Why Discourse?
Members@ and discuss@ mailing lists are unsuitable platforms for having and recording community discussions and input. The linear stream of responses to an email does not help engage multiple members with each other. Email is best used for exchanges between one sender to another, or one sender to many. It is not designed to spark conversation between multiple receivers.
That is not to say email is obsolete - email is still extremely accessible and useful in specific cases. But there are also better tools for community discussion and collaboration.
Hence, we introduce Discourse. https://www.discourse.org/
Discourse is an open-source forum platform, built to foster community. It’s like any online community like Reddit, but fully within our control to customize, collectively own and manage.
(E.g. Dallas Makerspaces’ Discourse: Dallas Makerspace Talk
List of other Discourse communities: Discourse customers | Discourse - Civilized Discussion)
It enables us to talk with each other in a more transparent, inclusive way. It can help us find, connect, and organize with the broader membership. We can get a better sense of members’ needs/wants/visions/ambitions etc.
Discourse can develop into a kind of digital twin of Artisans Asylum and can become an accessible resource for new members. We mapped discussion categories to physical spaces in Holton & Antwerp, and added categories based on member activities like committees and working groups. So content is intuitively organized, searchable, and navigable. Ultimately, it can help new members familiarize themselves to the people and culture of A2.
So please give Discourse a try! Get started by reading this quick post here. We can’t fulfill this vision without active community input and participation.
Any and all feedback is welcome - just start a topic in the Discourse category :).