674792 - discussion: Copy for placeholder "Discussions" page

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Wiki pages, defect, P1)

Description

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

Decide on copy fo the placeholder "Discussions" page. The Discussions page should explain that the forums have been archived (see bug 674788), link to the archived forums, and note that a new discussion section is coming soon.

Comment 1

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

Taking this bug to get copy together for the page + some basic layout recommendations so we can set it up for future content (like Stackoverflow and Reddit feeds)

Comment 2

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

Hey Janet. Do you think you would be able to write some copy for this? If so, please see comment #0 for some basic guidelines.

Thanks as always!

Comment 3

[Janet Swisher]

Where are the forums?

Posting a question about a technical problem and never getting an answer is almost more frustrating than the technical problem itself. Because the MDN forums got very little traffic (more than a year after they launched), very few posts got responses. Rather than create more frustration, we have decided to close the forums. 

Old posts and responses are archived here for searching. However, you can no longer create new posts. Thanks to everyone who contributed posts and responses!

If you have technical questions, here are some places with more lively discussions where you might find someone with answers:

* Open web technologies: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/web-development
* General Mozilla development: http://www.mozilla.org/about/forums/#general-development
* Mozilla technologies: http://www.mozilla.org/about/forums/#mozilla-technologies
* Mozilla application development: http://www.mozilla.org/about/forums/#application-development
* Mozilla add-ons: https://forums.mozilla.org/addons/
* Mozilla Labs: https://mozillalabs.com/discussions/
* MDN content and community: http://www.mozilla.org/about/forums/#dev-mdc

Comment 4

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

Thank you for taking care of this so quickly, Janet. I love that you explain why archiving the forums is a good idea and provide link to other useful resources.

A couple of notes:

* The archived forums will not appear on the "Discussions" page itself, so we will need to update paragraph 2 and link to the archived forums. Where do you think we should place that link?
* It would be great to mention that an updated "Discussions" section is coming soon (at the moment, it looks to be at least a couple of months off). Would you be able to add that to the copy as well?

Thanks again!

Comment 5

[Janet Swisher]

Replace "Old posts and responses are archived here for searching" with a separate paragraph:

Search the archive of old posts and responses.

Make that whole sentence a link to the archive. Delete "However, you can no longer ..." and make "Thanks to everyone who posted or responded!" another separate paragraph.

Is there a bug containing the spec for the new Discussion section? I'd like to look at that before writing about it.

Comment 6

[Janet Swisher]

During today's MDN community meeting, one person pointed out how difficult it was for him to find and subscribe to dev-mdc (he subscribed to the Google group, and got a bunch of useless daily summaries). This makes me think we need a better explanation of how to use Mozilla groups/lists. That would apply to all of them, not just dev-mdc. However that's fodder for a separate bug.

Comment 7

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

Thanks Janet!

I definitely agree that we need to make it easier for the community to join the relevant mailing lists, IRC channels, etc. Bug 674982 talks a bit about that.

There's no formal spec for the Discussion section, just what's mentioned in comment #0.

Comment 8

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

Thanks Janet for the copy. Craig has this implemented in his template and will be checking it in soon.  Marking this r.fixed.

Comment 9

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

(In reply to Janet Swisher from comment #5)
> 
> Is there a bug containing the spec for the new Discussion section? I'd like
> to look at that before writing about it.

Just filed bug 679910 so we can incrementally add to the page.