[swift-evolution] Proposal and Timeline for Discourse Transition

[Nicole Jacque]

Hi All-

Below is a summary proposal for our move to Discourse.  Please note, that unless there are any serious objections, we’d like to do this transition over the next weekend, so please communicate any issues that you may see as soon as possible.  Please file issues/comments/requests at bugs.swift.org <http://bugs.swift.org/> under the “Project Infrastructure” component for tracking.

A “prototype” of the forums showing the proposed structure is available for viewing at: http://swift.trydiscourse.com <http://swift.trydiscourse.com/>
(Note: the final version will be hosted at forums.swift.org <http://forums.swift.org/>, and will be hosted over https.  Also note, we’re currently not supporting logins on the prototype site as we’re in the process of changing configurations.)

A big thank you to the volunteer members of the Swift Discourse working group for all of their input!

Timeline
In order to get the transition done, and work through any post-transition issues before many of the Swift infrastructure maintainers are on winter holiday break, we’d like to move forward soon — we propose starting the transition on the afternoon (US Pacific time) of Thursday, Dec. 14, and completing the transition by Dec 18 (Monday).  This means that email from the mailing lists would be disabled on the evening of the 14th in order to do a final import of mailing list data.  One final email would be sent out to the lists when the forums are up and ready for use.

The following @swift.org email lists will continue to function during and after the transition:
code-owners
conduct
swift-infrastructure

Forum Structure
After discussion with the Swift Discourse working group, we’ve slightly re-structured the forum, as opposed to simply mirroring the existing mailing list categories.  In Discourse, every topic must have a category, and it can have only one category. There will be four main categories, Evolution, Development, Using Swift, and Site Feedback.  The Evolution and Development categories will have a number of subcategories as follows:

Evolution: Announce, Pitches, Proposal Reviews, Discussion
Development: Compiler, Standard Library, Core Libraries, Package Manager, LLDB, Server, LLBuild, CI Notifications, Announcements

Some of these categories, such as the announcement and CI Notification sub-categories  may only allow new topics to be posted by forum administrators.

In addition to categories, forum posts can also be categorized by use of tags.  A forum post can have many different tags added by the poster.  This is a great way to make it easy to find posts relating to certain topics, and to mark topics of interest (such as issues relating to specific projects) so that they can be easily found.

Accounts
Accounts can be set up using either email registration, or GitHub accounts.  For those who have previously sent messages to the various Swift mailing lists, a staged account will already be set up, and there will be a process to take control of the account, provided you still have control of that email address.  Note: Login functionality is not available with the swift.trydiscourse.com <http://swift.trydiscourse.com/> staged site.

Within the forums, users can be tagged as “@Username” and can get notifications based on that tagging.

Email
You can choose to get email notifications for tracked categories tags, and can also choose to mute certain categories or topics within tracked categories.  Replies via email to forum topics will be posted in the forums.  In order to create new topics via email, there will be an email address corresponding to each category/subcategory (similar to a mailing list email address) that can be used.

Code of Conduct
All forum activity is expected to conform to the Swift Code of Conduct.  The Code of Conduct will be prominently posted on the site. Violations can be anonymously flagged via the forum for review by administrators.

Upvoting
The Discourse forums have a “like” button which can be used to upvote a topic or reply, and the prominence of a post within a category reflects this.

FAQ
At the time when we go live, a FAQ will be posted with common questions, procedures, and links.  (for example setting up email notifications) 
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