Hey y’all! Rene here, bringing you a Public Service Appreciation Announcement. A few of us have been busy curating Discourse’s categories, posts, tags and features – I want to show some love to that effort by highlighting where you can find more context and conversation about why we have a forum like Discourse and how we can use it alongside our other tools.
The High-Level Stuff
@elb’s recent posts about principles and tools to support a healthy Network outlines a starting point for considering all the tools we use and our reasons behind them. This post doubles as a working document for the community; comments on the post are not only encouraged but are also a primary way to suggest changes to the document.
Em then dig into the details of how best practices when using tools for distributed work applies to Discourse (and GitHub) – there’s substantially more specificity to consider here. A lot of those big-picture concepts you’re prompted to think about in the post above materialize into actionable plans, and a few lingering questions. Read through the suggestions and share what resonates most for you, or any thoughts you haven’t seen represented by others yet.
Our Own Public Library
In the updated FAQ, we liken Discourse to our own public library. We’ll continue to make good on this comparison as more curations improves functions and features. A function now available to use is being able to create documentation and wiki posts – here’s a post that explains the differences between the two (and when a post might be both!).
Adding events to the Discourse calendar is also a great way to increase visibility for your Brigade’s goings-ons. These live on in the Discourse realm as fixed points of reference where you can add slide decks, materials and information about following up with event hosts and participants.
Connections with Discourse
Discourse integrates with or should serve as a strong connecting point between all our digital commons.
When or how to best use Slack vs. Discourse is an ongoing conversation – check out what @chris posted back in 2018 about those distinctions, then look at this post where Em brought a Slack thread’s most salient points over to Discourse for more discussion. @Shaunm44 zoomed in on [the relationship between Discourse categories/tags and Slack channels] (Integrations between Slack and Discourse) next.
Just for Fun
Once upon a time, we talked about renaming Discourse – and I don’t think we ever truly finished that conversation even if it’s gone quiet for a time. Any new thoughts on whether this rose would smell as sweet by any other name?
And lastly, but most importantly, Discourse now supports GIFs. Go forth and meme freely!