[swift-evolution] [META] Re: Mailman?

Wed Mar 9 13:03:33 CST 2016

I'm wary of any forum software with "community moderation" or gamification features. These inevitably become amplifiers for narrow points of view, and they tend to lead to community owners abdicating their own responsibility for moderating their communities.

-Joe

> On Mar 9, 2016, at 2:34 AM, Adrian Kashivskyy via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> I'm a very big supporter of moving the discussions to a Discourse forum installation. Here are my arguments:
> 
> Subscribing to interesting threads
> In the mailing list, it is not possible to subscribe to a thread unless the mail client supports it. In a forum, you can subscribe to a thread and you may even turn on email notifications.
> Muting uninteresting threads
> Unless the mail client is supporting it (many don't) – it's not possible to mute a thread – all emails are equally important.
> Searching
> It is way easier to search an indexed forum like Discourse, than searching through 12k emails
> Message formatting
> We tend to include many code examples and formatted text in our messages. Some of us tend to create markdown files on the side and then paste the generated HTML into an email body. Discourse supports mix-and-match of Markdown, HTML and BBEdit.
> Tags
> In the mailing list, most of us tend to include [tags] in the mail subjects, but some folks forget or ignore them. Discourse allows to predefine tags for the threads which improves indexing and searching even more.
> Pinned threads
> Announcements of e.g. ongoing reviews may take a form of pinned threads so they are immediately visible to forum members.
> The problem of replying to a thread with a changed subject
> Sometimes users reply to threads but accidentally add a tag or a whitespace to the message subject. Most mail client interpret it as a new thread and such a reply may be lost in the wild. Replies to coherent forum threads are never lost, they're always in the right place.
> Accessibility
> Even if your mailing client allows all of the above features, sometimes it is needed to access the forums from a phone or on a university computer, where many functionalities are blocked. Although it is possible to access the webmail page in the browser, it is most often painful to navigate through archives (especially on icloud.com <http://icloud.com/> ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). When using Discourse, all above features are available everywhere.
> Permanent links
> To share a link to a Discourse discussion, you just copy it from the browser URL field. To share a link to a mailing list reply, you need to open the web archive, find the topic manually and then copy the URL from the browser field anyway.
> Mentioning other users
> In mailing list, this is achievable by including the target user in a recipients list. In forum, you just @mention someone, just like in GitHub issues.
> Privacy
> Some users don't want their private emails to be disclosed in a mailing list. In a forum like Discourse, you can choose whether your email is displayed publicly or not.
> 
> I can actually go on and on with my points, but I very much hope that the above list is sufficient to start a serious discussion about migrating to a forum, like Discourse.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Adrian Kashivskyy
> 
>> Wiadomość napisana przez Fload via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> w dniu 06.03.2016, o godz. 23:46:
>> 
>> Using Mail here, it works well for me! :)
>> 
>>> On Mar 6, 2016, at 9:31 PM, Kevin Lundberg via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I wonder if some of the dislike for mailing lists here is due to people using Mail.app on osx/ios to keep up with discussions. I find that Thunderbird's mailing list handling is really nice (much better than Mail.app), since it correctly shows replies as a tree so it's easy to see which messages reply to which at a glance.
>>> 
>>> On 3/6/2016 12:54 PM, Goffredo Marocchi via swift-evolution wrote:
>>>> Setting up a custom Google Wave service? ... *waits for laughter to die down* it is actually open source and did its job well actually.
>>>> 
>>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>> 
>>>> On 6 Mar 2016, at 17:35, Radosław Pietruszewski via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> I have to admit that I’ve also gotten used to the current system, however archaic ;)
>>>>> 
>>>>> I’d still be happy to move to a more modern system, but it’s not as important to me as in the beginning. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> The only requirement, I think, for a lot of people, would be for the new system to still allow subscription and posting to go through email.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Best,
>>>>> — Radek
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On 05 Mar 2016, at 00:37, Erica Sadun via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Speaking as someone who tries to observe trends in discussions, does a lot of search through her mail archives, 
>>>>>> and uses gmane to capture permanent links, I've been very satisfied with the existing solution. 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I suspect that most of us happy users never get heard in this discussion, so I'm just putting this out there.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> -- Erica
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Mar 4, 2016, at 3:34 PM, Jacob Bandes-Storch via swift-evolution < <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Friendly bump:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Discourse is now free for open-source projects.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> http://blog.discourse.org/2016/03/free-discourse-forum-hosting-for-community-friendly-github-projects/ <http://blog.discourse.org/2016/03/free-discourse-forum-hosting-for-community-friendly-github-projects/>
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
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