Discourse


 * For the proposal to use Discourse as a platform for Wikimedia discussion, see Discourse. For the skin, see 

Discourse is an open source web discussion platform (Wikipedia links - demo). The Technical Collaboration team is planning to experiment with Discourse as a developer support channel.

One place to seek developer support
Currently developers (and specially newcomers) have a hard time finding the right place to ask questions. Project:Support desk or any other wiki Talk pages in MediaWiki.org and technical spaces in other wiki projects? wikitech-l or any of the other dozen lists? #wikimedia-dev or any of the other dozen IRC channels? StackOverflow?

Meanwhile, the experienced developers willing to help suffer the same problem. If a question lands at the right moment in the right place, good. Otherwise it is lost. Community collaboration based on project knowledge or expertise area is basically none because of this fragmentation.

Why Discourse
FIXME Summarize T155678.

Implementation plan
To be discussed at least with #Operations. Big changes might and probably will occur. Based on the Phabricator experience, there are some aspects that need to be thought out beforehand:
 * 1) Start with a protoype in mediawiki-discourse.wmflabs.org as a way to experiment with the structure, maintenance, workflows... See whether current and new Wikimedia developers like it and see a future for it.
 * 2) Once there is consensus and inertia, move to production at discourse.mediawiki.org
 * Wikimedia single user login. Do we start without it in Labs? If so, how can we migrate users once SUL is available?
 * HTTPS, is that a problem?
 * Media files, are they a problem?
 * Private message functionality, is it a problem? FWIW administrators can access to all private spaces and messages via UI in addition to checking the database if they have access.

Scope
Anything that a developer needs to know in order to produce software for the Wikimedia movement. This goes from MediaWiki core and extensions to apps, tools, bots, gadgets, templates... Non-Wikimedia projects using our projects or APIs should be able to have their space as long as they come with maintainers.

English is the primary language of this space, just like it is the primary language of Wikimedia technical spaces in general.