On Tue 14 Apr 2020 at 18:15:16 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote: > On Ma, 14 apr 20, 09:49:16, Curt wrote: > > On 2020-04-14, Andrei POPESCU <andreimpope...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > To me "may or may not be a replacemnt" and "would be better of" are > > > very far away from "I propose to replace X with Y". > > > > It is also rather distant from "Nobody is proposing replacing > > debian-user with Discourse," so I guess we're kind of even, though I > > think my interpretation is closer to the truth than your flat and > > unequivocal dismissal. > > Let's agree to disagree on this, see below on why. > > > I'm sorry, but it does follow from Neil's > > comments that replacing debian-user by Discourse is under consideration > > (as he *specified* debian-user as a *particular list* he believes would > > benefit from the shift). > > Debian's lists are under the responsibility of the Listmaster Team[1] > and so far they haven't expressed any opinion on this. Even if some > other Debian Member would explicitly advance a proposal to change > something regarding Debian's lists they are in charge to approve and > implement (and no, they can't be forced to do this, because they are > volunteers). > > What *may* happen: > > If (and only if) Discourse is popular enough it could be promoted to an > official channel (moved from debian.net to debian.org), most likely > operated by a completely different team than the Listmasters. > > As we have seen with shapado/ask.debian.net this might *never* happen. > > If (and only if) *some* mailing list is not useful anymore it could be > disabled by the Listmaster Team (regardless of the popularity of some > other official channel). > > With 3000+ subscribers I don't see this happening for debian-user > anytime soon. If it's going to see any significant decline in use it > will probably be correlated to general decline in e-mail use. > > I'm not aware of any list on lists.debian.org with as many subscribers > as debian-user, only debian-devel comes close with 2500+ subscribers. > > Do note that some lists on lists.debian.org have less than 100 > subscribers. > > [1] I was under the impression they are delegated as per Debian's > Constitution, though I can't find any proof of that now.
A nice exposition of some salient points. Perhaps this https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2020/04/msg00208.html will also help to clarify. On Wed, Apr 15, 2020 at 10:12:21AM -0400, Brian Gupta wrote: > Do we have to start by making it a mandatory switch? I don't feel consensus to > move to discourse will be impossible in the long term but it's normal for human > beings to resist change, especially during a time of otherwise great stress. > I think we're miles away from making it a mandatory switch! In fact, I explictly stated this in my initial email: > What about the mailing lists? > This may or may not be a replacement for any particular list. I suspect > there are some thet would benefit greatly from having Discourse be the > primary interaction, and other places where this would be less suitable. > > Be specific! > Ok... I think debian-user, debian-vote and possibly debian-project would > be better off in Discourse. I think debian-devel-announce should stay as > an email list (for now). However, I am not suddenly proposing that we shut > those lists down. The aim of this exercise is to see if Discourse would > work well for us. The whole point of this is to evaluate if Discourse would work for Debian at all, rather than if it should be the primary communication platform. I think that discussion is very different. > How do you feel about making discourse.debian.org, and making it a fully > supported tool, that's fully backed up, and available as an alternative for new > lists? He can have another discussion later about migrating existing lists. > Personally, I think that would be fantastic, and the idea behind this initial call for testing is to determine if I should be spending my time, and aiming for a discourse.debian.org instance, or if there is no appetite for that. Neil -- Brian.
