[Dev] <-- Should we add these tags to threads that target a dev audience?

[Quintillus]

An idea that spun off from another thread, where it was mentioned that developer posts can cause eyes to glaze over. I'm not surprised; I've seen the same phenomenon with other projects where I'd an end user.

My first thoughts are there are two solutions:

1. Have separate areas for developer-focused and general-audience-focused discussions. A subforum?
2. Some sort of indication that a thread is targeted at a particular audience. Not dissimilar from the [RD] tag seen in Off-Topic to indicate that a thread is a serious ("red diamond") thread.

I'm not sure that (2) is better than (1), it may be worse. But either one seems like a potential improvement to me.

Longer term, there's also a conversation to be had about where our home should be. We could have the developer discussions on GitHub Discussions (are those any good?). We could set up our own C7 forum (maybe after we have the name question more settled though?). We could even do the popular thing nowadays and primarily use Discord (although please don't, I like threads). Or something else. Set up a C7-Devs IRC channel?

But for now I'm thinking we should make incremental improvements rather than try to solve the long-term question up-front.

 

[WildWeazel]

1. Have separate areas for developer-focused and general-audience-focused discussions. A subforum?

You mean a sub-sub-sub-subforum?

2. Some sort of indication that a thread is targeted at a particular audience. Not dissimilar from the [RD] tag seen in Off-Topic to indicate that a thread is a serious ("red diamond") thread.

I had thought of that, specifically because there are actual site-wide tags you can apply to threads (just above the first post on desktop). But now I see those don't appear on the forum view, so that's not very helpful. But your method works. I had already done that incidentally with [Dev Diary]. And I found that you can now edit thread titles (see Architecture Thread). Neat.

I mean, sure why not? It costs nothing to try it. I guess the only downside might be that if we're not intentional about keeping the right conversation in the right threads, one group might filter out important posts. So we'd need a small set of clearly defined tags. Maybe [Dev Diary], [Technical], [Media], uhh... [Users]? [Features]?

Longer term, there's also a conversation to be had about where our home should be. We could have the developer discussions on GitHub Discussions (are those any good?). We could set up our own C7 forum (maybe after we have the name question more settled though?). We could even do the popular thing nowadays and primarily use Discord (although please don't, I like threads). Or something else. Set up a C7-Devs IRC channel?

GitHub Discussions seem like a capable forum equivalent but they're private to the organization members, which I don't like as a general solution both for posterity and that it creates a separation between "us" and "them". But they're good for purely technical discussion where it's easy to reference other stuff on GitHub, like WIP that spans multiple tickets. (edit: but then, I guess you can accomplish the same thing in the open with umbrella issues as discussion threads.) Discord is a nice complement for realtime chats but it's almost impossible to browse and retain information. IRC even more so.

But for now I'm thinking we should make incremental improvements rather than try to solve the long-term question up-front.

Iterative development, if you will.

 

[Quintillus]

Yeah, I thought about the actual forum tags, but then realized I'd never found them useful. You managed to elucidate the "why".

I hadn't realized GitHub Discussions was team-member only. I agree then, since that means it has the same visibility problem as Discord (in some ways worse), even if discoverability of information long term may be more comparable to a forum.

But I'm happy to see we're trying it! It might work better than testing the limits of XenForo for how many forums deep it can support.