If we were to move to Loomio, I think that it would be more a replacement of silverstripe-dev and/or silverstripe-core.

Agree Sam, this current setup is a bit of a meta exploration just to test out the features of Loomio. So far I like the consensus building, agree this probably is not the tool to use for voting and working out priority of things. Once I've had a few people in the SilverStripe dev core play with this a bit we can have a discussion over on dev/core list whether we might find it useful to switch away from Google Groups and what the benefits might be.

Looks useful as you can change your position on something if a good argument is put forward. It also retained the history of position changes and comments on this.

@fredcondo thanks for being an early adopter, we are going to open this up later this week to the developer list with a few useful discussions (also I'm just trialling the @ mentions).

Some ss-dev threads that could be useful as sample posts:

• TinyMCE 4 default toolbar https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/silverstripe-dev/h7lLVV0o77I
• Feature flags https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/silverstripe-dev/h7lLVV0o77I
• SS documentation https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/silverstripe-dev/3X8kZVSqPiY

Further to my disagreement:

That the current decision can be completely different, or a very small subset, of the overall topic is already confusing people as can be seen in this topic

Secondly, formatting is done with markdown. Markdown is not very friendly for non-tech people, which limits their ability to get their point across.

Most people still see value in a silverstripe-dev mailing list and so I've refined the proposal, suggesting that we use Loomio as a supplement.

Simon might have a point there. Mailing list has the definite upside of happening inside my mail client, meaning I will see every single message.
Those daily reports from loomio one gets by default are pretty useless in comparison actually.

To clarify -- I really like loomio. I think there are some simple tweaks they can make to improve it significantly.

For instance, adding a "Follow" functionality which sends you email notifications for threads you're interested in.

Second is it needs a little more structure to each discussion. Discussions start with a "problem". Thoughts are discussed and a proposal is made to solve that problem. Discussion occurs for that proposal. From there, another proposal may be initiated (why not have multiple proposals at once in some cases?). Discussion should somehow be grouped by proposal. And when a second proposal is created, they should have the option to reframe the original Discussion description (most likely, to be more broad in nature). Following this line of thought, maybe all discussions MUST start with a proposal (aka hypothesis). When the second proposal is created, then it becomes a group of proposals, which you can discuss separately on.

Nothing definitive here. Just raw thoughts.

Marketo has ONE community and it works well.

The single community includes (all under one account):

1. Feature Voting (e.g. UserVoice)
2. Discussions (more like StackOverflow)
3. Support (some help desk tool)

(Also help articles are tied in via federated search.)

ZenDesk provides all this under one product (though, it is not OSS, nor free, ...nor cheap).

SilverStripe should really have ONE destination for its community (and, thus, ONE system to manage) including Feature Voting, "Get Help" Discussions, "Dev" Discussions (something LIKE loomio should replace the current dev list), and Bug reporting.

And they should all be integrated. A "Get Help" or "Dev" discussion (or even a newly created "feature" to be voted on) should have a button on it that says "convert this to a bug report" (how many times do we really need to say "file a bug" on a forum post?). With this built, you can close GitHub tickets down to SS devs only and use it more as a task manager (and each of the types above could have "Create GitHub task from this thread").

...Ya, something like this is something that'll likely have to be built yourself. But I can already tell you I know a good number of SMB and Enterprise businesses who could use these modules.

Remember, it's not just about those currently involved. You must think about the people looking at us from the outside considering whether they should join in and start developing using SS. I have to say, I was quite reluctant to get deeply involved with SS mostly because I looked around and saw nothing happening in the community (old, unanswered forum posts; no one chatting much in IRC; etc). I just didn't know all the chatter was happening in different places.

@nathanjbrauer you make valid points and this is something we are attempting to address in the forthcoming silverstripe.org overhaul. Making it clearer where to go in order to get particular types of help.

Yeah, we could build all our own tools... however how long would that take?, and would we do any better job than the people that makes these external tools given they have a passion for building these tools, whereas we have a passion for building SilverStripe Framework and CMS.

Perhaps what is needed is a better way to stitch these tools together or bubble up content from them for users to get to the right places most relevant to them?

Integration is key, I think.

SSO and the ability to move a discussion from one place to another (or easily link them together).

PS: As far as rolling your own, this is a highly lucrative monetization option. I know companies paying millions a year for these. Build them out as individual OSS modules that all integrate, then provide a warranty and ongoing support (and custom features) to companies like Marketo or even large OSS companies.

One more thing. You should definitely and absolutely replace the user forum with something like http://AskUbuntu.com (StackExchange). AskUbuntu has been HUGE success in community Ubuntu support.

StackExchange has a fairly gruelling process to get your own site, I know we have tried in the past, we didn't get one. Which is why we now have a SilverStripe tag on StackOverflow. Also doesn't recommending another 3rd party tool contradict your earlier point @nathanjbrauer ? ;)

I also have stats around forum usage, it's higher than you might think.

Excluding spam comments, the forum's average number of posts/comment/activity per month over the last 12 months is approx. 350 vs StackOverFlow's, 90. Trends are that there is some convergence occurring between the two but not enough to warrant dumping it.

For those that want to split hairs and push the "yeah but how many actually solved a problem?" ~ no, I don't have comparable data on that just yet but we are now tracking unanswered forum posts on the community dash as a start and the answer to that question is largely subjective anyway. Users are still getting value from the forum, hence why I am not keen to just drop it yet (the same could be said for our little excursion in to Loomio vs Google Groups too).

I personally try and answer what I can in the forums, however it's more likely this group (active devs) that has the kind of knowledge that those on the forum are looking for, so I do encourage you to share what you know to help others over on the forums AND StackOverflow once and a while.

Knowledge is knowledge no matter where it gets shared.

I get that some people like emails to turn up for every post as in the google group, but this just lends to information overload. I'd rather if people believe something is relevant they tag me in.

This does mean people need to reflect a bit on what they are writing and who it is for. This is also good for community building rather than blanket blasting everyone with a bulk email.

I had a thought after looking at the Silverstripe User Voice page, would this be better than User Voice? In User Voice, you can only vote for a change rather than giving yes/abstain/no/block. Thoughts?

Different audiences I think. One is to collect features from a wider audience (UserVoice), the other is for those implementing it to thrash out the way we go about doing the architecture/implementation (Loomio).

Think of a funnel, UserVoice is the wide end (the ss core dev team will use this to drive decisions as to what is in new versions), Loomio is the middle bit, and then GitHub would be the end point where the work actually gets done. Later we'd communicate back to those that contributed to the "wide" end of the funnel as to what has happened by marking items as completed in UserVoice.

Remember, the current proposition under vote is that we keep both Google Groups AND also use Loomio for decision making. I'm leaving this open til the end of the month to get a good idea of the feeling in the room about our next move.

The more I use this, the more I'm inclined to think it actually could replace the current dev group. I'm coming to prefer it over the emails and find myself participating more. I would probably vote yes if we revisited the "replace the list with this". If folks want help, the appropriate places are IRC and the forum correct?

Hey all, in that case if you do find yourself enjoying using this space over the dev list please adjust your current position vote accordingly. Seems like they are pretty active getting new features out too just got a message from them about a few new things.

@camfindlay1 should we vote no on the current position then? I didn't want to derail loomio entirely with a no vote.

The more I've tried to use this, the more I think it shouldn't be used. There's no mobile friendly site, the only hint I have of the going ons is a daily email (that I'm usually reading on my phone while commuting) that contains everything that's happened over the last day and the only people that seem to be here are a very small subset of the people that use the mailing list, which leads to this feeling more like it's hiding discussions than making them more open.

@simon15 on their roadmap is a mobile friendly site https://trello.com/b/tM6QGCLH/loomio-roadmap

Also remember that the entire mailing list isn't here, only those that have been engaged and motivated enough to come over and give things a go based on my post in the dev-list (it's also possible that some people are reading this and not actively subscribing, and that is actually an ok thing). I've found the level of constructive participation here really good (far exceeding my expectations).

Just because we can blast everyone on the mailing list, doesn't mean they are actually engaging in the conversation flow or even care, there will be certain topics that particular people care about and will jump into given the chance. I quite like keeping data exhaust to a min, ensuring those that actually want to get actively involved can in a meaningful way without being bombarded with emails.

I understand you would like to have notification the moment any thing happens in and around the deeper SilverStripe community discussion. Perhaps live subscribe emails are something to be added to Loomio's feature list? You are welcome to go suggest it I would imagine as their process is pretty transparent.

I guess my point is I am thinking toward the future, rather than accepting how the tool is in it's current incarnation (which I'd like to think is how we think about SilverStripe too). The things I see on the road map at the moment excite me and I look forward to seeing them implemented.

@camfindlay1 Yet we're making decisions on using this now, not at some hypothetical point in the future when it might actually be worthwhile.

Looks like Loomio are actually actively addressing the email notifications if that is something people have a concern about. Worth having a read over https://www.loomio.org/d/GUCFDqQH/beta-feature-yesterday-on-loomio

I'd be interested in exploring and making more explicit what the feature set that would be appropriate for the dev list is. It would be pretty useful to help us define the types of tools we adopt in the community.

Revisiting this in the future is a good idea and based on their roadmap they are likely to be implementing those things that have been mentioned in this discussion (email notification, mobile friendly) in the near future, these items are currently sitting in their "up next" and "in progress" respectively.

As you can appreciate, introducing change always takes a bit of time (and a lot of communication!), so my approach here has been to introduce the tool as a pilot, get some community use and feedback, and use a little foresight based on what I see on the Loomio roadmap to put us in a good strategic position to adopt and make it successful. I really like the tool and I know a number of you have also expressed this view which is great to see.

Let's leave the current proposal to run it's course and then we'll follow up with whether we would like to take a break and come back once there are more things to play with, or whether we do adopt under the tenet that those things we want are on the horizon.

Anyone interested in the discussion about how loomio might handle notifications in the near future, you might want to join this group and make your opinions heard - https://www.loomio.org/d/42kKoEvs/feedback-please-keeping-up-to-date-without-information-overload?utm_campaign=notifications&utm_medium=email&utm_source=new_discussion_created

If overlap/fragmentation is the problem, you could always use Google Forms (docs) to create polls

My opinion probably does not hold much value but seeing how i used to be an active contributor on many forum software forums like mybb etc. i have for silverstripe for the longest time been wondering what the idea is of pushing certain things to other websites.

Like uservoice, google forums and now loomio (and i heard something about asking for help / questions going to stackoverflow). I am not opposed to the idea but would it not be much much better to push all of these topics to the official forums (even if it would mean grabbing a normal forum software or integrating it into silverstripe for the merit of features xenforo has over the silverstripe forums).

Just seems to me you want to get your community active and alive and don't think pushing all discussions to so many different sites will help in achieving this goal. MyBBs forum about MyBB updates etc for example even integrates github in some form. With the reason that issues posted on the forums can be pushed to github.

My question i guess is now why would you not try to get all discussions in one place instead of 4.

@simon15 good to know that. I can't say I've had these problems myself and it would be good to know if others had this access issue too. If it is of concern I think it would be good to let the Loomio people know too so they can improve their application.

Anyone else had problems accessing the site?

@schippie everyone's opinion has value as long as you can give some good reasoning behind your position (which is the part of meritocratic communities I enjoy).

With communities of practice like SilverStripe, I see that there are many level of participation going on which require different tool sets. Granted I am not a fan of fragmentation we'll be looking at ways in the updated silverstripe.org website to help direct different levels of participants to the correct place for them to have appropriate discussions. As long as people's experience is fluid and valuable, not having to build all the tools yourself is a good thing (and saves efforts and time we can channel into SilverStripe core).

Initially newcomers are likely to get value from tutorials, forums and StackOverflow. This group is trying to get accustomed to working with a new framework, solve a problem and build a website with SilverStripe. Over time as they learn more, places like IRC, api, docs etc are the next level deeper in the community-at this point too is often where developers get to know each other in the community better through more ongoing interaction. Then when the dev is wanting to help and collaborate on the actual direction and architectural approaches to SilverStripe itself, the dev list or places like Loomio are more appropriate.

Ideally it is all geared toward robust discussion and knowledge sharing, with more experienced devs helping newer ones, and in turn those devs will do the same one day. It's how you grow a good self-renewing software community with knowledge and learning at the core.

Has anyone attempted to contact loomio about making discussions accessible in a mailing list style?

Yeah I agree @zauberfisch email notification have been the deal breaker at the moment (the email notifications are on the Loomio roadmap you can also turn on the daily digest email in your account settings).

@simon15 I had those stability issues this morning too... agree we cannot have that if we adopt a new tool (I'll also be letting Loomio know about this).

@zauberfisch @camfindlay1 I do get an email from loomio with a daily digest of all discussions as well as a notification when new discussions get started. Don't you have these email settings in your account (yet)?

Yip I get those, I think some people wanted a higher volume of email notification i.e. as they happen, as an option.

@florianthoma yeah, I do get those, but exactly what @camfindlay1 said, I need it per thread and message. And I need to be able to respond to a message directly from my email client.
If responding means I have to open a web browser, possibly log into loomio, find the read, and fill the form - well, I probably will not be active for very long.
(yeah, there is the "reply to this" link in the digest, but even with that I still have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to even see the form)

@camfindlay1 While i partially agree with this, their is no reason why you could not build forums to include all the features you wish through custom user groups permissions forum sections etc. Like developers, new user etc. and have polls related to voting open to certain groups.

Besides the fact that discussion threads can just as well be had on a forum hosted by yourself as on Google forums.
Also most modern forum software come fully equipped with a notification center that automatically informs a user if somebody mentions them etc. through mail etc.

The main advantage that would have is that all discussion is held within one site and not spread out like it is now. It would make the community seem a lot more active and it would also cause users to mix more than currently happens. So developers would interact with newer users and vice verse.

I again am not opposed to multiple services, just saying how from my perspective one mixed community with topics ranging from deep level core changes to new user questions is very beneficial. For example: https://www.google.com/search?q=mybb+problem&oq=mybb+problem most messages you see are direct links to the MyBB forums while in comparison https://www.google.com/search?q=silverstripe+problem&oq=silverstripe+problem is all over the place.

I think if you have one unified forum in which all matters related to the software can be discussed and users are rewarded for their involvement in some way or form. Users will be more likely to keep using and participating in future discussions / help questions.