My personal opinion is that, if we want Discourse to be a replacement of the mailing list, then we should treat it like one. Right now, it’s a combination of the mailing list, wiki, FAQ site, and whatnot. And I don’t want one more email in my inbox when someone decides to add an entry to the FAQ.
As concrete examples, consider: - https://racket.discourse.group/t/urlang-is-javascript-with-a-sane-syntax/119 - https://racket.discourse.group/t/gui-builder-designer/151 I’m not sure what’s the point of these posts *in the context of the mailing list*. Stephen definitely knows MrEd designer and has been promoting it for years, so this looks like his attempt to build a wiki/FAQ on Discourse. While I really do appreciate Stephen’s effort into building and maintaining the valuable wiki/FAQ at https://github.com/racket/racket/wiki, I personally don’t think a mailing list is an appropriate medium for it. Urlang is great, but I don’t understand why we are rehashing it now on Discourse. Will we also see 1735 more posts to rehash every package on the package website in the future? Another issue is cross posting. Often posts are shared to all Slack, Discord, Reddit, the current mailing list, and whatnot (and also in the other direction). It makes sense to do that for event announcements. I’m not sure the same can be said for other posts. They are inundating (at least to me), especially if they happen a lot. I understand that there's a spam problem on the current mailing list and in fact have been complaining constantly on Slack. I actually even proposed to Sam last year to consider Discourse as a replacement of the mailing list, so I'm not against the software at all if that's what you worry about. To be clear, no offense to anyone at all. It could be that my expectation of the mailing list is far off from most people, and if that’s the case, I’d simply excuse myself from it. On Sun, Nov 21, 2021 at 3:42 PM Philip McGrath <phi...@philipmcgrath.com> wrote: > I've long been in the basically-content-with-the-mailing-list camp, but > I've recently come around to the view that the status quo is untenable. I > looked into it after Racket 'Con and discovered the mailing list had shrunk > especially much for me, because the Google Groups spam filters were letting > through so much spam that Google spam filters on one hop of my receiving > side have been classifying a great deal of legitimate mailing list traffic > as spam. > > I haven't done much with Discourse yet, but it seems promising, and I hope > it works out. > > I'd guess the list administrators have tried this already, but, just in > case, the Google Group settings should have a "Spam message handling" > setting that could be set to "Moderate without notifying content > moderators" (see > https://support.google.com/groups/answer/2464926?hl=en#posting&zippy=%2Csettings-reference%2Cadvanced-settings-reference). > If this is the official moment for giving up on this mailing list, it would > probably be good to turn up these settings to some draconian level anyway, > just to leave one fewer spam target on the internet. > > -Philip > > On Sun, Nov 21, 2021 at 6:08 PM 'John Clements' via Racket Users < > racket-users@googlegroups.com> wrote: > >> Wait, you think that’s high traffic? Gee whiz, the mailing list *has* >> shrunk, hasn’t it? >> >> Okay, that was not an entirely serious reply, but I do think that in >> contrast to the discord & slack channels, the discourse is likely to be >> searchable and at least lightly curated six months from now. Also, if you >> take a look at the mailing list archive >> >> https://www.mail-archive.com/racket-users@googlegroups.com/ >> >> … you’ll see a *shocking* amount of spam. Many of us don’t see this >> because we have semi-reasonable spam filters, but others are putting up >> with what looks like more than 50% spam on this list. That’s just not >> acceptable. >> >> John >> >> >> > On Nov 21, 2021, at 14:14, Sorawee Porncharoenwase < >> sorawee.pw...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > >> > I could be in the minority here, but as an early proponent of Discourse >> to replace the mailing list (even before RacketCon), I feel reluctant to >> join it after observing it for a while. It has a very high traffic, with >> almost 100% of the contents being cross-posted everywhere else (and vice >> versa) anyway. >> > >> > While I appreciate any efforts into promoting the site, I do think >> different content has different appropriate mediums. For example, FAQs >> probably should go to the wiki. There's no need to clutter anyone's inbox >> for this type of content. >> > >> > On Sun, Nov 21, 2021 at 10:09 AM 'John Clements' via Racket Users < >> racket-users@googlegroups.com> wrote: >> > TL;DR: Go to >> > >> > https://racket.discourse.group/invites/okLTSrQw1T >> > >> > and sign up for Racket Discourse (https://racket.discourse.group/) >> > >> > # Thoughts behind the move: >> > >> > Over time, it has become steadily more apparent that email-only >> > mailing lists are an outdated communication medium for the Racket >> > community. More recent arrivals in our community have generally >> > chosen other platforms like slack or discord to carry on discussions. >> > As a result, the signal-to-noise ratio of the racket users mailing list >> > has dropped below the level of viability. >> > >> > In short, it’s time to give up on the mailing list. >> > >> > After a good deal of research, it looks like there’s room for a whole >> > bunch of discussion platforms for Racket, but it also seems as though >> > there should be a “permanent” one; it should be archived, it should be >> > searchable in its entirety, and it should not tie us to someone else’s >> > plan to monetize user data. >> > >> > Given these criteria, the winner is Discourse, an open-source >> > messaging platform built by Jeff Atwood, Robin Ward, and Sam >> > Saffron. It has a reasonable business model (they host projects like >> > ours unless they get really big, whereupon you can either host it >> > yourself or pay them to do it); it’s widely used by other language >> > communities; and it appears to do most of what we want. >> > >> > # So where can I sign up? >> > >> > Sign up here: https://racket.discourse.group/invites/okLTSrQw1T >> > >> > The discourse platform has been in a “soft opening” phase for about >> > two weeks now, since RacketCon, and we have about a hundred users. >> > You’re receiving this message because we’d like to have *YOU* there >> > as well. >> > >> > # Can I still receive messages like a mailing list? >> > >> > Yes, you can. I have it enabled myself! >> > To use discord as a mailing-list: >> > Sign up, go to Preferences > Email, and tick “Enable mailing list mode'. >> > >> > Yours, >> > >> > John Clements & Stephen De Gabrielle >> > >> > -- >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> Groups "Racket Users" group. >> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >> an email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> > To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/9d080367-1b70-4818-8e76-8c6714db404c%40mtasv.net >> . >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Racket Users" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/4b85e73f-4233-4b77-8d06-96b4afdebc24%40mtasv.net >> . >> > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Racket Users" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/0100017d44e13501-021b5151-0b13-4827-bb1e-80638acc0634-000000%40email.amazonses.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/0100017d44e13501-021b5151-0b13-4827-bb1e-80638acc0634-000000%40email.amazonses.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. 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