And then there is also this discussion in the meta Discourse group, for whatever it's worth.
I guess what concerns me is Jeff Atwood's observation that "What most communities struggle with, when they make big changes in their discussion software, is simply change itself. It depends on the nature of the community, of course, ..."
How many diabetics do you know who absolutely LOVE change? Maybe I'm wrong in assuming that the disease often correlates with the attitude. But I've always rationalized to myself that ever since a "PWD" had that one big honkin' change foisted on them ... without even asking first! ... the tendency is to walk around more than a bit pissed off at the universe in general and change in particular.
But maybe I'm just a big, silly goose, eh?
-irrational john T1 LADA since ~1979; first pump: Minimed 507 ~1997, currently using Minimed 723 + CGM
My understanding of how it might work is that only people who have just joined the group would be limited. And that's mostly to prevent people doing harm. After that initial trial period, all members would have relatively equal access to everything in the community.
The purpose of the higher levels is usually to let the community select people who are allowed to assist in managing it. My experience has been that the "assistance in managing" tends to involve a lot of "voting" to reach a group consensus.
How it would actually work for tudiabetes, I of course have no idea.
-irrational john T1 LADA since ~1979; first pump: Minimed 507 ~1997, currently using Minimed 723 + CGM
Thanks John. If we were on discourse, you would be notified that I mentioned your name ;) The reality is, it is fun to see what open source programs look like and do.
Thanks for the direct link, Lorraine. It's even creepier than I thought.
I suppose it could look that way if you read it completely out of the context & spirit it was written in. Jeff is actually trying to find ways to make the group more automatically inclusive while at the same time protect it from people/bots who might want to robotically fill it with posts to porn or worse.
Two things to consider. First, Jeff wrote that not quite two years ago, in March of 2013. They wouldn't have a release version of Discourse available for another year & 1/2 later. So what you see there is essentially a design proposal intended to prompt internal debate in their development group as much as anything.
Second, notice how in each case there is an "Admins can change these limitations in..." section. If they wish, the admins of tudiabetes can disable ALL of this should it make sense to do so. Nothing about this is required to be used simply because one is using Discourse.
But I think they will use it. In my experience with it, it tends to work quite well.
-irrational john T1 LADA since ~1979; first pump: Minimed 507 ~1997, currently using Minimed 723 + CGM
Thank you, John. I will keep that in mind. I meant no offense. Many things about our technological age I find creepy--like talking cars. Of course, I have a couple legally blind friends who embrace any machine that will talk to them!.....Blessings...
Judith, I am actively looking at Discourse with an eye towards curiosity. Really understand how tech can seem creepy. Personally use only what I need ;) The platform is very clean, and we will most likely lose some things we are used to here, but also believe the things we will lose are going to fall away in this tech world we live in anyway. One could say, TU is "cutting edge".
"Links to personal blogs we consider to be of particular value" - who is going to make the judgment of what's " of value"? Sounds pretty subjective to me. For quite some time, there has been a tiered hierarchy of cliques of bloggers in the DOC. It's a "circle the wagons" attitude.
I have to say, my preference would be to have the TuD community decide what is of value. I agree there are different circles but I think it would be much better to be inclusive. But we may also need to have some level of editorial standards, we probably shouldn't link inactive blogs and we should be careful about linking commercial and scam blogs.
This trust level function--Big Brother is Watching You function--is it really necessary after the move? It seems to me that TuDiabetes has survived quite well without such a function, merely by the members caring and watching out for the website.
Like AR, I'm also a fan of the flatliners club group. This group was more active in the past but it alternates between periods of activity and inactive times. This group, along with the TAG group, I think named TAGers United, proved inspirational to me when I made pivotal successful changes in my diabetes treatment regimen.
Obviously, you're not going to migrate all 420 groups to the new Discourse platform. Will we get a "heads up" when you decide which ones make the cut and which ones don't?
Obviously, you're not going to migrate all 420 groups to the new Discourse platform. Will we get a "heads up" when you decide which ones make the cut and which ones don't?
OK, I am confused. It's almost as though you think if a group is not migrated then it will be lost forever, never to be reinstated.
If enough people want to recreate a group which was not migrated, I expect you can just ask and the corresponding Discourse sub-category can be created?
My hope is to make these decisions with the community. The groups are heavily weighted. There are a small number of groups with more than 200 members and a vast sea of groups with just a couple people and almost no activity. Even the "big" groups may not be appropriate to transition. Some of them haven't had activity for months and months. I promise to advocate to get community involvement in these decisions. But I will tell you there will be a lot that is crumbs underneath the bed and we just need to toss it.
I take your point, John. Some of these groups, however, have a large volume of posts and may not be accessible if they don’t migrate. Restarting an old topic is one thing, restoring a complete archive of discussion is another.
But John---In several groups that I value, I often go back to reference an older post, for instance, because my circumstances have changed. For instance, I might pay attention to thyroid groups/discussions because my thyroid read is borderline. I learn what I can wherever I can. Then sometime later, I am actually diagnosed hypothyroid, so I revisit the subject......
