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

[Julien Cabieces]

Hi Valentin,

I completely second your request. At the time the discussion arose, I
was not completely sure discourse was a better option but now I made up
my mind and I'd really love we make the switch to discourse.

I'm using a mail client and I'd like to continue. Good thing is AFAIK
discourse propose different notification strategy (on mention, on post I
already reply...) and that would be a real advantage to me, selecting
the topic I want to be notified or not.

I completely resigned from the QGIS user mailing list because it was too many
mails that I can deal with. Sometimes, I feel the need to discuss with
users (about UI or user workflow when developing a new feature for
instance) but I would have to subscribe/unscribe the mailing list and
receive emails I don't care. So I don't do it...

I had the same experience last time I wanted to discuss packages with
the Debian community : subcribe/send email/Ooops wrong mailing list/unscribe/subscribe/...(repeat)

And searching in old messages (and maybe replying) when you're new to the project is also
really important and help onboarding in the project.

Regards,
Julien


> 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 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
>
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> QGIS-PSC at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-psc

-- 

Julien Cabieces
Senior Developer at Oslandia
julien.cabieces at oslandia.com