I saw a banner on Wikipedia or somewhere about improving how discussions happen on the wiki. Rather than storing conversations in the wiki, and building a tool around communicating there, I think external systems should be used when possible. Because conversations aren’t as useful living as second-class citizens in a database next to articles. And I don’t expect Mediawiki or other software to become chat platforms.
Three URL patterns come to mind:
- crafted URLs to create DIscourse posts, works when user is expected to already participate
-
mailtoURLs with subjects and bodies pre-populated - jabber URLs, to join a conference
Because Discourse exposes everything as a JSON feed, any CMS should be able to pull in messages in a sane way, meaning you can still carry conversations next to content, it is just the interactions are served better on a different platform.