[postgis-users] OSGeo Discourse - Mirroring of the mailing lists and eventual move to discourse

[Regina Obe]

As some of you may have noticed, we have set up discourse on OSGeo infra.

https://discourse.osgeo.org/

The initial plan is just import the lists and mirror the mailing lists, so
we have a more searchable archive of results (similar to what the now
defunct Nabble provided which many people preferred over interacting with he
mailing lists).

Eventually we'd like to move the mailing lists to discourse. The results
will be

1) People can still interact with discourse via email as if it were just a
mailing list, and subscribe to a whole list = category in discourse speak
As they do now with mailing lists
2) People have the option of only watching threads they are interested in =
topics in discourse terminology
3) People can login and do posts instead of email if they prefer	
4) Easier cross-pollination between OSGeo mailing lists.

Right now our discourse instance supports logging in using an OSGeo LDAP
account, GitHub Account, or direct registration on our discourse.

I know this is a very divisive topic, so I'd like to hear people's inputs.

What do you like / not like about the plan?

I'll start with mine.  

* I know a lot of folks don't want to be on mailing lists, they just want to
ask a question and just monitor answers to their questions or if their name
is mentioned.
* I do not enjoy interacting with mailing lists, because I don't care much
for email so I only subscribe to the mailing lists I have deep interest in.
To me email is something I can't easily shut off.  I much prefer going to a
site when I have a spare 15 minutes here and there. Which is why I try to
turn off all notifications from all sites except possibly digest.  And
Sandro -- yah I know I can configure my email to be less invasive, but I
honestly don't care too.

Paul had mentioned he'd be okay with the idea if we did not host discourse
ourselves, cause he thinks OSGeo shouldn't be managing any of its own
infrastructure.
I still feel hosting our own is the way to go, cause if no one wants to move
to discourse, there is no point in paying hosting fees for it, and moving a
discourse instance to a hosted discourse instance, is still way cheaper than
piecemeal migration (which cost $250/hr for migration in addition to the
$300 or more /mth of hosting).

Thanks,
Regina