Suggestions for an Unofficial Magento Discussion Site?
Last week, Brendan Falkowski, Piotr Kaminski and I engaged in a high-speed friendly discussion on Twitter about the recent Magento Connect purge of extensions and how the metrics used by Magento to purge 'low quality' and 'unsupported' extensions may not have been the best metrics to use (at least, that was my position). Throughout this conversation, I realized that Twitter wasn't the best platform for this - 140 characters at a time (less, if you're mentioning people to get them involved in the conversation) isn't much to state an opinion, and it's hard to refer back to a discussion on Twitter.
I've been brainstorming over the past few days the best way to hold discussions like this - something that could be mentioned on Twitter and then the discussion could continue elsewhere. I've thought about a few possibilities - Gists, IRC, the Magento sub-reddit, but I keep coming up with drawbacks for each.
So, I wanted to ask the community - what ideas do you have? Post them here, tweet them at me @JoshuaSWarren on Twitter or email me at josh@creatuity.com.
The overall idea is for a place where all members of the Magento community - developers, partners, merchants, and any other interested individuals - can share in a discussion about Magento. This wouldn't be for technical questions (we have StackExchange for that), but for overall discussions, questions and feedback about the direction and future of Magento in a 'safe', unofficial setting. A place that we, as a community, can get organized and say "Magento, here's what the community thinks", and, if they so choose, a place that Magento employees could officially or unofficially post questions or potential changes to and easily solicit feedback from the Magento community in a safe, un-official, simple manner.
To meet these goals, I think we need a place that meets these criteria:
- Easy to use - shouldn't be something that only developers know about or can use.
- Lightweight - it would be very simple to start a new discussion quickly after a topic comes up on Twitter or in another venue, so there's little resistance to just get the discussion going.
- Free.
- Open - shouldn't require moderation for comments to appear.
- Keeps a public record of the discussion that's easy to refer to.
This could be a new place, that we build ourselves or use existing software for, or it could be an existing place that we all decide will be the place we go to for these discussions - let's see what sort of ideas we can come up with as a community, and then make this happen.
Also, there's some discussion on Twitter about meeting at/after PreImagine during Magento Imagine next week to discuss this - however, not everyone in the community is at Imagine. So, I'd like to suggest that people that aren't able to make it to Imagine this year post their thoughts here or on Twitter and then we can make sure they are brought up if/when we meet in person at Imagine to discuss this idea.
So, Magento community, what do you think? Let's use the hashtag #MagentoDiscuss and post your thoughts on Twitter or as a comment here!