PSC Vote: Let's move this list to discourse

[Sandro Santilli]

On Fri, Jan 05, 2024 at 01:49:44AM -0500, Regina Obe wrote:

> But I'm not sure the best terms to use to explain it to people how they can continue to use email.

The best would be not explaining anything because things just work.

Did we find out a way to get mailing list subscribers into the
discourse system automatically ? Mailman users each have some form of
"account" (they do have a password they can use to edit Mailman
settings) - could Mailman authentication be used to log into Discourse ?

> I'm not even sure the best place in discourse to post these instructions that will be easy for everyone to find.

What about a Help category ?

> Sandro had brought up some concerns about the formatting of the email, and that is what he was most worried about
> and also impostering (which mailman has the same issue too as I understand it).

Confirmed: spoofing is general problem we also have with Mailman at
the moment.

> He has been successful receiving and sending emails and replying to
> threads, so the general email functionality is there,

Confirmed, BUT.

A problem I didn't raise formally yet (no ticket) is that moving
to Discourse seems to introduce a fundamental change: we stop talking
with "real email addresses" and start talking with "a bot" (discourse)
which eventually delivers our emails to the targets.

While this "bot-mediated" communication somewhat also happens with
Mailman, the messages we receive via Mailman still contain the email
address of whoever talks, which in turn can be used to bring the
communication somewhere that doesn't require the bot to remain in the
middle. 

This is an important paradigma shift that we should carefully consider
as it can kill communities (I do feel this problem very heavily with
the modern issue trackers - I never know how to contact people without
having to take a million steps which turn me into a detective).

> I'm also hoping with this group we can iron out any issues people
> may run into before more people get on board and come up with some
> instructions everyone can understand.

Can't we use the Help category as a guinea pig, just "subscribing"
(or "watching", I guess?) to that one and run on those wheels ?

> Many people in this group are more skilled at the general workings of
> discourse than I am.

I'm not sure about this. I know a couple of people who screamed for
having Discourse but I don't see them talking on this list at all.

Please if any of you reads this: speak up, we need you in the Help
category !

--strk; 

  Libre GIS consultant/developer
  https://strk.kbt.io/services.html