[Qgis-psc] Status on migrate our mailing lists to Discourse ?

[Richard Duivenvoorde]

No email client ??? Ha ha, yes then a mailing list is not a thing for 
you :-)

I think the purpose of mailing lists can be two-fold:

- as an information source / archive
- as a (direct) communication channel

To me all my mailing lists (GDAL, PROJ, (geoserver... gone), 4xQGIS) end 
up in one mailbox, perfectly searchable with an mail client.
And I'm checking mail all day, so the best way to communicatie with me 
is mail (or chat).

Your case that information gets lost is valid, but to be honest: at 
least mail archives have mail from 10 year. Try that with other (non 
federated) services?

Maybe for users (who do not communicatie with each other on regular 
bases), a forum is good?
But for (transparent) communication between people, I't say a mailing 
list is better?

So my 2 ct:
I'd say: the user list is more suitable for a forum then the dev list?
( I do not think I would check discourse as often as I do my mails, in 
my client :-) )
But all this is personal: I'm not following Geoserver discussions 
anymore because of their move, but maybe I can get used to checking 
discourse every day if QGIS also moves...

I'll try to follow :-)

Regards,

Richard Duivenvoorde

On 2026-03-09 21:17, Valentin Buira via QGIS-PSC wrote:
> Hi PSC,
> 
> As per my email subject, I would like to know more about the status of
> the migrating mailing list to OSGeo discourse, as it was announced
> almost two years ago on this mailing list [1]
> 
> mailman is a venerable piece of software that has served us well for
> the past 10 years, but the quality of life improvements everywhere
> else has made mailman pale in comparison of what a 2026 collaborative
> platform could be. I think it's a good time to study the possibility
> of migrating to discourse again.
> 
> In random order a list of defavor argument for mailman and favor
> argument for discourse:
> 
> * Answering to an email is super tedious, I don't have a mail client
> installed on my computer and I found two workaround this:
>    -  use the developer tools of my browser to find the right reply-to
> email.
>    -  Or write the email first, then browse from my phone the web
> interface for the right mail to answer to and finally click on it as
> my gmail app acts as a mail client.
> * No search function out of the box we have to rely on external
> service like : mail-archive.com [1] it's fine if you have been in the
> project for 10 years but if you join recently there is a loss of
> informations.
> * Sometimes I want to answer a really old topic, but I don't because I
> don't want to pollute everybody else mailbox. Discourse handles
> long-tail discussions more cleanly via threading
> * This one is a bit subjective BUT to me the current web interface
> looks like a scam website
> * Emojis support in discourse (I think they light up the mood
> sometimes )
> * Blender, Gnome, Mozilla, pg-routing have all adopted it, and have
> not looked back.
> * Mobile support in discourse
> 
> Last time the discussion came up, I feel like the arguments were
> really one sided, that's why I would like to open up the discussion
> again.
> 
> I understand the concerns about the migration, and if we don't want to
> dive in right away maybe we could have an experiment period of 6
> months? Keep both side by side, give it a try, and I am convinced the
> concerns will fade quickly.
> 
> Cheers,
> Valentin
> 
> [1]
> https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-developer/2024-April/066662.html
> 
> 
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://mail-archive.com
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