Discuss mailing list

[Jonah Aragon <jonah AT opennic.org>]

Fusl’s voting plugin is more production ready and should be voted on any day 
now, in my opinion. Discourse is a month or so out I’d say. 

Discourse does support polling built-in, but I’m not sure how that works with 
people who only interact via email. I think we should move to the wiki for 
votes ASAP, and Discourse for discussion at some later date. 

Jonah

> On Aug 2, 2018, at 3:58 PM, Daniel Quintiliani <danq AT runbox.com> wrote:
> 
> Perhaps one proposal with Discourse for everything with an effective date 
> of October, and then a proposal to use Fusl's Wiki plugin for voting with 
> the same effective date, so that whatever OpenNIC members decide on will 
> take effect at the same time?
> 
> --
> 
> -Dan Q
> 
> 
>> On Thu, 02 Aug 2018 16:50:43 -0400 (EDT), "Daniel Quintiliani" 
>> <danq AT runbox.com> wrote:
>> 
>> There is an issue I thought of here.
>> 
>> Many of those who would support migrating to Discourse want to use Fusl's 
>> Wiki plugin for voting, while others want to use Discourse for everything.
>> 
>> Which vote should come first?
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> -Dan Q
>> 
>> 
>>> On Wed, 1 Aug 2018 20:14:20 -0400, Rouben <rouben AT rouben.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Are there plans to tie into LDAP so one doesn’t need to register for an
>>> account, beyond specifying their email address and other profile data?
>>> 
>>>> On Wed, Aug 1, 2018 at 14:57 Jonah Aragon <jonah AT opennic.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> We now have a testing Discourse server up and running! Feel free to 
>>>> create
>>>> an account at https://discourse-dev.opennic.org/ and test it out!
>>>> 
>>>> After creating an account, you will have the option to enable “Mailing
>>>> List Mode,” which replicates the functionality of a traditional mailing
>>>> list such as this one (i.e. you will receive an email for each post and
>>>> reply). Follow these instructions to do so if you so choose:
>>>> https://gist.github.com/JonahAragon/6b5aef4f076d3640815cbe8dfdb133e8#mailing-list-mode
>>>> 
>>>> Additionally, mailing in to create a post is available. To post in the
>>>> “General” category (which is where basically everything besides support
>>>> requests will go at the moment) simply send an email to
>>>> general AT discourse-dev.opennic.org from your account’s email (you will
>>>> need to register beforehand).
>>>> 
>>>> Please send me any feedback you may have. This is just a server setup for
>>>> testing purposes so feel free to mess around with it and see what it can
>>>> do, and what will need changing before we switch to it in production.
>>>> 
>>>> Feel free to email me here with any feedback, or post it in the Site
>>>> Feedback section on Discourse so I can see what may need to be changed.
>>>> 
>>>> Jonah
>>>> 
>>>> (I thought I sent this to the mailing list earlier but I may have just
>>>> sent it to myself, whoops!)
>>>> 
>>>>> On Jul 7, 2018, at 1:35 PM, 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
>>>> 
>>>> Jonah
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>> Rouben
>>> 
>>> 
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