Discourse revamp

Archive
#1

So after spending a lot (a lot) of time in the meta forums for discourse, I’ve done some tweaking of thepeople: http://thepeople.p2pu.org/categories

I feel like the categories were designing in the way we think about them (our projects, our conversations) as opposed to a n00b (who will be looking for help on new courses or to look at our knowledge base we’ve built up–which is considerable at this point).

@dirk @Erika didn’t want to step on your toes. Made some suggestions.

@1L2P & @bekka please take a look at how I peeled out learning and orgy and see if you agree. I feel like someone looking to run a course is going to want to read the articles we’ve talking about / recommended. Someone interested in P2PU the org will be more interested in our proposals/talks etc.

At any rate, now to frolic in PWYM and TTW.

#2

Looks great. Three suggestions:

Collapse Misc with Org (there aren’t many posts in Misc which is good).

Move Brag Sheet category to Org(y).

I know I am probably responsible, but what about turning Org(y) into Org?

#3

Didn’t you set up Orgy?!?! I <3 Org(y).

I’ll do these things. My only thought is that if folks are more into the learning/support forum, they might not feel as though they can add things to the brag sheet?

#4

You said “orgy”… snickers

Really, though, I think this is wonderful. It’s vital that we remember that the way staff think about what P2PU does is not the same as what the community thinks. I think, in the past, this has happened because we’ve been worried about scaling-up, and that made us try and impose blueprints, when in reality we’ve always been best at community stuff when we respond to the way things ARE working, rather than trying to MAKE them work in particular ways.

Kudos.

#5

I did … cringe …

Would be great if we can change it.

1 Like
#6

I did. I’m a bit cranky about it. :confused:

#7

So we lost “orgy”… sighs nostalgically…

I think this appeals to everyone not just newcomers.
What are your suggestions for tech stuff?
I would hate for that part to slowly morph into support for our projects… Would make me look bad :smiley:

I want to excite people about the tech aspect of peer learning as well.
A part like “get encouraged”, where would live a support part, but also “Show and tell” part… like a brag sheet but for tech?

#8

Hey @Erika maybe the tab in tech should be “contributions” / “contribute”?

@jessykate might have ideas for how to empower folks to contribute to the technical tools…

#9

Hey @vanessa, I think our categories was in need of some love for a while now! Good work!

I especially like the New Courses, Recommended reading and Research categories! I think they fit current discussion well!

A single level of categories should be enough, needing to group them makes me wonder if we have too many categories. I would remove Mechanical MOOC and Translation, there is only a few conversations and we may start talking about other things that the Mechanical MOOC.

I don’t think Support belongs to the Tech category. Some of it may overlap, but support questions are not specifically technical and everyone should be helping out in answering them.

Can we rename Brag sheet to something like Show and tell or Sharing success. The term brag implies exaggeration and vanity and it is negative to me.

#10

I’m going to create a category called unsure if that is fine with everyone. I just posted a topic and wasn’t sure where to put it… I think it would be better for new posters to have a place to put things when they aren’t sure.

Any thoughts, objections?

#11

I think I’d prefer “general” rather than unsure.

Also, we still have too many categories. I know we tried to design for newcomers to make it easy to find content they would be interested in. But having to decide where to post a topic is getting complicated - and makes participation harder for the core community members. Need to find a balance, and it feels like we went a little too far in one direction.

#12

I’m going to pull out the community course for now.