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

[Adam Nielsen]

> At PSC, we discussed this topic and decide to phase the migration plan, 
> by starting  QGIS PSC and QGIS users first. Those are the first places 
> we want users to jump in easily.

What's the reason you want users to be able to jump in easily?

In my own experience, if it's too easy for people to ask questions,
then they tend to do so before doing their own research.  This runs the
risk that they will ask a question before bothering to do even a simple
web search, resulting in many low-effort questions that the askers
could easily have solved themselves.

The end result is that humans end up functioning like AI LLMs - they
simply repeat parts of the documentation that people could not be
bothered to search for themselves.

Now if you like repeating similar answers to simple questions then
that's fine, but most people tend to get bored with that and lose
interest fairly quickly, or become rude with their replies as they are
tired of repeating the same basic information over and over again, and
this then tarnishes the community as "hostile" or "toxic" to new users.

This is why generally speaking, it's often better to add some hurdles
in before people can ask questions, such as figuring out how to
subscribe to an e-mail list.  It means people will do some web searches
first as they are the easier option, and only ask the community for help
if they really are stuck and really do need help.  This cuts down on a
lot of low-effort questions and demands less time from community
volunteers responding.

Now if you are a paid company accepting money for support agreements
then this does not matter, but if you are relying on the goodwill of
volunteers to answer the incoming questions, then it is most important
to cater to the needs of those volunteers.  If they all become unhappy
and leave, then it does not matter how easy it is to ask a question if
there is nobody around to answer it.

If you still think Discourse is the way to go, I would suggest running
it in parallel with the e-mail list for a few months, and compare how
many questions get answered there vs here.  If Discourse questions are
getting answered then it means it is a viable replacement for the
lists and the list can be closed, but if the questions are going
unanswered then it may be Discourse that should be discontinued and the
e-mail lists retained.  Either way you will have some real-world
statistics to back up the decision one way or another.

Cheers,
Adam.