[Board] Mailing lists interface

Wed Sep 7 14:26:35 PDT 2022

Pierre,

Thanks for the input.  I am inclined to start with upgrading Mailman to Mailman 3, as I think that might solve most of our pain points if the forum part of it is “Good enough” for most people.

Which from reading it sounds like it might be.  Yah I’m personally not excited to lose old history, so using Discourse as the only solution if we can’t migrate, is a big no for me too.

We can then revisit Discourse after if people still prefer that and have both a mailing list and discourse running with people picking whichever ones they prefer.

I’m not sure how well the new Mailman 3 handles topic based discussions, but that was one of the selling points people liked about Discourse.

From: pierre.cardinal at sympatico.ca [mailto:pierre.cardinal at sympatico.ca] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 7, 2022 5:09 PM
To: 'Regina Obe' <lr at pcorp.us>; 'Michele M Tobias' <mmtobias at ucdavis.edu>; 'Jody Garnett' <jody.garnett at gmail.com>
Cc: board at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: RE: [Board] Mailing lists interface

Hi,

Best to keep the current mailing list system and add a forum interface like Nabble was. If it's possible to export the actual mailing list to Discourse, that might be a solution. But the PS at the end of this email is very important. In fact, I think we have to keep the actual email addresses so I will be surprised that Discourse be the solution.

In fact, list.osgeo.org uses Mailman 2.1.34, there is no search option with it and the archive emails are grouped by month which is awful. Sometimes my emails sent to mailing lists disappear and sometimes they are reformatted before being displayed in an almost unreadable way. Moreover, Nabble made it possible to display images which made it possible to exchange information much more easily (an image is worth 1000 words). 

According to my understanding of the situation, OSGeo needs to do something to improve communication between users and developers.

Regards to all of you,

Pierre Cardinal

P.S.

Discussion with an excellent developer

I have not looked into discourse, but if it replaces the mailing list itself as the *definitive source of truth* for all MapGuide discussions and is not just an alternative "frontend" to read/write posts to this mailing list (like nabble before it) then it's a hard -1 from me on adopting discourse.

Or to put it another way, even with Discourse in place, I'd like to still be able to post to the mailing list with my regular email client (which I have now gotten used to). I'd like to also browse archived and *up-do-date* discussions through:

*	 <https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/mapguide-users> https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/mapguide-users
*	Or more web-friendly mirrors like:  <https://www.mail-archive.com/mapguide-users@lists.osgeo.org/> https://www.mail-archive.com/mapguide-users@lists.osgeo.org/

If discourse breaks all of that because it's the new central silo for MapGuide discussions, then that's a hard no from me.

- Jackie

De : Regina Obe <lr at pcorp.us <mailto:lr at pcorp.us> > 
Envoyé : 7 septembre 2022 15:21
À : 'Michele M Tobias' <mmtobias at ucdavis.edu <mailto:mmtobias at ucdavis.edu> >; 'Jody Garnett' <jody.garnett at gmail.com <mailto:jody.garnett at gmail.com> >; 'Pierre Cardinal' <pierre.cardinal at sympatico.ca <mailto:pierre.cardinal at sympatico.ca> >
Cc : board at lists.osgeo.org <mailto:board at lists.osgeo.org> 
Objet : RE: [Board] Mailing lists interface

Michele,

Thanks for the input.  I know some lists are very busy many of the project ones – e.g. postgis, gdal, proj, geos.

>From what I just read about Mailman 3, it does look like it has a forum like feature in it.

So it’s a question to me if the Mailman 3 forum like feature is good enough to satisfy the needs of those who don’t like mailing lists at the benefit of not stratifying our groups.

I personally don’t have issue belonging to both camps, since they’d all be coming to me via email anyway.  For many which I am just a casual observer, I would prefer a forum format.

Mailman 3 has been out for a while, so I think it’s an inevitability that if we keep mailman we should upgrade to it, just to stay current.  The number of moving parts of Mailman 3 does concern me a bit, but I’m not sure if discourse would be any easier, aside from not having a migrate piece to contend with.

From: Michele M Tobias [ <mailto:mmtobias at ucdavis.edu> mailto:mmtobias at ucdavis.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 7, 2022 3:06 PM
To: Regina Obe < <mailto:lr at pcorp.us> lr at pcorp.us>; 'Jody Garnett' < <mailto:jody.garnett at gmail.com> jody.garnett at gmail.com>; 'Pierre Cardinal' < <mailto:pierre.cardinal at sympatico.ca> pierre.cardinal at sympatico.ca>
Cc:  <mailto:board at lists.osgeo.org> board at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: RE: [Board] Mailing lists interface

I can’t comment on the details of email list tools, but given the lack us use of many of the general topic mailing lists for OSGeo, it might not be worth the effort to add (or restore) features if the email functions are working otherwise.

I think it would be worth a try to have a Discourse site. The Davis R Users Group uses it so I’ve seen that you can set it up to email you if you want notifications of posts (kind of like how GitHub can notify you of any posts to the Issues board). It’s not my favorite platform, but I’ve recently had discussions with a handful of students that they don’t even know what an email list is.  The new Telegram group is getting a lot of discussion, even if it’s been mostly about how to set up Telegram groups.

Michele

Michele Tobias, PhD

Geospatial Data Specialist

DataLab: Data Science & Informatics

UC Davis Library 

370 Shields Library

(530)752-7532

 <mailto:mmtobias at ucdavis.edu> mmtobias at ucdavis.edu

ORCID:  <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2954-8710> 0000-0002-2954-8710 

Pronouns: she, her, hers

From: Board < <mailto:board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> On Behalf Of Regina Obe via Board
Sent: Wednesday, September 7, 2022 11:59 AM
To: 'Jody Garnett' < <mailto:jody.garnett at gmail.com> jody.garnett at gmail.com>; 'Pierre Cardinal' < <mailto:pierre.cardinal at sympatico.ca> pierre.cardinal at sympatico.ca>
Cc:  <mailto:board at lists.osgeo.org> board at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Board] Mailing lists interface

I’m not familiar with the benefits of Mailman 3 over Mailman 2.  

There has been recent discussion about the difficulty some people have with using mailing lists.

Many people seem to prefer a forum like system over a mailing list system.  One suggestion that gained much applause in this regard is discourse which many FOSS systems seem to prefer over mailing lists.  Only issue with it is the ease to bridge the gap between our mailing lists and discourse. 

Discourse does seem like it can work as both a forum and a mailing list type setup:

 <https://meta.discourse.org/t/start-a-new-topic-via-email/62977> https://meta.discourse.org/t/start-a-new-topic-via-email/62977

Is it okay to stratify discussion like this, given that the mailing list system works for many, but we could garner a bigger crowd with discourse?

Some FOSS systems that were mentioned using discourse

 <https://community.opendronemap.org/> https://community.opendronemap.org/

 <https://forum.orfeo-toolbox.org/> https://forum.orfeo-toolbox.org/

 <https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/> https://discuss.linuxcontainers.org/

From: Board [ <mailto:board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> mailto:board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Jody Garnett via Board
Sent: Wednesday, September 7, 2022 2:22 PM
To: Pierre Cardinal < <mailto:pierre.cardinal at sympatico.ca> pierre.cardinal at sympatico.ca>
Cc: osgeo-board List < <mailto:board at lists.osgeo.org> board at lists.osgeo.org>
Subject: Re: [Board] Mailing lists interface

Pierre:

Not a board member here, but you are welcome to propose the idea of using Mailman 3 to the system committee at  <https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo> https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo

OSGeo if volunteer driven, so if you have any experience to assist with migration it would be very welcome.

--

Jody Garnett

On Wed, 7 Sept 2022 at 09:48, Pierre Cardinal via Board < <mailto:board at lists.osgeo.org> board at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

Hi,

Since the announcement of the shutting down of Nabble, does the OSGeo board did something to replace it ?  Without a friendly interface, it is difficult to users to communicate with each other. To keep the old mailing lists, why the OSGeo does not use Mailman 3 ? 

Regards,

Pierre Cardinal

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