Discourse
The Discourse plugin assigns Cred to contributors participating on Discourse forums; for example, by posting, replying to posts, or liking posts.
The plugin does this by fetching data using the Discourse API in anonymous mode. This means that, unlike other plugins, it does not require any credentials and we can start loading data right away. It also means that non-public contributions (e.g. private messages and closed topics) are not included in the graph. The data is temporarily cached, but the source of truth for the Discourse plugin is always the live server hosting the Discourse instance. That means that if content is deleted on Discourse, it will also disappear from the Discourse plugin (after a cache refresh).
Cred flow
The full set of node and edge types used by the Discourse plugin are defined below.
Nodes
The Discourse plugin creates the following types of nodes in the contribution graph:
- User:
A Discourse user account, e.g. @decentralion. User accounts do not mint Cred, so setting a node weight would have no effect. Using the identity plugin, it's possible to "collapse" user nodes with other identity nodes into a single, canonical identity. For example, if a contributor had a Discourse user account and a GitHub account, then the identity plugin can collapse those identities together.
Users are connected to posts they author, to posts they like, and to posts that mention them.
- Bot:
{SB: below is copied from GitHub page. Still true for Discourse? Do we support Discourse bots?} A Discourse user account that has been explicitly marked as a bot, via inclusion in bots.js. This is useful so we can filter out bot accounts from receiving grain or showing up in the Cred rankings.
Bots have the same connections as users.
- Topic:
A Discourse topic, e.g. About Champions and Heroes. Typically referred to as "threads" in other forum software, a topic is a collection of posts. When users create a new topic and are prompted to create a post, the post they create is actually the first post in the topic, not the topic itself. A topic is just a collection of posts. A topic node will be connected to its author (user node creating the topic), all posts in the topic, and any references to the topic.
- Post:
A Discourse post, e.g. comment on: About Champions and Heroes. Everything under a topic is a post, including the first post and all subsequent replies. A post node will be connected to its author (user node that created the post), any replies to that post, and references to that post. {SB: elaborate more on references here? Is it
- Like:
A Discourse like on a post. When a user likes a post, a like node is created that is connected to the author of the like (user that liked) and the liked post.
Edges
The Discourse plugin creates the following kinds of edges (connections between nodes) in the contribution graph:
- Authors:
An "authors" edge connects an author (user or bot) to a topic or post they created.
- References:
A references edge connects a topic or post to another referencable node (i.e. a node that corresponds to a specific url on Discourse ).
If the reference is pointing to a user, we call it a "mention", but from SourceCred's perspective it's the same kind of edge.
References in Discourse can be either hyperlinks to referencable nodes, or quoted parts of other posts.
- Reply to:
A reply-to edge connects a post to the post it is replying to.
The Discourse plugin creates the following kinds of edges (connections between nodes) in the contribution graph:
- Creates Like:
A "creates like" edge connects a like node to its author and liked post or topic.
- Has Parent:
A has-parent edge connects a "child" node to its "parent" node. Here's a table summarizing these relationships:
| Child | Parent |
|---|---|
| Post | Topic |
| Reply | Post |
| Like?? | Post?? |
Status and Caveats
The Discourse plugin is currently in Beta. It assigns Cred scores that are reasonable and robust for a trust level 3 community.
Currently, there are two general approaches to minting Cred you can take with the Discourse plugin: activity-minted and like-minted Cred (or a hybrid of the two). Activity-minted Cred means Cred would be minted for each new topic or post created. While like-minted Cred mints new Cred for each like given.
The plugin defaults to using like-minted Cred. For most communities this will be the better approach. Unlike activity-minted Cred, like-minted Cred allows people to validate contributions. People soon learn their likes signal "this is valuable and I'd like to see more of this", which incentivizes the creation of high-quality posts.
The caveat is that it creates some "popularity contest" dynamics, where memes and/or heavily promoted posts might receive more likes than makes sense for the relative value they've added. It's something which would be easy to game, making it less suitable for lower trust levels for the time being.
When a Discourse forum is very new, and does not have much content, activity-minted Cred may be more suitable, at least in the beginning. This is because new forums are often "lower stakes" (unless you're paying significant sums of money according to scores right away, or have other strong incentives for gaming). In new forums, the community is likelier to be smaller, higher trust, and less susceptible to gaming. In addition, you may want to incentivize raw activity in order to build up enough content to attract more users.
Another thing to keep in mind is that only public posts are included for Cred calculation. Private categories and private messages, for example, receive no Cred. This both creates an incentive to have discussions in public as much as possible, and is necessary for security as private data could otherwise leak.