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

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.