Use GitHub discussions a Community Knowledge Base

[molnard]

Wasabi Wallet 2.0 will need new documentation. With GitHub discussions, we have new opportunities to do that, also we could improve our existing infrastructure of documentation, support, and community.

I collected a couple of positive and negative properties of our existing channels.

Telegram

• 🟢 Very direct chat communication.
• 🔴 Channel flooded by scammers.
• 🟢 Users can have a conversation about everything.
• 🟢 Power users give support voluntarily.

Docs - docs.wasabiwallet.io

• 🟢 Good search engine.
• 🔴 Completed thus inactive, contributors need to be hired to update it.
• 🔴 Contains a lot of support-related questions and answers which clutters the documentation for firstcomers.

Reddit - /r/WasabiWallet

• 🟢 Question/answer format.
• 🟢 Karma system.
• 🟢 Power users give support voluntarily.
• 🔴 Users and developers are kind of disconnected because developers are not checking Reddit and users are not checking GitHub.

GitHub discussions right now

• 🟢 Question/answer format.
• 🔴 It is Beta.
• 🟢 Karma system - number of answered questions/profile.
• 🟢 Everything would be in one place.

Questions

• What should happen with docs?
• Telegram group will be transform, shall we open a broadcast telegram channel or discussions is enough?
• Is Beta good enough to use in production?
• What to do with Reddit?
• Shall we integrate blog too?

Next steps

• Investigate and Test GitHub discussions.
• Transform Telegram group.
  • Preparation interval. Inform users and redirect them to the new system (telegram broadcast channel or discussions).
  • Open the new one.
  • Set the old group to Read-only mode and set the bot to communicate this is not maintained anymore and move to the new channel. (Do not close the old group otherwise, scammers will recreate it.)
• Set up the Roles in GitHub discussions, official support staff.
• Start to move some part of the documentation to Discussions, maybe set up a new category if required.
• Make sure Reddit users know about the new support interface - change the link in the software.
• Start documenting WW2 in the new system (using the new UI).
• Start marketing our new community interface.
• Release WW2.
• Maintain GitHub discussions and build a living Wasabi community.

[MaxHillebrand]

Great to move forward with this!

Should we use GitHub Discussions?

Yes.

Is Beta good enough to use in production?

Yes.

Should we close the Telegram group?

Yes.

Should we start a Telegram broadcast channel?

This is basically for announcements from us to the public. This is rather similar to our Twitter feed.
How about, automatically pushing every @WasabiWallet tweet to the Telegram broadcast? This would make it low maintenance & the our announcements reache a larger audience.

What should happen with docs?

• upgrade text + pictures to Wasabi 2.0
• Move F&Q + edge content to GitHub Discussions
• Simplify and streamline everything
• Reduce future maintenance burden
• Add gifs & videos

[MaxHillebrand]

One benefit of GitHub discussions, is that it can help us to clean up our GitHub issues:

• Questions and misunderstandings can be answered in FAQ
• Feature requests can be talked about in Ideas
• Note keeping & other stuff can be done in General
• Prototype tinkering can be done in a draft PR & talked about in Show and Tell

This would probably close most of our open issues, and leave only dev-oriented things like bug-reports & coding coordination in the issues.

[nopara73]

What should happen with docs?

Bring it over to GitHub Discussions, then redirect the URL here.

Telegram channel will be closed, shall we open a broadcast telegram channel or discussions is enough?

We have not decided this, only brought up as an idea.

Is Beta good enough to use in production?

Yes.

What to do with Reddit?

Add a sticky post that the support moved.

Shall we integrate blog too?

Interesting idea. I like it! But let's make our hands dirty with the docs and support first.

[RiccardoMasutti]

Docs - docs.wasabiwallet.io

• green_circle Good search engine.
• red_circle Dead, contributors needs to be hired to update it.
• red_circle Contains a lot of support-related questions and answers which clutters the documentation for firstcomers.

I don't think theat dead is the right word. I think that the documentation it's just... complete. That's why is inactive now. We are just updating it for small nitpicks and version updates.

Questions

• What should happen with docs?

I think that documentation is beautiful. If you prefer, we can move again everything into GitHub instead of using the docs.wasabiwallet.io subdomain which has lot of privacy issues (javascript, algolia api, etc.)

• Telegram channel will be closed, shall we open a broadcast telegram channel or discussions is enough?

If you are talking about the Telegram group, I don't think that we should close it. If we close it, then someone else will open a new one and scam users and will impersonate us.

• Is Beta good enough to use in production?

Seems so.

• What to do with Reddit?

Move everyone to GitHub discussions over 3-4 months.

• Shall we integrate blog too?

Depends on how much time/energy is needed. It is possible but is it worth?

[molnard]

@RiccardoMasutti fixed the words, thx.

[BTCparadigm]

What should happen with docs?
I think it's a beautiful archive of knowledge but I understand the maintenance issue. I'll be glad to help with that.
IMHO some things could be moved or copied to Discussions but I think we will need the docs anyway.
It could be restructured in to two parts. A simple beginners manual and a power users manual.

Telegram group will be transform, shall we open a broadcast telegram channel or discussions is enough?
I'd would leave the Telegram group as is but also inform users more clearly, that it is not official support group.
I think Telegram channel isn't a big burden to maintain, especially if you have tools to automatically post tweets or texts from certain accounts on other platforms. Could be good for blog posts too. At least we could try it out?

Is Beta good enough to use in production?
Dunno about the security but it seems to have most of the basic functions so I think we could at least move support in to discussions.
I hope they will add a possibility to create sub categories to keep discussions organized and subjects easy to find. Otherwise we will need lots of main categories.
I also agree with @MaxHillebrand that Discussions could be helpful for cleaning up Github issues for example.

What to do with Reddit?
When ready, pin a message to inform people that support is moving in to discussions. Maintain it for a while even after moving support?

Shall we integrate blog too?
I think that could work.

[molnard]

What should happen with docs?
I think it's a beautiful archive of knowledge but I understand the maintenance issue. I'll be glad to help with that.
IMHO some things could be moved or copied to Discussions but I think we will need the docs anyway.
It could be restructured into two parts. A simple beginners manual and a power users manual.

The current doc is a complete source of knowledge, however many things will be obsoleted with WW2 - so someone should go through all in it and replace/remove legacy parts. We cannot have two docs that would cause confusion - so the change is unavoidable. This is true in every case.

Telegram group will be transform, shall we open a broadcast telegram channel or discussions is enough?
I'd would leave the Telegram group as is but also inform users more clearly, that it is not official support group.
I think Telegram channel isn't a big burden to maintain, especially if you have tools to automatically post tweets or texts from certain accounts on other platforms. Could be good for blog posts too. At least we could try it out?

Is Beta good enough to use in production?
Dunno about the security but it seems to have most of the basic functions so I think we could at least move support in to discussions.
I hope they will add a possibility to create sub categories to keep discussions organized and subjects easy to find. Otherwise we will need lots of main categories.
I also agree with @MaxHillebrand that Discussions could be helpful for cleaning up Github issues for example.

I agree.

What to do with Reddit?
When ready, pin a message to inform people that support is moving in to discussions. Maintain it for a while even after moving support?

I agree.

Shall we integrate blog too?
I think that could work.

I am not sure maybe we can have a publication section here too where links are provided. and the most recent blog pinned.

[BTCparadigm]

so someone should go through all in it and replace/remove legacy parts.

I can do that.

I am not sure maybe we can have a publication section here too where links are provided. and the most recent blog pinned.

Sounds good.

[molnard]

Let's figure out the categories.

• Ideas - Feature requests, concepts those needs to clarify, so basically the name
• Q&A - Simple questions and answers, FAQ
• Show and tell - Basic know-how's, creative section.
• General - everything else

Do we need more?

• Support - I would create this category. If some user needs help - might be in "panic" there should be a category that is clearly watched by the Wasabi team.
• Publications - A category where the users can discuss out public appearances like blog, articles, any Wasabi or privacy-related stuff appears on the internet. Ofc this would be another place to publish references to our contents. The benefit of this that the user can subscribe here so can get notifications about everything and also can comment on it. Category name can be better Pinging @Belliusz

[MaxHillebrand]

ACK support.

Nice idea to have a 'repost' of the publications in here too, to kinda have a discussion forum for each content. this however, would probably clutter the discussions with a lot of content [might be a feature, not bug]

[molnard]

That is the point. Discussion is for every public conversation - like we do sometimes at issues or on slack.

[BTCparadigm]

I'd like to have the following categories in this specific order:

• View all - All categories
• FAQ - Frequently asked questions
• Support - Official Wasabi Wallet support
• Ideas - Ideas to change or improve the project
• Show and tell - Creations, experiments, or tests relevant to the project
• Publications - Bitcoin and Privacy related articles, blogs, videos, podcasts and discussion about them.
• General - Bitcoin and privacy related discussions

Unfortunately Discussions doesn't let us change the order of the categories, at least for now.

Reasoning behind these are that Q&A could be easily confused with support. FAQ sounds more like a category that has most of the common questions with answers already, which it is.
We could of course move some good questions and answers from Support to FAQ when needed.

I'm not sure if we want to have General and Publications as a separate categories but IMHO it's better that way.

FAQ as a top category so people can find answers to their questions quickly and to minimize duplicate questions in support.
Support as a second one so it's easy to see.
Publications and General in the bottom because those categories are the most general ones, so not necessarily even related to Wasabi but overall Bitcoin and privacy stuff.

[BTCparadigm]

Also, Show and Tell sounds good but what is the difference between faq?

I was thinking that Show and Tell is more for things like announcing Dumplings, Observatory and things like that.

Creations, experiments, or tests relevant to the project

[molnard]

General and Publications -> Fight club or Shooting area or Arena or Gossip
Show and tell + FAQ -> Questions and Answers

[molnard]

Ideas -> Ideas #in2weeks

[molnard]

Also, Show and Tell sounds good but what is the difference between faq?

I was thinking that Show and Tell is more for things like announcing Dumplings, Observatory and things like that.

Creations, experiments, or tests relevant to the project

That is a very good idea. How about trying to find the best arrangement according to the audience.

• Everyone in the community, they are interested in all Wasabi/privacy-related topics
• Someone looking for help, support - not able to search and find any answers
• Technology "mads" - they like to research, know-hows, looking for answers themselves, and able and willing to answer others' questions. They don't like to be involved in non-technology related things.

[BTCparadigm]

In that case, maybe we should move General and Publications between Support and Ideas?

I think it's good to have FAQ on top so duplicate questions would be minimized.
Support after that so it's easy to find.
Then General and Publications

These are probably the categories that newbies are interested in so I think it's good to have them close to each other and in the top of the list.
IMHO people should be directed to check the FAQ first. Probably many support questions and answers are already there.

Ideas and Show and Tell would be more for the advanced users and contributors.