Building this community (this forum): defining and stating its purpose

Open Source Design meta Forum feedback
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From READ ME FIRST: Getting Started (for site staff), the first of four points under Building your community:

  1. Define your community’s purpose in a pinned or banner topic.

Whilst that Staff area is limited access, I’d like that point to be open to the public for discussion.

Examples of Discourse presentation of statements of purpose

A few hours ago I stumbled across this:

example.png1177×732 88.8 KB

For this forum, that type of banner might be effective during a period of transition. Something short and sweet, linking to (I suggest) just one key topic.

(Side note: I don’t use Manjaro.)

Related

Building a Discourse Community (2014-08-01)

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The current OSD banner here is pissing me off, since I’ve closed it like 3 times :slight_smile: not sure why it doesn’t preserve the state and know that I don’t want it here :slight_smile:

Currently it states things for newcomers, like the purpose of OSD community.
As an older member I would have expected to know what to use OSD Discourse for, in comparison to GitHub.

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The welcome message

Did it reappear as a banner (with the blue background) after the first two dismissals?

I guess that it remains as a pinned topic after being dismissed as a banner – see for example the second shot at First impressions (preview) – but the nature of pinning with Discourse allows pinned content to be not repetitively obstructive.

After a first reading (maybe a first full, unrushed reading) of what’s pinned, the content is automatically unpinned for whoever read it. And each user has the option of re-pinning for his or her self.

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When I click on the readme above I see this:

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Please note:

I’ll de-link the phrase.

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Something like this maybe:

Welcome to the Open Source Design forum!

This is a place for all kinds of productive discussion about open source + design:

  • pushing more open design processes
  • improving the user experience & interface design of open source software
  • the tools used for it
  • making it sustainable & securing funding
  • the issues we face working in it
  • and more :slight_smile:

If you want to get involved more and contribute to the website, please check out our :computer: Github organization, donate to our :money_with_wings: Open Collective, or spread the word via :bird: Twitter!

What do you think? (The bullet points can definitely be adjusted ;))

EDIT: Just saw the current message at First impressions (preview) – of course we can use some of those points too. I just mainly took stuff from our frontpage.

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Thanks –

To help everyone think about it, in context, it’s now the banner topic.

@evalica your wish to be not repeatedly pissed off is understandable :slight_smile: – if this  particular edition of a banner topic reappears following dismissal by you, please add a comment.

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It works. It gets dismissed the first time. Thanks :slight_smile:

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Thanks @grahamperrin, looks great! Just one thing: Can we add target="_blank" to all the outbound links there so that they are opened in new tabs? That way the forum stays open and people are not led away from it.

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Open source, of course :slight_smile:

For local site administrators:

Above (if you have not already seen it), Building a Discourse Community

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Open Source Design already carries a great deal of commitment towards the “open source” initiative in its name. If it shares the values of the “Free Software” movement it would be great to mention that by talking about “free and open source software” in official statements of purpose.

I hate to be that guy to nitpick about this, but I think there is an important difference even when things are as close to each other as Free Software and Open Source.

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@mray: I think it is a compromise between being very specific and being easy to read and to understand.

Considering the practical consequences: What do you expect to happen if we add “free” there? I would assume that it is currently already clear that we don’t exclude “Free”.

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Just FYI, using free, libre, and open source software is specified in our by-laws.

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I think a practical consequence is to acknowledge the ideals of free software, not only the development model – which OSDs name strongly suggests.

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It is nice to see that it is addressed in the bylaws somewhat.
But it mentions “open source” 7 times. “free software” 0.
The about page looks even worse: 12:0.

Please understand that especially since it is called OPEN SOURCE DESIGN there is value in including “Free Software” explicitly.

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@mray, if you want to elaborate on specific issues, you can submit a pull request to the by-laws and I’m sure they’ll be accepted. Alternatively if you want to write a new version I’ll do the PR for you.

No one is trying to shaft the free software movement here. We just use open source because more people understand it (and understand it to include free as in libre).

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By the way @mray, note that we are also about to become an FSFE associated organization: https://github.com/opensourcedesign/organization/issues/88 :slight_smile: So yes, we do have these values. The difference is that »free« does and probably will always mean »free of charge« for any regular person.

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