Devtalk is the new polyglot platform brought to you by the same team behind the Elixir Forum 
We first mentioned we were planning a polyglot forum in our 2020 Update, however, after the excitement and feedback received from some of our friends in the industry, we were inspired to become more than just a forum: to become more of a platform 
From the very beginning one of the reasons that made creating Devtalk so compelling was that we could use it to help promote Elixir and the BEAM within the wider dev community. Elixir is entering what may arguably be its most critical stage of adoption yet, since it is no longer viewed as a new language and is increasingly being judged on the same terms as any other established language. This includes awareness (as well as adoption) in the mainstream. We think Devtalk could be the perfect platform to help with this.
There were of course many reasons for creating Devtalk (some of which we touch upon in our 2020 update, with others mentioned in various comments and threads here and of course in the Devtalk announcements, About Page, Mission Statement, etc). All of these reasons combined made it impossible for us not to do… and we’re super excited to see where it all leads!
We hope you’ll join us on this exciting journey and we’ve prepared some FAQs for you - we hope you enjoy our little elixtory
How is Devtalk related to this forum?
Both projects were started and are run by AstonJ and the most senior members of our mod team here are also our most senior members of our mod team there 
You also share some sponsors, do they have a say in the running of either site?
No. We view sponsors (all tech companies in the space in fact) as members of the community. We’re not alone in this, most conferences and some languages in particular (like Ruby) have a very similar stance. Sponsors help us do really cool things for our community, for instance, by the end of 2021, in conjunction with Devtalk, they’ll have helped us give away over $100,000 worth of prizes to our members! That’s never been done on a programming forum before!
Are any of my details on this forum stored on Devtalk or vice-versa?
No. The only details we have about you on Devtalk are the ones you freely submit there, and whenever there is any interaction between the two sites (eg, when Devtalk cross-posts Elixir related threads here) we do so via the Discourse API and only of publicly visible threads. (Devtalk does not connect to the Elixir Forum database or vice versa.)
What type of threads will Devtalk cross-post here?
Only those relating to Elixir and the BEAM.
Specifically, only those tagged with certain keywords. Currently those keywords are elixir erlang phoenix nerves as well as lfe and gleam since they are the other most talked about BEAM languages here. We will be monitoring this closely to ensure that it is as useful as it can be and we’ll later review whether it would be worth adding a few more keywords, such as otp and liveview. After the initial set-up period we envisage it to work well and be a fantastic opportunity for our members here to help, and possibly win over users from the wider developer community there - at least that’s the plan. For those not interested in these cross-posts, we’ll do our best to make them easy to mute/ignore.
How can Devtalk, being a polyglot platform, help with some of the goals of this more language centric forum?
We’re glad you asked!
Apart from what we just mentioned above, if you’ve read some of the links in this post you will by now know that we’ve been busy working hard on this forum for almost 5 years, and that it has done a tremendous job in many aspects that are linked to adoption - however - there’s only so much we can do via this forum because it’s a language-specific one, which means it’s unlikely that anyone who’s not interested in Elixir will join or ever see it. That’s a lot of people we can’t reach, but platforms like Devtalk can.
But what about simply using an existing platform to reach these people?
Many people have tried …it’s really not as easy as it sounds. There is intense competition for mind-share, and, currently, the big players around don’t seem to be doing a good job of promoting Elixir or Erlang. That could be intentional or it could simply be a by-product of the fact that their own interests lie in other languages/tech. Whatever the reason, it is much harder than it appears and although members of the Elixir community have done a great job to date, a lot of people do not like some of those existing platforms (many consciously avoid them) and would therefore prefer to spend their time and energy elsewhere, on platforms they prefer/feel more at home. By creating Devtalk, we’re giving people another choice, and one where Elixir has a far greater chance of successfully being prominent on.
I still think <> or <> would be better!
We believe people are most likely to succeed at the things their heart is in most, and if that’s how you feel you should definitely do it!
Please remember though that everyone is entitled to decide where and how they spend their time or where and how they spread the word about Elixir. If you think members of the community should be spending their time on X or Y the onus really is on you to convince them to join you (we feel Devtalk is worth our time and effort hence personally focusing our efforts there).
I’m liking the idea of Devtalk more and more - but can it really help given it’s so new?
While it’s true Devtalk is new, and even without taking into account we’ve had a great first month (we served over 300,000 pages - and just to give you something to compare to, we served just over a million in our entire first year here) we’re definitely focused more on the long term benefits where the gains are potentially huge.
Dev.to has over 300,000 members (many are probably bots) and serve 19M pages a month - we think we can serve more with a considerably smaller userbase (it’s actually something we’re pretty good at) and that’s exactly the type of platform Elixir would benefit from being prominent on. What makes it even more compelling, is that Elixir has a real chance of being prominent on it because of the collaborations and links to this forum. The fact that the Devtalk team are fans of Elixir, can only be a good thing for Elixir.
We already have 5 streams of regular traffic - our collaboration with PragProg (we host their errata), our twitter account which came with the domain, a prominent notice on an older Ruby forum (for its members/search engine visitors), our presence here, and general search engines. Over time these streams will naturally expand, such as bloggers or other forums linking to threads and via other cool features we have planned (some that have never been done in the industry before). Remember that this is just the beginning - imagine where Devtalk will be 5 years from now, and how that can potentially help Elixir and Erlang.
Ok I’m sold! How can I help!?
Awesome! Simply sign up and post about Elixir, Erlang, Phoenix and other BEAM tech the more Elixir related threads there the more chance they have of being featured in our trending lists while also helping keep the Elixir portal in our ‘top portals’ list, which takes number of threads into account and is displayed on our homepage.
So should I stop posting about Elixir here? Not at all 
Devtalk is just another option for those who want to use it (just like some people like to use sites like SO, Reddit, HN etc). Questions for instance, are much better suited here because you are more likely to get a speedy response and from people who may know more about Elixir (they are also the sort of threads that are less likely to ‘trend’ there - so it makes less sense to post them there). It makes sense to post generally positive stuff on Devtalk; things you think might be worth people in the wider dev community seeing - like blog posts and screencasts (which automatically get posted here too) and the type of general discussions that might get Elixir noticed Ultimately, it’s your choice - we trust your judgement
Overall we’re really excited to see where Devtalk leads, and thanks to things like our branding and domain name we genuinely believe we have a chance to make a difference… and we’d love for you to join us and be part of that journey 
