Discuss mailing list

["Daniel Quintiliani" <danq AT runbox.com>]

My main concern is the ability to edit messages, which could result in 
manipulation of votes. Even if users editing their messages is disabled, a 
disgruntled or dishonest admin can cause trouble. Perhaps something like 
groups.io would be a better idea?

--

-Dan Q

On Sat, 7 Jul 2018 13:35:39 -0500, Jonah Aragon <jonah AT triplebit.net> wrote:

> Hello all!
> 
> This is going to be a pretty big proposal today, since not much has
> happened in a while. TL;DR: we should move to Discourse (but I hope you'll
> read the rest of this mail anyways).
> 
> ## It's just a proposal.
> 
> I want to be clear right from the start that this is just a proposal,
> nothing here is guaranteed, and the entire point of this thread is to hear
> your opinions. Before shutting it down, lets see if we can reach some sort
> of agreement.
> 
> ## Why should we do this?
> 
> For quite some time, I've been thinking about ways OpenNIC's community
> platforms have been a success, and ways we could improve ourselves,
> especially in terms of gaining new users and fostering regular discussion.
> Times change, and a mailing list is simply a relic of another era. I firmly
> believe there is a significant group of people that would join our
> community, but don't want to join a mailing list. In these modern times,
> people simply expect a UI to join platforms like this, and are a lot more
> comfortable there/online versus participating via email. This is a thought
> I've heard repeated by other community members here, so I'm not alone.
> 
> ## Why Discourse?/Why a forum?
> 
> Let me just link to https://blog.discourse.org/category/use-cases/ for an
> overview, but I'll pull out some especially useful examples below, in no
> particular order.
> 
> * Easier for new users to get started with a clean and simple interface
> * Better search and search engine indexing
> * Post creation tries to be helpful, suggesting similar topics that already
> exist.
> * Markdown support.
> * Category-level subscriptions.
> * Browser & phone push notifications for new posts.
> * Community digest by email & “unread” on the web (for those who can’t keep
> an eye on the web site all the time).
> * Converting a post to a wiki post, so everyone can edit it.
> * Group-level notifications.
> 
> In an overall sense, migrating to a forum, and Discourse in particular
> grants us many new features out of the box, that aren't replicable on a
> list like this, as well as flexibility in the future.
> 
> ## How it helps with support
> 
> When it comes to support, especially with integral operating system
> components like DNS, which we specialize in, what matters is that users can
> ask a question and get a reply that they can feel confident in.
> 
> The problem with mailing lists is that neither of these things are really
> achievable on a mailing list. If a user, who just joined this mailing list
> and knows nobody, gets two differing replies, who is (s)he to trust? A
> forum on the other hand can display user reputation levels, badges, and
> titles that distinguish trusted members of our community from another new
> user's reply. A mailing list has nothing distinguishing users apart
> whatsoever, to the point where I still have to check peoples history and
> qualifications after years of participating here.
> 
> Discourse specifically also helps new users by showing "Similar Topics"
> when they're creating a post, ideally pointing them to existing resources
> before starting a new thread. This is impossible for new users to do from
> within their mailbox, and incredibly difficult to find via Sympa's uh,
> "lacking," web interface. Features like this can prevent duplicate posts
> from cluttering our platform.
> 
> Discourse also supports plugins (it's a Rails app) which should allow us to
> look at things like issue templates, etc. for people needing support with
> some of our services like Tier 2 servers.
> 
> ## How it helps with announcements
> 
> We currently don't have a dedicated announcements platform, making it
> impossible for any organizationally relevant news to be shown to many new
> users. Currently, our only option is to send it to the mailing list, which
> is what we currently do, but that leads to important information being lost
> among the other threads. Discourse has supports for sticky posts and a
> global announcements banner we can use to get important messages across.
> 
> ## More general notes
> 
> Discourse has a lot of things going for it, as a platform. Groups support
> for example, can help segment our members into groups we can use for
> notifications, etc. If there's a change to the root zone for example, a
> quick ping to @tier2ops from our Tier 0 administrator can notify them all
> right away. Groups can be invite-only or users can self-select to join
> them, depending on configuration.
> 
> Additionally, private messages may be useful, especially if somebody is
> offline on IRC, which happens often. It also has a privacy benefit over the
> mailing list: many users are a lot more comfortable sharing usernames
> versus their email address.
> 
> ## But I love mailing lists!
> 
> Discourse does offer a per-user "mailing list mode" you can enable. Now,
> I'm not going to try and sell this as a 1:1 replacement for this mailing
> list, but a lot of the core functionality can remain the same. Creating new
> topics, replying to posts, and getting individual replies via email should
> all work. Threading works too, so the basic functionality of a mailing list
> should work fine.
> 
> Is it a perfect replacement for this use-case? No. Is it a worthwhile
> tradeoff? I think so, you tell me :)
> 
> ## How will this server work?
> 
> @fusl (Katie) will be hosting a Discourse server for us. (As an aside, she
> also hosts the wiki, our two active anycast servers, and a lot of backend
> stuff for this organization). I'm hoping to get Discourse online within the
> next week or two at community.opennic.org that we can test out, which would
> become our live server if this proposal is approved.
> 
> ## What's next?
> 
> Nothing immediately. I want to gather a lot of feedback on this proposal
> before we proceed. I'll be here to answer any questions, and you can also
> email me privately with any questions/concerns at jonah AT triplebit.net.
> 
> After some time, exactly how long depending on the amount/type of feedback
> we get on this proposal, we'll be able to look at everything and come to a
> decision, and bring it to a vote here. This time around I don't want to
> rush anything, and I want to make sure we consider everything before coming
> to a conclusion, so please voice any feedback you may have. It's a pretty
> big change, organizationally, and I want to make sure we get everything
> right.
> 
> I very much hope everyone here will support me on our journey to the modern
> world. Change isn't easy for anybody, but I genuinely believe we need this
> to happen. Let me know your thoughts!
> 
> Thanks everybody,
> 
> Jonah
> 
> 
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