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

[Jean Felder]

Hi everyone,

Thanks Valentin for raising this discussion.

I also think migrating to Discourse is a good idea.

I had the chance to experience the migration of the GNOME project from a 
mailing list to discourse, and it was a complete success. In particular:
- It allowed many people who found subscribing to a mailing list too 
complicated to join the discussion (please, don’t try to rationalize 
this. Yes, for some people, especially newcomers, subscribing to a 
mailing list really is difficult)
- It created new discussions between project developers and users. By 
users, I mean people who have lots of ideas or feedback for the project 
but would never have created a GitHub account

For more information, here’s some feedback from the GNOME project:

- 
https://discourse.gnome.org/t/common-questions-re-mailman-to-discourse/11841
- https://discourse.gnome.org/t/sub-categories/11733/6?u=trim


I also want to point out that it’s totally possible to use Discourse 
directly from an email client. That’s one of Discourse’s strengths.
See for example:
- https://discourse.gnome.org/t/interacting-with-discourse-via-email/46
- https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/how-do-i-use-discourse-via-email/15279


Cheers,
Jean




Le 09/03/2026 à 21:17, Valentin Buira via QGIS-PSC a écrit :
> 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 <http://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
>
> _______________________________________________
> QGIS-PSC mailing list
> QGIS-PSC at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-psc


-- 
Jean Felder
Développeur SIG
Oslandia
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