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

[David Hart]

Hi Ted,

Thanks so much for taking time to discuss this with the team. I feel very confident this is going to be a big plus for the community :)

David

> On 9 Feb 2017, at 01:03, 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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