Do you know what will be cool? Having an input option with free handwriting and drawing, like a blackboard. Do you know what would be even cooler? Having the machine learning ability to interpret and print them in the notebook in Wolfram language.

Since you're participating in a discussion in a MOOC, you can provide data that others (including me) don't know:

How large is the Harvard CS50 MOOC? About how many people are participating in the Discourse discussion?

Approximately how many messages are posted in a day?

How do you manage your participation? Do you get notifications via e-mail? How do you control how many notifications you get?

Do you read all the discussion, or only a subset of it? If you read a subset, what navigation hints do you use to help you find the parts you want to read?

Is the discussion overwhelming, or is it manageable? As an aside, I find that the Wolfram Community discussions become quite cumbersome at >250 messages in the discussion -- there's a limit that can be displayed on one webpage.

If someone has said something that warrants a personal reply (e.g., "Thanks!"), is it easy to send that personal reply? Conversely, is it easy to block receiving personal replies from someone who is too vocal?

Is it possible to block messages matching some keywords/user so that you never see matching messages in the future? Do you use those mechanisms?

Any other questions/comments in using Discourse vs. a Wolfram Community discussion for a course?

Thanks!

Thank you for the feedback and suggestions you provided. We will keep them in consideration while continuously improving Wolfram Community.

Interesting. I don't think that trolling would be an inherent problem in a private Discord group for a Wolfram U course. I don't think trolling would be a problem if the entirety of the Wolfram Community's discussions were ported over to a Discord server. OTOH, I do think trying Discord with a few Wolfram U courses as an experiment would be a good way to start.

There is zero chance that our intro to Calc course would move to Discord. That would make no sense; it would be planned in advance -- probably >6 months in advance. We really don't get a vote in this. Maybe the first overture would be for Wolfram U to do a survey of its students and see what they think about the idea. I fondly hope that this is something @Jamie Peterson (Director of Wolfram U) would consider in the future. You're the only participant in these forums that I've ever conversed about their community software with. I happened out of random chance to stumble on the discussion you created.

I just don't know how much friction there is to staying with the Wolfram Community forums. Is that an important product for WR -- a selling point to companies to use their software? I don't know. I don't think so, but I could be mistaken.

The fact that you can't use emojis here is not a serious problem. The fact that emoji-postings fail with a "The message system is temporarily unavailable" error is a concern. Vague error messages that don't point to the [simple] solution are problematic. There no way to measure, but I'm certain more than a handful of newbies have punted when they got that :( message.

Tingting, you're currently participating in a Wolfram U course. All things equal, I think that Wolfram U courses would be far better off if Discourse were being used for their messaging. They're easier to use, easier to navigate, they scale pretty well, and -- most important -- emojis are available. ;) Newbies are grappling with brand-new concepts in a Wolfram U course. The way they converse with instructors and each other should be as easy as possible. Many of them are already familiar with Discourse and similar systems. Are all things equal? I cannot tell. I have asked Stephen about that in one of his live q&a sessions; he ignored my question. Perhaps he had more important questions to deal with.

you will be moved instantly to the Community editor to write your reply.

I don't see this. I see the reply window at the bottom of the community screen. Over the last 2 years, I've seen a set of bugs/misfeatures in the Wolfram Community software:

1. The message you're replying to is typically far away in the discussion.

2. If you attempt to put an emoji in a message, you'll get a "The message system is temporarily unavailable" error. This can be fixed by hitting a BACK button in the browser and removing the emoji that you entered during editing. You have to figure out on your own that that the problem is the emojis you have in your message..

3. If you launch a new window into the Wolfram Community, your login session will often not be associated with that new window. When you try to do something that requires your id -- posting to a message or adding a LIKE -- you get popped to the home screen of the community forums. There's no reason why that new window wasn't logged in. If you hit BACK from the home screen, you're back in the discussion (but still without being logged in). The solution is to hit the RELOAD button, and then you are logged in to the discussion. I have the muscle memory to do this now, but newbies have no clues to figure this out. I'm betting a fair percentage just give up and never post their question/comment.

4. The Wolfram forums get very difficult to use if there are >200 message in an individual discussion. Navigation is very cumbersome. OTOH, they work pretty well if there are <20 or so messages in a particular discussion. A true Wolfram U MOOC with hundreds of participants and a lively community discussion would be problematic for discussion participation.

5. Notifications are an all-or-nothing proposition. One message per posting is far too many in an active discussion, but it might useful to get a daily digest of new messages.

6. The message preview is clunky. The side-by-side preview on other commercial bboard systems are far easier to use.

7. There's no way to DM other participants. "Thank you" messages to some particular participant are a drag -- especially with the number of e-mail notifications generated by every message sent to the group.

The TL;DR summary: compared with modern forum systems, the Wolfram message system doesn't work very well. It doesn't scale. It has some quirky behaviors that would bite a large percentage of users -- particularly newbies. There are many companies with Wolfram licenses, but I'm betting there's not a single one of them who use the Wolfram Community framework for their internal or customer-facing messages.

I think it's great that Wolfram Research uses its own tools whenever possible. It would be silly if WR made its own video-lecture software or a web browser or even its own computer Operating System. Why does Wolfram need to make their own bboard system? I don't know an answer. I can't find anyone who will answer the question. Is there a show-stopper around how WL code would (or wouldn't) interact with (for instance) Discourse? Is there some other issue? It's a mystery!

I believe Tingting's point — if not, it is my point — is that the post one is replying to moves well out of sight. Often, I want to reread something to make sure I've got it right. On a long thread, it's hard to manage scrolling up and down.

Hi Tingting,

Regarding Wolfram Community replies: If you click on the "Reply" button below the post's body or any comment, you will be moved instantly to the Community editor to write your reply.