[OSGeo-Discuss] Mailing lists to discourse migration

[Regina Obe]

> On Fri, Dec 29, 2023 at 09:52:35AM +1100, Bruce Bannerman via Discuss
> wrote:
> >    Apart from these few emails telling me that a move to something called
> >    Discourse is happening, I have not seen any discussion on our lists
> >    explaining the pros and cons of such a move.
> >    I find this lack of community engagement on this issue to be troubling.
> >    This does not seem to be a very open source community way of making such
> a
> >    significant move.
> 
> I feel the same and ask every OSGeo member with responsibility over
> infrastructure to use this mailing list more as this is the "place"
> with the most foundation members.
> 

First of all, this IS THE DISCUSSION.  We've only moved one mailing list.  We are just encouraging people to try it out
first by allowing us to mirror their lists.  No harm in that I see. Most likely the lists that will move first are those with not that many people, and who are dissatisfied with mail lists like some of the QGIS users groups.

OpenStreetMap put together a nice intro, which I'm hoping we can pattern our intro after:

https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/how-to-use-this-forum-for-new-users/314/9

which links to this discussion about pros and cons of mailing lists vs. Discourse

https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-use-discourse-instead-of-a-email-mailing-list/54298

	
My impetus for wanting to move is people asking for it, and complaining about how mailing lists don't work 
for people who want only casual involvement. 

Personally I hate mailing lists so they don't work for me.  I only have discuss in digest mode cause most of the topics don't interest me.
I only subscribe to a few mailing lists, but I do see with discourse, I can at least peak into others and watch specific topics, and be selectively emailed in only things that interest me or if someone mentions my name.

We need to move either to Mailman3 or Discourse - end of story.  Mailman2 is dead and in looking at what we get with Mailman3, effort to move,
and all the people screaming over the years for discourse https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/2306  
, and seeing the success of discourse for projects such as OpenStreetMap https://community.openstreetmap.org/ , Gnome, I'm leaning heavily toward Discourse is the best solution 
for most and most flexible to configure.

* It will allow people who only want to interact via Email only  to still do so

That is not to say there aren't issues with how it handles emails we need to work out, which Sandro has made clear, but at least he's trying, so I can't complain about him too much.
https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/3072

* It will allow people to just post a question and only follow the discussion about their question -- I know sounds selfish, but FOSS is about scratching your own itch, and hanging around for longer when you decide these people are cool and what they talk about is cool.

* It has integration with ActivityPub, thus allowing discussions to flow thru to channels like mastodon if wanted. We've been experimenting with that and it's been pretty cool so far and I hope we can experiment with more facets of discourse, like the language translation of forum questions etc.


> The introduction of so many new/different communication channels resulted in
> this fragmentation leaving people with this feeling of being excluded, which is to
> be avoided.
> 
> >    Personally, what we have now has been working nicely for me for close on
> >    20 years.
> 
What different channels?  We have matrix (which largely replaces IRC and allows people on slack to interact with people on Matrix and IRC),
Discourse I am hoping to replace Mailman with to satisfy the mailing list crowd of people and begin to satisfy the needs of others with no patience for mailing lists, who relied on Nabble for their interaction (which nabble is now dead).
(so this is about reducing fragmentation in my mind, not increasing it). It's about bridging the gap between the old timers and newcomers (just as Matrix did for IRC/Slack/etc)

We are not forcing anyone's hands at this point.  I expect we will live with both Mailman2 and Discourse at least for the rest of the year, and perhaps longer.


> Same for me. This is something new generations probably consider like a reason
> to change (20 years, you oldies!) but I really think email is still the most open and
> available and configuratble communication channel for everyone. I'm 100% sure
> blind people can read and write email just fine, and I know first person that I can
> read and write email even from a place where internet connection quality is
> poor, and from machines which are not very powerful, and I think this is very
> important if we want to be inclusive.
> 
> >    The lists have been very quiet for quite a while now, but that is a
> >    community engagement issue. It is not something that technology will
> >    magically fix.
> 
> This is only partially true: I've seen a lot of people who are being very
> partecipative BUT do not interact on the mailing lists, even people having
> responsibilty on the OSGeo infrastructure have been expressing a form of dislike
> for mailing lists, for reasons we cannot pretend not to see.
> 
and I'm one of those Infrastructure people who feel a bit dissatisfied with mailing lists only 😊


> I for one only very recently finally got back to manage my own email and I'm
> seeing again the problems associated with doing so. This does not mean the
> same problems do not exist with other systems, but we should try to understand
> the needs of our user base and try to help with providing solutions.
> 
> The above said: I'm also disappointed by not seeing partecipation in the effort
> which is required to setup a new service (Discourse) from the very people who
> loudly asked for it. Let's all please remember that infrastructures need to be
> maintained so please don't ask what OSGeo can do for you ("I want service X")
> but rather ask what you can do for OSGeo ("I want to help maintaining service
> X").
> 
> Thank you for reading so far (short messages are also a kind of technology some
> prefer to avoid long messages like mine ;)
> 
> --strk;

I was also hoping a bit more help in people getting involved, especially those who said they wanted this.
To help write out the intro to newcomers and raise their hand "Yes, move us".
I'm hoping it's just cause I sprung this over the holidays, that only a few of those folks have shown interest.
But that said, I was a bit skeptical at first, but now reviewing all discourse does I think it's a good idea, and I'm willing to see it thru.


Thanks,
Regina