2023-2024 Biohack.me Changes - Your Review Needed
At Grindfest 2023, we discussed how the Biohack.me forum, Slack and Grinder wiki could be better. We need input from the rest of the community. We want to hear from you if there are better options or things we aren't thinking of.
Forum Change - Switch to Discourse
We propose changing from the Vanilla forums https://open.vanillaforums.com/ to the Discourse forums https://github.com/discourse/discourse
Cons of Vanilla
1. It has broken a couple times now, at least once due to changes they made
2.They are reducing support for open source
3. Search isn't great
4. Doesn't do well on mobile devices
Work involved
1. Setting up infrastructure and security
2. Migration of database/data from Vanilla
3. Testing migration
Are there any objections to switching to Discourse? Do we have anyone with skills to help?
Chat App Change - Switch to Discord
There are several chat tools out there and various instances of "biohacker" Slacks and discords. This would be branded biohack.me and not be business owned. We propose changing from Slack to Discord
Cons of Slack
1. It doesn't keep messages so history is lost
2. It's expensive to move to a pro plan
Work involved
1. Setting up Discord securely
2. Migrating users from Slack and shutting it down
Are there any objections to switching to Discord? Do we have anyone with skills to help?
Wiki Change - Fix wiki
This is a main project for me this summer.
1. Discourse has a wiki butit isn't great
2. Mediawiki needs to be re-installed with better security from the start.
Do we have anyone with skills to help?
Those three are big changes and we want to make everyone's voice is heard. These are long due changes and we're excited at the idea of improving the infrastructure.