Discuss mailing list

[Jonah Aragon <jonah AT triplebit.net>]

This is a discussion of Discourse, not Discord. 

Regarding voting, we’ll have a separate system, probably on the wiki for 
that. 

But currently all our systems are at the hands of a single person or small 
group of people (at best) who could create havoc in theory if they so chose. 
That isn’t the scenario I’m worried about, because a disgruntled admin could 
change the root zone or something equally sinister, for example, so it seems 
silly to me to focus on edge cases like that. 

Jonah

> On Jul 7, 2018, at 3:37 PM, <vv AT cgs.pw> <vv AT cgs.pw> wrote:
> 
> Perhaps I misunderstood, but I don't think that
> Discord was intended to replace the mailing list.
> If I understand correctly, the ML would still be
> where voting take place.
> 
> ~ Ole
> 
> 
> On Sat, 07 Jul 2018 15:50:33 -0400 (EDT)
> "Daniel Quintiliani" <danq AT runbox.com> wrote:
> 
>> 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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>> 
>> 
> 
> 
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