Love the DLN discourse site but also am noticing that links to the shows sometimes don’t appear as expected. Am I correct to expect a thread for each show in the appropriate category shortly after each show is publicly available?
I know you all put a lot of work into getting the shows out there, but a quick thread post on discourse does enable us to view and give feedback very directly, if it’s not too much trouble - thanks!
P.S. This was prompted by my visiting the DL website just now and seeing there have been two shows released when I was wondering if there had been any of late as I hadn’t seen links on discourse.
TBH over the past several weeks there hasn’t been much input on these forums from the DL hosts, which honestly has been disappointing. I’d have expected more activity, especially when trying to foster a new community.
I’ve also noticed these forums have dropped off in activity levels a lot since launch, which is again a bit disappointing as I was hoping for somewhere that was actively used and not tied to a specific distro.
Destination Linux was the only show behind so I channeled the forum’s open source contributor vibe and brought it current letting Michael know with an @ mention in a reply. I’ll keep it current in future so if there’s a gap again it’ll only be for a few hours though it’s probably just a glitch in how things are automated.
I figure if the community contributes to filling minor gaps when we see them it’ll help Michael get on with the somewhat ridiculous amount of work that is making and improving DLN.
@ak2020 This is a very valid concern as to why this isn’t happening. Essentially, this is due to my forgetfulness of all that I need to do. Hosting, editing and publishing a podcast is a big task which includes a lot of small tasks like posting links in various places. I just at times forget some of the things that should be on my checklist.
The episodes were not posted because I made a mistake in my lack of posting them. I will correct that going forward for all future episodes.
@Sar I don’t really know how to address this complaint. I participate as much as possible but developing and building a network is a significant amount of work that I signed up for so I have to attempt to balance my time in a way that is essentially endless juggling.
I do think we should be promoting the forum more often than we do and that will be addressed going forward. The forums are a very important aspect of the network and I intend to integrate it heavily throughout the network. For example, I am currently working on building an integration so comments displayed on the podcast websites will be directly linked to threads posted in the forum so the way to post comments is via the forum.
It’s not done yet because it just have way too much to juggle.
@Ulfnic thank you very much for creating those threads that I neglected to do. I appreciate the assist there. I appreciate the offer to bring it current in the future but hopefully I can make it so that it won’t be necessary again.
@MichaelTunnell Thanks, Michael for your feedback and for all the hard work you and other members of the team are doing behind the scenes which we will see later. Look forward to seeing you all on the forums when you are able
You’re welcome and thanks for putting this issue at the forefront of my attention. I have now completed something really cool.
I have setup an integration for this DLN Discourse forum with both destinationlinux.org and tuxdigital.com so now new threads will be automatically posted to the forum. The threads will automatically be posted when a new episode of DL and TWinL are published as well as when I make new videos on the TuxDigital channel. I am also working on more integration with other pieces of the network.
The coolest thing though, is that destinationlinux.org and tuxdigital.com also have an integration in the other direction so replies to the episode threads will now display as comments on the official website posts. . . . and I have linked all the existing threads with existing episodes.
@MichaelTunnell That’s fantastic - I was wondering if automation might be possible to reduce the work you all had for linking in all the shows to all of the forums
It’s been a while since I did any web development myself, though my guess is this would have been coded in Javascript rather than PHP, but maybe you’re talking between servers so it’s PHP…?
I already had automation setup for some stuff but I wanted to do deeper integration for DL and TWinL because they had pre-existing sites. That’s what I did today.
The integration is using PHP and JavaScript as well as other stuff. Discourse has an API that you can integrate with WordPress and that’s what makes this integration possible.
@MichaelTunnell Thanks for the response Michael. I know you guys have been busy, just hoping to see you all around here a bit more
I’d love for the DLN forums to be a success, as I think we have the beginnings of a fantastic community here and I wouldn’t want to see it wither away.
@MichaelTunnell Thanks for the informative technical response. I guessed discourse would have had an API for this and guessing TWinL and Destination sites are based on WordPress which seems to have come a long way forward as some years back Drupal seemed to be looking to become dominant, but I don’t think Drupal achieved that.
@ak2020 Drupal was the developer’s ideal CMS but it was always too complicated for average users. WordPress was always super simple for users but limited in function (their plugin system is still poorly structured). Joomla was like the perfect mix of developer power and user friendly usage, however it never took off for some reason . . . probably because they were stuck on the same major branch for so long that WordPress just had a head start.
WordPress is now absurdly dominant with around 30% of the internet using WordPress to power their sites. This is rather shocking but also makes sense considering an average user can load up a wordpress site very easily with their hosted approach, something Joomla still doesn’t do.
I think WordPress has such a huge lead right now that basically nothing can catch it without a huge mistake by WP or another CMS realizes the way they need to move forward for marketing and structure very fast.
@ak2020’s comment is good example of constructive criticism and this isn’t a dog pile on anyone else, I just need to get this off my chest.
In my previous community I had 30 minutes of casual group conversation with only one of several creators over the span of 3 years. The community was dying and it was a major pain point leaving but I was lucky to have DLN as the rescue.
I only joined DLN a few months ago and i’ve talked to Michael on Mumble for hours days on end, sometimes just one on one, we’ve also chatted a bunch on Telegram, the “That’s Incog-Neat-o!” episode got named while we were laughing about it on Mumble. The idea I couldn’t just say hi at any time doesn’t even enter my mind, he’s REDICULOUSLY accessible.
I took this screenshot at the point i’d given up on following just two of the ways he communicates with everyone. It’s not intuitive how much Michael is giving of himself till you start including everything else let alone the editing, R&D, maintenance, expansion and so on. It’s objectively ridiculous, it’s beyond a full time job.
He can’t do it alone, my opinion is he mostly shouldn’t even be here. It’s like if you were a fan of Keanu Reeves would you want him hanging out with you or making movies? Tough choice but mostly he should be making movies. From what i’ve come to understand, Destination Linux is supposed to become a hub for collaboration so unlike traditional networks we’re all immediately downstream of whatever we help him do.
Anyway… that’s how I see it. As it grows he gets more help and more time and we get it all either way.
Some activity and involvement. It’s been weeks since some of the DL hosts have had any sort of presence here and it’d be nice to see them conversing with the members of their own community and getting involved in the topics being posted. It’d be nice to get their perspective on areas of interest the community are discussing.
And of course the majority of the content would and should be posted by the members of the community, that’s a given even just from a numbers perspective
@Ulfnic Thanks for your reflections. I’ve not been part of a community forum previously. One thing I wasn’t sure about is whether it might be stepping on toes of content producers to not wait for them to post links to their own content but to post them before they had a chance to themselves. As you’ve been more in-touch with Michael directly, for example, and been in forums before, I’m sure you proceeded with confidence and I appreciate what you did In any case, my question certainly didn’t intend to imply not enough was being done by creators and hopefully that’s been clear
@Ulfnic This is a very interesting perspective and I appreciate it very much! I hadn’t thought of it that way with the amount of time I invest in various pipes, so to speak. With that said, this forum is one of the main factors of the network so I should be more interactive here and promote it as much as possible because of that . . . I will do my best to do so.
I think Ulfnic made a great point that even when we aren’t conversing here we are conversing in general such as the Telegram group and other places like YouTube comments. I try to read every forum post and every YouTube comment but theres only so much time and also commenting to everything would be a full time thing in itself.
Some people might be bothered by that happening but I am much more laid back of a person so I am not bothered by that and in fact, the opposite, I appreciate the assistance. This thread being made also brought it to my attention that I missed doing the integration thing I had planned to do. So @ak2020 thanks for doing that.
I need to get more involved myself in the Telegram group, but I’ve personally always been a fan of forums because everything is much better organised and laid out in terms of threads rather than one big long spiel as with Discord & Telegram
I appreciate the offer to bring it current in the future but hopefully I can make it so that it won’t be necessary again. 
