Greg, I gave Discourse another try via e-mail but I have some issues:
1) Edits are not propagated to e-mail only users, I edited a post and never got an e-mail about this. If this is a feature (I don't get notification on my own edits), that's fine, but otherwise this creates a huge hole as you can miss content. 2) It seems you can't reply to yourself via email, this often happens if you need to correct yourself. This is because you need the reply token, otherwise reply will lead to a new thread - this is broken in many clients but some do have ability to correctly reply usually via Reply to List feature (Mutt, Thunderbird via plugin). Discourse let you opt-in to receive copies which makes your folder a mess and you still need to wait because of (4). 3) All emails contain huge button to visit the thread, this is not an email interface but notification with some ability to reply. Not a great reading experience. Maybe we can edit the footer and make this a very small text with just non-intrusive link? 4) Does not support text/plain emails, it just send both in MIME which is "good enough" according to devs. I would love to *have* all emails in plain text because integration with other things like mailing list archives, bots or simply gmail users who cannot turn off HTML viewing by default. Solving (3) might improve reading experience for poor gmail users in HTML tho. 5) Email response is slow, I know there is some polling, but this is simply limiting and web users are in advantage as they see the content earlier. 6) Your MUA is collecting "sent addresses" as these are randomized addresses. Perhaps not a big deal. 7) Similarly to (1) there are tons of other actions in the web UI without e-mail notifications - "mailing list" users are put aside. 8) It's a notification system not a mailing list interface, please do carefully communicate this towards users. If we choose to migrate, we will see users moving towards web UI not because it's good with all the shiny features, but because mailing list mode is terrible experience. Now, on a different topic, with possible migration we will likely loose 3rd party archives. Our groups are already being archived at several places, for example the world famous: https://www.mail-archive.com/foreman-users@googlegroups.com/index.html The way this works is usually there is a registered user that receives all e-mails creating such an archive. There are multiple similar services, GMANE perhaps the second most well known and Nabble is also in wide use. I want not to break having this read-only for-life archive which anybody can user or download. It can still serve as a read-only backup when the service is down (e.g. planned outages) and most importantly if we experience some mailing list integration misbehavior we can all look into the "archive" to see what is being sent and how it looks in text mode. This will be also here as an archive of all emails sent, because if someone edits an entry and there will be discussion around the edit, we can always look into the archive. At the end, it's how people using mailing list interface will read all content. Theoretically anybody can setup such an integration, but some administration or contacting mail-archive people might be required in order to make sure the account does not get deleted and receives all (publicly visible) emails. Big question is how this will work with Discourse "MIME only HTML+plain" format. Therefore I would like to request this to be put on TODO list ideally with priority so we have continuous mailing list archive for the future. Details are here: https://www.mail-archive.com/faq.html#newlist In short, just "subscribe arch...@mail-archive.com to the mailing list" and make sure the account does not get deleted (e.g. expiration after X years). But something tells me this will fails and emails coming from Discourse will not be readable in such an archive due to MIME/HTML thing, let's see. Then, you showed how easy is to import content into Discourse, but I would like to read something about what is the plan if this whole project fails. I tried to google some info about how to migrate from it, but apart from some "data liberation" download links in weird format (non-mbox/maildir) I could not find anything. We should at least have a plan how to approach this and what our options are to move back to mailing list. And lastly, I see lukas_zapletal1 accounts, I was likely posting under same name but different emails into the list. Is there some kind of merge? Would like to only have one account with proper name, proper nick and multiple emails owning all my posts. I briefly saw some discussion around but I understand it is not possible, there are some workarounds: https://meta.discourse.org/t/ability-to-merge-users/9220/75 On Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 6:16 PM, Greg Sutcliffe <g...@emeraldreverie.org> wrote: > Hi all > > TL;DR lets migrate to Discourse (forum software, self-hosted). I hope > you'll read the rest of this mail though :) > > This is a big proposal. If you prefer audio/video to huge posts, I've > also put some of my thoughts in the latest community demo: > > https://youtu.be/QHzNIFjMpTM?t=2103 (12min watch) > > # Not confirmed, only a proposal so far > > Lets get the important bit out of the way first - this is a *proposal*, > it's is not guaranteed. No final decision has been taken. I'm posting > this to get feedback from the community about whether it's a good idea, > and I really (really really) want to hear what you've got to say. > > # What am I proposing? > > I want to migrate our mailing lists to a self-hosted Discourse instance. > We have that Discourse instance set up, you can go play with it right > now (see below for details). I want everyone to try it out, and tell me > your thoughts. > > # Why do we need this? > > Let me start with a graph: > > https://imgur.com/a/jjPJI > > This is the volume of mailing list posts (users, dev, and the totals) > over the last 6 years, grouped by month. As you can see, that traffic > has been declining for the last 2 years, and that's a trend I also see > in the IRC data too. This worries me. > > For some time now, I've been wondering if a mailing list is the right > fit for our needs as a community. Times change, and I believe there's a > significant group of people that would be willing to be part of our > project, but do not want to join a list. In modern times, people expect > a UI, and are more comfortable there. This is a thought I have heard > repeated from other community members too, so I'm not alone. > > Specifically though, why a forum? I'm proposing we use Discourse, so let > me link to https://blog.discourse.org/category/use-cases/ and pull a few > examples out (in no specific order) > > * Easier for new users to get started withClean and simple interface > * Better search and search engine indexing > * Post creation tries to be helpful, suggesting similar topics > * 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 > > Broadly, a forum gives us both many new features out of the box, plus > flexibility for the future. This post is long enough, but I went into > much greater detail in my post to foreman-dev a few weeks ago, please do > read it if it interests you (and maybe come to the AMA next week): > > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/foreman-dev/xSS1mNKpRQg/uFSmDNK6CAAJ > > # I like mailing lists though > > Discourse does offer a "mailing list mode". I'm not going to try and > sell this to you as a 1:1 replacement for a mailing list, but the main > features in terms of creating new topics in by mail, receiving new > topics by mail, and getting/replying to new posts by mail should all > work. Threading is there too, so the basic functionality should work > fine - but I'd love to test this more. Setting up mailing list mode is > covered in my intro notes to Discourse notifications here: > > https://community.theforeman.org/t/configuring-mail-notifications/7513 > > Is it a perfect replacement? No. Is it a worthwhile tradeoff? You tell me :) > > # How do I help test this? > > Glad you asked. Start at: https://community.theforeman.org > > Everyone who has ever mailed foreman-users or foreman-dev already has an > account (importing the lists creates those users) but all outbound email > is disabled by default so we don't spam people. To recover your account, > simple log in with your mailing list email address, and then hit Recover > Password. > > If you're a mailing list lurker (never posted) then you won't have an > account yet - never fear, signups are available, or you can log in with > your GitHub account. Once logged in, you'll be shown my FAQ to help > orient yourself, and you can visit the docs for configuring mail (see above) > > # What's next? > > Nothing immediately. Next week I will hold an Ask Me Anything on our > YouTube channel, and you're welcome to come ask your questions. > Obviously questions are welcome here too, and you can email me privately > (or private message @gwmngilfen on Discourse :P) if you like. > > After some time - exactly how much depends on how quickly we get > feedback - we'll be able to take a look at the feedback so far and come > to a decision. I absolutely do *not* want to rush this - I want to > listen for a while first. It's a big change, and we need to get it right. > > I very much hope you'll join me on the expedition to the future. Change > isn't easy, but I genuinely believe we need this. Let me know your thoughts! > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Foreman users" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to foreman-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to foreman-users@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/foreman-users. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Later, Lukas @lzap Zapletal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Foreman users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to foreman-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to foreman-users@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/foreman-users. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
