Our new Discussions are officially launched- Tell us what you think!

Latest response

The new community platform we've been telling you about has now gone live! Participate in this new "Discussions" area and let us know how it works for you.

Link to the new discussions area: https://access.redhat.com/site/discussions

Link to start a new discussion: https://access.redhat.com/site/node/add/discussion

Per our recent Groups announcement and email, here are some things to remember over the next couple weeks if you're still visiting the Groups posts:

  • Badges and Reputation Points have moved over to the new area: To facilitate a quick transition to the new Discussions you'll find that your level badges and reputation points have now migrated from the Groups to the new area. You'll now start seeing your points and badges right away in the new discussions and comments that you post.
  • Existing Groups content will soon be made read-only: We now ask that you make discussion posts by clicking the link above. We'll begin "freezing" discussions and comments to the various public groups quickly as interactions taper off. The old Customer Portal Groups content will remain fully accessible and searchable in the Portal but won't be moved to the new Discussions (nor will the Groups content be indexed in the web search engines). Customers accessing private groups set up by their Red Hat Technical Account Managers will not be affected by this change.
  • Discussion comments won’t allow “voting” as it currently exists in Groups. This capability will be reintroduced in the future in a way that helps users better assign value to these interactions. For example, having discussions flagged as being "answered" is one possible approach.
  • The new Discussions will use markdown editing instead of WYSIWYG. You may have noticed that the Groups interface for creating posts didn't always work as intended. The markdown editor in the new Discussions may take a bit of getting used to but will result in more consistent presentation of your posts.

Also here's a recap of some of the improvements and benefits that you'll see from our new Discussions:

  • Better integration with the rest of the Customer Portal: The Discussions community will be hosted on the same platform as other content on the Red Hat Customer Portal (such as the knowledgebase). This integration should make it easier to connect with relevant knowledge and information.
  • Improved notifications: Our new discussions will have a much better notification management functionality, in line with what exists for other content on the Portal. For example, you can now follow discussions based on products, categories or tags-- which wasn't possible in Groups.
  • Unified community area: The idea of "Groups” won’t exist in this new area. Currently, Groups are mini-communities that you must join individually and post within. Our new discussions will share a unified context; i.e. when posting a discussion you select the product, version, component, or any other properties you want to associate with the post. Other users will be able to browse all discussions at once, or filter by any and all of these categories.
  • More accessibility: We're removing the login requirement to now allow read-only access to the new community. Discussions will be fully viewable without a Red Hat subscription or login. An entitled login will still be needed to participate and interact in discussions.
  • Web Search engine visibility: In our new community, the discussions will be indexed by search engines (i.e. posts will show up in a Google search).

Thanks, and we appreciate your patience during this transition. See you around the new discussions, and please let us know what you think by commenting below.

Responses

Looking good!

Is great to have it

Hi Mario, thanks for sharing your feedback and we hope you enjoy our new community. Please let us know how we can continue to improve-

Thanks, Henry!

Are there any guidelines for deciding what sort of question merits a new discussion? I don't want to pollute the discussions area with questions that are considered too basic.

Jonathan, there's really no question too basic. As long as it's Red Hat-related, feel free to post. Some guidelines for the community are available here: https://access.redhat.com/site/articles/478343

I am unable to create a new discussion. When I attempt to do so I get the error message: "You have to specify a valid date." I do not see an option to specify a date at all.

Could you please point me to the RSS feed for the Discussions? I can't seem to find it.

Unfortunately we don't currently have an RSS feed for the discussions, John. We have email notifications however, which you can fine-tune in your user profile. If you ever have any feedback or requests for features, feel free to post a discussion about it.

Using the RH subscription model, preferences for discussion groups are set where...seems I'm receiving all the Customer Portal discussion posts and need to trim the scope of the e-mail notifications.

David, you should be able to fine tune your email preferences by going to https://access.redhat.com/site/user and then notifications, and then content type & categories. Can you give that a shot and let us know if it improves your situation?

Thank you Henry,

Oddly, the tabs appeared on the preference document instance--but the issue remains. A little backgrouond first, NoScript may be contributing to the behavior I am witnessing...the domains that are referenced from the preference document appear to be analytics and not RHN related (eloqua.com, em25, and demandbase.com) though I believe the cloudfront.net host is feeding requests from clients to the site. As a subscriber to Redhat for a number of years (renewed my company account--it is my company) and would like to avoid the "tracking" of my activity on Redhat's service. It would make the purchase of Redhat's services an insult--what value is returned to me, the paying customer? My subscriptions go back to 2000, under a company I started with three students from a California university.

None of the "Types, Category, Group, Tag" selectors are set. I cannot locate a flag that could be toggled. All selector check boxes are unflagged/unchecked. If there is an account prefernces reset I will try that. Currently I have changed the subscription setting to not receive errata notifications--but I still gettig discussions from the nearly dozen discussion categories. I know the subscription errata notification is its own service and does not related to the discussion group control/parameters...or am I wrong. The errata notices emminate from the subscribed/entitled entity and that the discussions are resident of the user account.

Will continue to work the issue...

Hi David,

I took a look at your profile and confirmed that none of your notification flags are set, so you shouldn't be receiving notifications on all Discussions content, unless you have these configured on another account. Please let me know if this is still an issue and I'll investigate further.

You are correct that errata notifications are a separate service.

Apologies David,

Took a while to get back to you--still no luck. What concerns me is the Account Name, and the e-mail address associated with an account (I assume an alias between the login account and the MX address linked to the alias).

Do you need additional information, seems you've verification of the account settings--errata notification and discussion lists for my account is "completely" unselected. I even un-flagged receive notifications via e-mail on my RHN account. Any suggestions; does the alias map separately from the e-mail account? As I can login using either--assuming LDAP authentication for the site, please, don't tell me it's some Oracle DB services login!

Henry and David Powles,

The issue is resolved, apparently the browser is now rendering the notification tab selectors--either the ccs or the browser behavior was dysfunctional. Apologies for taking your time on this one--tried to resolve it with the browser debugger but to no avail.

Regards

Using firefox or chromium, I get "You have to specify a valid date." when I try to create a new discussion. Does anyone know how to work around this?

Found a workaround. This only happens if you click "Preview".

Thanks for reporting this, Abraham.

[see next line, found it] Is there a way to view discussions in this new area directly?

Think I found it - https://access.redhat.com/site/discussions

I see it's been live for a bit...
Thanks

Is there a way to "delay" the distribution of a comment? I post responses and then realize (after I click submit, of course) that I should have paid more attention on my writing classes in college and need to edit my post. I feel bad that I sometimes generate 3 or 4 extra posts.

Hi James! I don't know if that's an available option but I'll check into it.

You can always toggle off "Send subscriptions notifications" for any of the additional edits you make. The checkbox should appear below the text entry box.

Also, I agree that it would be a good idea to block too many notifications from a single user on a single post coming in close succession. I'll see if we can implement that.

As a fan or Linux but yet not so experienced I found this very helpful.
I read no discussion is too basic. That makes me feel welcome.

Thanks

Hey Ernst- we definitely want you to feel and home and we welcome your contributions to our community!

Henry,

I am missing one smal features: a daily digest.

At the moment I get as much as 5 to 10 status updates an hour, so after a good night sleep I have to analyse about 60 discussion mails with "unclear" titles.
My mail program only shows half the title "Red Hat Discussion update ....." the real interesting part of the title is not shown.

A daily digest with the titles as links would be nice, instead of a "mail flow".

Kind regards,

Jan Gerrit Kootstra

Second Jan's idea - a daily digest would be great. If the typical emails could pool/collect for a day then be sent that would be great.

Thanks for the feedback. We actually had this feature in our older community. I'll see if we can perhaps implement it again.

The new Customer Portal is extremely well done; kudos, Red Hat!! Now, we all just need to populate it with clear, concise, congenial and relevant help to one another (in all directions: between Red Hat and Subscribers, between one Subscriber to another, etc). This is a highly positive change and welcomed addition to the "Realm of Red Hat".

One thing I would like to have as option, although from a "coding" perspective doesn't look affordable at the moment with only a markdown editor, would be ability to post Screenshots as this would be highly useful to the Community here in both clarifying our own posts, as well as in "helping others to help others". I would recommend a screencapture tool be built into the Portal to standardize the images and related markup available, but being able to add screenshots in any fashion is 100x better than attempting to articulate issues in pure text.

  • one other item for consideration: integration with a "live chat" tool for RH Support to better assist and address issues

Hey John, we have a live chat tool that can be found when you're viewing or opening a support case. Check out this article for more info- https://access.redhat.com/site/articles/313583. Let us know what you think!

I've used that chat feature during the opening of a case and on ore than one occasion, the chat resolved the issue.

Also, the recommendations that appear at right sometimes are very useful.

Hey John, you should be able to attach and insert an image to all community Discussions. Just look below the editor block area and you'll see the ability to browse for an image on your hard drive and insert it (don't forget to click insert!). You'll then see the image URL appear in your markdown which you can then move to the desired location in your post.

Not quite the full-featured screencapture tool you're outlining, but it's a start...

Thank you, Henry but - u can only add an image when you start/author a Discussion; you can't add a screenshot to a discussion other than at the time you start one, so anyone joining the discussion that might have a screenshot to solve a question being asked etc. has no option to do so.

Hey John, good point. You should be able to "edit" your own discussions to add an image later if you like (and update your original post). Look for that option on the right. Otherwise, I'll see if we can bring that ability into the comments section of discussions. Thanks for the feedback!

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