I once lived in a house where one of the rooms was always piled with random stuff. We jokingly called it “the treasury”, although “the heap” would have been more accurate. One might say, “the problem with this room is that it has a bunch of random stuff in it. The solution is to clean it”. However, this would have been a mis-diagnosis. The problem with the room was that we had no intention for it: there was no reason anyone wanted to be in it, or to invest energy in it. If we had cleaned it without setting intention, it would have stayed neglected, and eventually accumulated another mess.
The solution–which was pioneered by @LB while organizing a party–was to set an intention for it. It became a super cozy “womb” like room with tons of soft surfaces, gentle lights, and a great vibe. We put the TV there and it became the spot for snuggling and watching shows. Once it had a clear intention, it started getting used and loved and naturally became more cared for.
Similarly, I think the dis-organization of our discourse masks the deeper issue that we don’t have any real intention for this forum. This proposal feels like it treats Discourse usage as an end-in-itself, with success equated to increased Discourse engagement metrics, but why? The goal of “discovering information” and “receiving support” is already solved by our docs and our Discord, so it’s not clear why we need to invest in the platform.
That said, I think there are good reasons to use Discourse. Discord is a communication platform with fast feedback but poor discoverability. Most conversations will only ever be visible to the immediate participants. Discourse has slow feedback, but great discoverability: everyone can read up on hot threads, and we can reference them weeks or years later.
I propose we ask: in what areas can these advantages of Discourse be most useful to us? and then focus on those areas. With that in mind, I think two very strong categories would be:
Discussions: Any long-form discussion where we’d like to prioritize people getting to reflect and respond, and want to engage the whole community. Some examples are Exorcising Harmful Narratives and Should Discord be a "cred-free space"? - #9 by decentralion. The book club can also fit into this.
Proposals: Suggestions to change the project in ways that have wider-reaching impact and therefore merit discussion and buy-in from the community before experimentally getting started. This proposal and Changing the CredSperiment weights both feel like good examples. However, I wouldn’t need to write a proposal before (say) starting work on optimizing CredRank, because the community doesn’t need to provide input on that.
We can further tie these two use cases in with the rest of the project by explicitly referencing them in our community practices. Here’s what I’m thinking. Every week, we can find what discussion topic got the most Cred, and what proposal got the most Cred. Then, we reserve time during the community call to discuss that topic, and during the weekly update to talk about the new proposal. This would start to create a real palpable answer to the question “why would I go Discourse instead of just posting in Discord instead”.