> At PSC, we discussed this topic and decide to phase the migration plan, > by starting QGIS PSC and QGIS users first. Those are the first places > we want users to jump in easily.
What's the reason you want users to be able to jump in easily? In my own experience, if it's too easy for people to ask questions, then they tend to do so before doing their own research. This runs the risk that they will ask a question before bothering to do even a simple web search, resulting in many low-effort questions that the askers could easily have solved themselves. The end result is that humans end up functioning like AI LLMs - they simply repeat parts of the documentation that people could not be bothered to search for themselves. Now if you like repeating similar answers to simple questions then that's fine, but most people tend to get bored with that and lose interest fairly quickly, or become rude with their replies as they are tired of repeating the same basic information over and over again, and this then tarnishes the community as "hostile" or "toxic" to new users. This is why generally speaking, it's often better to add some hurdles in before people can ask questions, such as figuring out how to subscribe to an e-mail list. It means people will do some web searches first as they are the easier option, and only ask the community for help if they really are stuck and really do need help. This cuts down on a lot of low-effort questions and demands less time from community volunteers responding. Now if you are a paid company accepting money for support agreements then this does not matter, but if you are relying on the goodwill of volunteers to answer the incoming questions, then it is most important to cater to the needs of those volunteers. If they all become unhappy and leave, then it does not matter how easy it is to ask a question if there is nobody around to answer it. If you still think Discourse is the way to go, I would suggest running it in parallel with the e-mail list for a few months, and compare how many questions get answered there vs here. If Discourse questions are getting answered then it means it is a viable replacement for the lists and the list can be closed, but if the questions are going unanswered then it may be Discourse that should be discontinued and the e-mail lists retained. Either way you will have some real-world statistics to back up the decision one way or another. Cheers, Adam. _______________________________________________ QGIS-User mailing list [email protected] List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
