Posting to Google Group from Discourse

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#1

From @abesamma on his other gmail account:

Unfortunately, mailing lists and Discourse can’t handle this. I’d love if this worked, but the email has to come “from” your email address in order to be accepted by Google.

What we’ve done is subscribed a special email address to the group, and so it sends all the emails here where they get posted, trusting the original author info.

This might be something that someone could write a Discourse plugin for. I don’t know if Google Groups has a good API. This would be a pretty big job of both extending the email parsing and ingestion code. So while coding is always possible, let’s call this infeasible.

I think the big question is: how long do the two systems run in parallel?

And, what features or tasks need to be completed before the switch over?

These questions is something that I’d like to see a group form, to work through, and list the steps needed. I can help with this, but we’re going to need some more volunteers.

From Jeremy’s feedback on the call, he didn’t seem to think that importing the Google Group would add value. It still exists and can be searched. So that’s one less “must do” before switching.

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TW Google Group (Read Only)
#2

I think the key is just to get more people using Discourse and not just seeing it as an experiment that is just for testing by a select few. People post on GG as it is more active, but that wont change unless users start posting new topics here, chicken and egg etc.

I wonder if we could have a sticky post in the Google Groups introducing the Discourse forum and inviting people to use it. Part of what we need is for enough people using Discourse that if there are shortcomings, they surface before we switch over completely. @EricShulman is this something we can do?

#3

See:

@boris … Is this possible?

#4

@pmario I answered this previously, see above.

I think custom styling for the GG with a message that points to a FAQ about GG could be good.

I’ll see if I can find a theme component that lets us do this. Bookmarking this for later.

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#5

Since we’ve finally been able to have a realistic alternative to using Google Groups, it was actually somewhat confusing at first because I couldn’t reply in a thread because I didn’t realize it was a cross post from the Google Groups. I’m not sure how much this is addressed in the FAQ but I assume overtime the number of people posting in the Google Group will go down.

#6

Yes it would be good to have a banner message or something in that forum.

Maybe even rename it to Google Group - Read Only

I’ll research what we can do. Thanks for commenting!

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#7

@boris IMO, this Discourse group is currently confusing.

It is a bit of a CLEFT STICK, in the sense of being able to demo Discourse, yet, at the same time, the continuity with the GG is broken in large parts.

I think that is making the process of VALUING Discourse over GG more difficult than it should be.

In addition there are default behaviors on Discourse to do with “ranking” that simply don’t suit the kind of very matured correspondents that GG comprises. A LOT of the process of going through levels I think irrelevant to the overwhelming majority of GG participants.

Those levels would also be OFF-PUTTING to new users, IMO (WHY is it doing that?? they may well ask.)

(FYI, a major issue why an attempt to get a StackExchange TW group working in the past was the HOOPS you needed to jump through to get ratings were ridiculous for our GG achievements ready done already. Don’t make this are a re-run of that.)

Discourse, broadly, looks like an improvement. So, hats off on that!

BUT I think there are still many snafus to sort out.

Best wishes
Josiah

#8

The “ranking” is a Discourse built in feature to protect the site (new users are slowly given more responsibility over time / spammers are blocked from doing instant harm) in a way that is relatively automatic (that is, doesn’t require manual moderation). In Discourse they’re called Trust Levels.

This is an older article so not all of the details / permissions are totally correct, but is a good read if you are interested:

Please do continue to write up your initial thoughts and experiences as you come across different parts of the site. It’s very useful to hear from people and we can see what design, messaging or plugins we might add to help improve it for others.

Do you have any top “must do” items that you see?

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To Admin: Why Don't Some Posts Have A Reply Button?
To Admin: Why Don't Some Posts Have A Reply Button?
#9

I have updated the pinned topic in the Google Group to be titled read only. New users should see it at the top of the category.

2 Likes
#10

@boris, do you think it might be worthwhile to rename the topic “Google Group - Read Only (For Now)” or something similar? (If that’s not too ridiculously long.) A lot of folks may not make it as far as the category view to see the pinned topic (and may not read it even if they do catch sight of it in their peripheral vision).

Might it also be worth adding some text to the pinned post about how Google Groups topics will have replies turned on once we’ve fully migrated to the new platform?

#11

My suspicion here is the trust levels will be more frustrating to Google Groups immigrants than to new users, as most forum software the last few years has implemented similar protocols. The intent is to prevent newly registered accounts from spamming — and it’s pretty effective.

It’s another speed bump, sure — but I think it’s a pretty standard one to encounter these days.

I’m not 100% sure about Discourse, but the admins should be able to make exceptions with manual edits when needed. If you or, say, @DaveGifford couldn’t post in the plugins category because you had less than 10 posts over 24 hours, that’s a rarefied enough circumstance that someone on the admin team could pop in and address it.

For the post part, regular, responsible participation will level everyone up transparently, without anyone having to worry about their trust level. The minor annoyances will be well worth the administrative headaches these levels prevent.

#12

Ah, I see. That’s a good point! I was thinking about it as an archive, but could go either way – turning on commenting would be possible once it’s disconnected from GG.

I’m going to leave the text for now, because I don’t know what the right thing is post-GG. I’m collecting it as an Open Question.

#13

I had assumed commenting would be turned back on once the doors are closed on the Google Group. We’ve always been able to add new insights to old topics and resurrect old threads for fresh perspectives.

Another assumption I made (which turns out to be completely wrong) is that all existing content on Google Groups was already mirrored here on Talk. From your other post, I see it’s only threads with new posts that are getting mirrored — or maybe it’s just new threads created since the mirroring has been turned on?

Thanks! I went over there to leave a comment, but I wasn’t sure if I should clutter that one up just yet. (Maybe it’s better left as a stake in the ground to remind us this is a consideration?) So I added my comments here instead.

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#14

I think the trust levels and badges will encourage some/many users to try interacting in different ways. It kind of tells them they have not yet fully experienced discourse and encourage them to keep going through the normal change reluctance we all sometimes have.

As much as it may be about trust it can also be about adoption, encouragement and make people hold back from criticism until they really have something to criticise rather than a knee jerk reaction when facing change.

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#15

Could the GG posts be grayed/greyed out, to help indicate that they are unavailable for responses?

#16

I don’t think it is off-putting to new users. You can go up the rank pretty fast as far as basic posting. It is, however, a bit off-putting to me. I’ve only answered probably a couple hundred new users’ questions, spent hours coming up with help and info – none of that captured in my “basic level” status. To move through the ranks on Discourse it isn’t enough to participate, you also have to use all the little bells and whistles which the Discourse developers happen to think are important.

#17

@Mark_S I think @pmario has slowly been working on bumping levels as he sees whose account here maps to existing long term users.

These levels really are mainly about features/tools on the forum to help edit and organize – basically options to help do work on the forum. They shouldn’t be construed as meaning anyone’s “standing”.

#18

I would like to thank you for the 726 links you added to https://links.tiddlywiki.com/contributors/marxsal/. Everyone can and do make use of that not matter what group they use or not. Without all those links it would not make much sense for now. That is a big contribution and quite some effort. Also I know you are answering with solutions and clear explanations that I have learned so much from over the times. Bye the way I have often admired your patience.