[Qgis-user] Announce - migrate our mailing lists to Discourse

[DancesWithCars]

I won't be making the transition.
Bye


On Thu, Apr 4, 2024, 14:06 chris hermansen via QGIS-User <
qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> Régis and everyone else,
>
> My apologies; I try not to top post but my response is more an overall
> reaction to your announcement rather than a point by point response.
>
> I was a member (??) over at opensource.com's Discourse instance until
> RedHat decided to shut down support for opensource.com, so I have some
> experience with that Discourse configuration, also plenty of experience
> with mailing lists.  Also familiarity with the Ubuntu Forums, Stack
> Exchange etc.
>
> In my experience, Discourse "out of the box" doesn't offer any net benefit
> to its users.
>
> It's quite possible that people interested in, and willing to invest time
> and effort into customizing their usage profile would benefit more from
> Discourse than from a mailing list.  I have no experience with that.
>
> You may be correct when you say that we will attract more new users by
> offering them Discourse than by maintaining a mailing list.  I guess the
> question that begs to be asked is, will those new users thereby turn into
> contributors, or will the biggest Discourse channel be "how do I install
> QGIS on my new Mac"?
>
> I suppose, perhaps wrongly, that most of us on this (and other) mailing
> lists are here because the list provides a sense of community, an
> opportunity to pay back by offering a bit of help, an opportunity to
> stumble on something new and useful from time to time... what else?  I'm
> pretty sure none of us participate in this list to learn how to participate
> effectively in lists.  Moreover, we don't really have the tools to "only
> pay attention to topics X, Y and Z".  So all of us get to see the beginner
> questions, and the responses, and sometimes we find ourselves in the
> situation of starting fresh with something that, because of this broad
> familiarity, is not a total blank.
>
> In contrast, in my experience, moving to Discourse, or any other similar
> forum-type structure, allows or even encourages us to stick to certain
> topics that we think may be of interest and avoid all others.
>
> I would argue that we thereby cheapen and diminish our contribution back
> to the forum, simply because we miss real opportunities to help while we
> avoid reading certain topics; and by doing so, we reduce the sense of
> community we get by belonging to the list.  I would further argue that we
> run the risk of not learning many new things because by streaming topics
> into tens or hundreds of specialist channels, we inevitably miss things
> that might benefit us.
>
> Finally, we have the "opportunity" to spend more of our limited time
> learning about configuring our participation in this mechanism, rather than
> just participating.  Your example of learning how to treat Discourse like a
> mailing list by following the Mozilla tutorial addresses this situation
> precisely - instead of helping a person with their configuration issues, or
> learning more about how to structure the queries used in QGIS, we are
> tweaking the Discourse knobs and levers to get the "optimum" experience.
>
> I guess you can tell that I'm negative on this concept.  I don't feel that
> the mailing list is a be-all and end-all.  But I am pretty sure, again
> based on my experience, that the lovely community we have here on
> qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org will not be the same collection of good things
> once migrated to Discourse.  I do hope that I am wrong!
>
> On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 7:04 AM Régis Haubourg via QGIS-User <
> qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
>
>> [Message sent to all QGIS's lists. Sorry for crossposting - **please
>> reply only in PSC list**  ]
>> [stuff deleted]
>>
>>
>> Any thought from you is more than welcome, from ranting against modernity
>> to thanking SAC for their hard work.
>>
>  And thank you, SAC, for your hard work!
>
> --
> Chris Hermansen · clhermansen "at" gmail "dot" com
>
> C'est ma façon de parler.
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