[swift-evolution] Plan to move swift-evolution and swift-users mailing lists to Discourse

[Rick Mann]

I second this praise. FWIW, I recently installed Discourse using a DigitalOcean droplet, and it couldn't have been easier. Upgrades are surprisingly easy, too.

I have yet to figure out the email integration; I hope you can get that working.

I also hope you give some effort to improving on the default Discourse look. It's not bad, but I feel like it doesn't do a good job of delineating functional areas on the page. Having said that, I'm more than happy to wait indefinitely for such an improvement; it's not worth holding up the roll-out.

Thanks again!

> On Feb 8, 2017, at 19:34 , Joshua Alvarado via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> 🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉🎊🎊
> This is an awesome decision and a huge enhancement for the Swift community. Thanks (Core Team) for taking the time to entertain the discussion and move forward with what many community members have wanted. 
> 
> Alvarado, Joshua
> 
>> On Feb 8, 2017, at 5:03 PM, Ted kremenek via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi everyone,
>> 
>> There was a long thread on swift-evolution about whether we should use modern forum software — like Discourse — as an alternative to the mailing lists we have now.  After a long discussion, the Core Team has decided to move swift-evolution and swift-users to Discourse.
>> 
>> There are tradeoffs to moving to a forum.  The main advantages are:
>> 
>> - Easy for people to participate without subscribing to the entire mailing list, as well as no need to provide email address to participate.  A lot of people have voiced concern that they feel resistance to participate because of needing to subscribe to a mailing list.
>> 
>> - Consistent affordances and rendering of content, including Markdown support.  This is really useful for having technical discussions.
>> 
>> - Better searching of topics, archiving, etc.
>> 
>> - More tools for moderation.
>> 
>> - Topic cross-referencing, and consistent organization of topics instead of whatever threading support a mail client provides (which is inconsistent).
>> 
>> I also want to consider moving the -dev lists to the same forum setup as well; but that will be a separate conversation on those lists.
>> 
>> A rollout plan has not been figured out.  People are busy and there are logistics to figure out.  I will be engaging a handful of members from the community to help with the transition.  Specifically, there are those who really value using email for participation on swift-evolution and swift-users, and the goal is to get the forum setup to allow those people to continue to feel effective when using email for discussions on these "lists".
>> 
>> More details will be announced as they get figured out, but I felt it was important to let the community know about this direction.
>> 
>> Ted
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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-- 
Rick Mann
rmann at latencyzero.com