Discourse graduation

Meta
#1

Discourse started as an experiment and the IT team is doing an awesome work. I have the feeling that many Mozillians see this Discourse instance as beta, waiting to see how this experiment will work out.

I think it would make sense to move this instance under a more prominent (sub)domain. Something like: community.mozilla.org or discuss.mozilla.org. You get the point. I know that moving it under mozilla.org may have some legal implications we should consider, but it would also be a good opportunity to have a fully volunteer IT effort under mozilla.org.

3 Likes
#2

I agree, I’ve been talking with @tad @tanner @leo @Kensie and others to advocate more for Discourse internally (both paid and non-paid staff).

Some people from engagement team are willing to help but we need to first have a clear document and elevator pitch. We are currently working on this pad:

https://etherpad.mozilla.org/discourse-advocacy

Having the mozillians integration finished would be a big push that would help us to get more resources and visibility.

#3

During my tenure at Mozilla, services under *.mozilla.org required a security review.

I suspect as a step to a more prominent URL, we should engage someone in Security. Who’s the right person?

#4

@comzeradd - thanks for picking this back up (oops, saw the email from Nuke first). We were thinking we should create a pilot document for Discourse as community forum. Even though we feel it’s ready to move out of the pilot stage, creating this doc will show that, and present the info in a familiar format.

This is the template @bking sent me:

Pilot checklist - A pilot can be successful even if not all of the criteria are met:

  • Functional team need: There is a clear need from a Product or Functional team for this to happen, and they can’t do this on their
    own, i.e. there is a real incentive to punch above our weight
  • Measurable impact: The outcome/results are measurable so we’ll be able to tell whether this was a success or not
  • Volunteer incentive: There is real volunteer incentives (can be a combo of recognition, learning, impacting mission, swag, financial, or all of the above)
  • Asynchronousity: Most of the real work can be done asynchronously and at scale.
#5

To get access to some of the Mozillians API stuff, we may need a security review anyway, but there’s some other things we need to consider first (like the Discourse team). We’re also talking to Marshall Erwin about data compliance which could help ease that.

#6

A security review is never a bad idea anyway, especially on any site that lets users log in and will have their email address (and possible other profile data) on file.

1 Like
#7

What is the scope of the mozilla-community.org domain? Maybe we should continue to use that give me more prominence for other things as well?

#8

Good point. Not even sure what data is stored. Thank goodness it’s not login credentials!