NOTE: The documentation of this task can be found at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discourse
== Previous description ==
Emerged from a discussion about annual plans at technical collaboration's team offsite.
The idea is to help solve the problem of duplicate queries that we get on mailing lists, make it easier for users to search through the existing queries and get answers, and enable new contributors to ask questions, etc.
-----
**Open questions:**
* Which discussion forum would be best for our purposes?
** [[https://stackexchange.com/|Stack Exchange]]?
*** [[https://www.stackoverflowbusiness.com/enterprise|Own install]] or install on the StackExchange cluster?
**** If it's on the cluster, a separate site or use an existing one ([[https://stackoverflow.com/|StackOverflow]], or maybe [[https://webapps.stackexchange.com/|Web Applications]])?
*** **Pros:**
**** Would probably become a great way for attracting volunteer devs.
**** Answers searchable & updatable, unlike mailing lists
*** **Cons:**
**** Not open source (open content, though).
**** If we create a new site, we miss out on most of the network effects. If we use an existing site, all of them seem like awkward fits. (StackOverflow would be good for writing MediaWiki extensions; ProWebmasters and ServerFault for running your own MediaWiki; Web Applications for using MediaWiki as a service; SuperUser for using MediaWiki as a user. We want all of that but don't want to be fragmented into several sites.)
** A StackOverflow open source clone which we host ourselves?
*** List: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2267/stack-exchange-clones
*** Examples: [[https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/questions/|AskBot]], [[http://meta.mamute.org|Mamute]], [[http://paizaqa.herokuapp.com|paizaQA]], [[http://www.question2answer.org/qa/|Question2Answer]]
** [[https://www.discourse.org/|Discourse]]? (see also T124690)
*** Nice, modern UI.
*** Written by ex-StackOverflow devs with proven competence at social software
*** For example, Phabricator folks use Discourse: https://discourse.phabricator-community.org
** Phabricator integrated forums - [[https://secure.phabricator.com/ponder/|Ponder]] (or [[https://secure.phabricator.com/T12738|Nuance]]?)
*** Quim gave a small demo at the session in the Hackathon
* What'll be the scope of the forum?
* What's the timeline for this?
* [Low priority] Migration of existing content from Wikitech-l at some point?
----
See also:
* {T150732}