{"action":"created","issue":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/biocore/qiime/issues/1926","labels_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/biocore/qiime/issues/1926/labels{/name}","comments_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/biocore/qiime/issues/1926/comments","events_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/biocore/qiime/issues/1926/events","html_url":"https://github.com/biocore/qiime/issues/1926","id":56556893,"number":1926,"title":"should the qiime forum move to BioStars?","user":{"login":"gregcaporaso","id":192372,"avatar_url":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/192372?v=3","gravatar_id":"","url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso","html_url":"https://github.com/gregcaporaso","followers_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/followers","following_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/following{/other_user}","gists_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/gists{/gist_id}","starred_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/starred{/owner}{/repo}","subscriptions_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/subscriptions","organizations_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/orgs","repos_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/repos","events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/events{/privacy}","received_events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/received_events","type":"User","site_admin":false},"labels":[{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/biocore/qiime/labels/project%20management","name":"project management","color":"444444"},{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/biocore/qiime/labels/question","name":"question","color":"cc317c"}],"state":"open","locked":false,"assignee":null,"milestone":null,"comments":38,"created_at":"2015-02-04T17:12:23Z","updated_at":"2015-03-26T23:09:06Z","closed_at":null,"body":"Starting at the [Biocore 14.10 summit](https://hackpad.com/biocore-summit-v14.10-0wcyJBUqHFn), we've been discussing the future of the QIIME Forum, and whether we should migrate from Google Groups. There are a few core motivations for this:\r\n\r\n * The Google Groups searching functionality is surprisingly bad, making it hard for users to find posts related to their questions. \r\n * Because there is no up-voting/down-voting functionality (as is present e.g. on StackOverflow) it is very hard to find the \"right answer\" in long discussion threads. The threads are effectively chains of email discussion, which is very inconvenient. \r\n * Because it's hard to see or show-off individual contributions, there is less incentive for users to answer each others questions. If users had some page that they could point people to that highlighted their contributions (again, like StackOverflow does, [for example](http://stackoverflow.com/users/379593/el-developer)), this could be linked from their websites, LinkedIn profiles, etc to \"show off\" their QIIME knowledge and support contributions. \r\n\r\nWe discussed three options for doing this. The first was just pointing users to StackOverflow to ask their questions there. This isn't really the intended use of StackOverflow, and [the maintainers frown upon that](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3966/is-it-okay-to-use-stack-overflow-as-the-support-forum-for-a-product-or-project). The next was to use [Biology StackExchange](http://biology.stackexchange.com/), but that is more for general biology questions, not bioinformatics technical support. Finally, we discussed using BioStars ([web](https://www.biostars.org/), [paper](http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002216)), which is more directly intended for this purpose. \r\n\r\nI've been discussing using BioStars with the site admin and senior author on the paper, @ialbert. He prefers that we don't just direct our users there as that could overwhelm BioStars since we have such a large community. He suggested two options by email - I'm paraphrasing here:\r\n\r\n 1. That we run our own BioStars (this is done for [Galaxy](https://biostar.usegalaxy.org/) and [BioConductor](https://support.bioconductor.org/)), and could probably be done with an AWS instance fairly easily.\r\n 2. That we (quoting @ialbert) \"wait for Biostar 3.0 (I plan to release that by March 1st) - one of the goals is to turn it more into like Reddit - where there are different communities (groups) and one has the option of subscribing to communities instead of using tags. For example groups would be using subdomains where linking to say: qiime.biostars.org\". @ialbert, is there a prototype of this anywhere right now that we could start looking at? \r\n\r\nI think both of these sound like good possibilities, and it sounds like we may even be able to export previous discussions from the Google Group to initially populate the forum (is that accurate @ialbert?). With respect to option 2, I would think that instead of using ``qiime.biostars.org``, we would start by using ``qiime1.biostars.org``, which would give us a natural way to separate out support for QIIME 2, which will be very different. @ialbert said that this would work fine.\r\n\r\nOpening this up for developer and community feedback, there are a few specific questions that would be good to get input on. \r\n\r\n* Does using BioStars (either option 1 or 2) seem like a good move forward for the QIIME Forum (i.e., do you think it would help us get around the specific issues I noted above)?\r\n* Which of those options (1 or 2) do you prefer, and why?\r\n* What specific features would you like to see in the next iteration of the QIIME Forum (regardless of whether we were to use BioStars or not)? \r\n* Any other thoughts on this?\r\n\r\nThanks for the input!"},"comment":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/biocore/qiime/issues/comments/86749879","html_url":"https://github.com/biocore/qiime/issues/1926#issuecomment-86749879","issue_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/biocore/qiime/issues/1926","id":86749879,"user":{"login":"gregcaporaso","id":192372,"avatar_url":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/192372?v=3","gravatar_id":"","url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso","html_url":"https://github.com/gregcaporaso","followers_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/followers","following_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/following{/other_user}","gists_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/gists{/gist_id}","starred_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/starred{/owner}{/repo}","subscriptions_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/subscriptions","organizations_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/orgs","repos_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/repos","events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/events{/privacy}","received_events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/gregcaporaso/received_events","type":"User","site_admin":false},"created_at":"2015-03-26T23:09:06Z","updated_at":"2015-03-26T23:09:06Z","body":"Thanks, just did that here:\nhttp://qiime1.test.biostars.org/\n\nOn Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 3:08 PM, Istvan Albert <notifications@github.com>\nwrote:\n\n> You can create a group here\n>\n> http://test.biostars.org/g/list/\n>\n> --\n> Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub\n> <https://github.com/biocore/qiime/issues/1926#issuecomment-86735667>.\n>\n"}}