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
