I did not have the time to counter all those points but I was going to and point that Discourse has a solution for nearly all of those. I would REALLY prefer having the mailing-list part of the discussion on Discourse.
> On 03 Aug 2016, at 07:46, Jacob Bandes-Storch via swift-evolution > <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote: > > I hope my replies aren't too curt — I don't want to pick a fight (any more > than I did by starting this topic), but to explore how Discourse can serve > these use cases. Feel free to re-rebut. > > On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 3:03 PM, Brent Royal-Gordon <br...@architechies.com > <mailto:br...@architechies.com>> wrote: > > I don't think enough has been said in favor of mailing lists. Some advantages > for them: > > 1. Available on every platform. > Browsers too. > > > 2. Performant on every platform. (Discourse, for instance, struggles on > Android.) > Browsers are heavily tuned for performance, and Discourse is a relatively > lightweight site. If you prefer the performance of your email client, there's > mailing list mode. > > > 3. Native on every platform. > Browsers too. > > > 4. Based on open standards with multiple implementations. > Browsers too. You may argue that the forum itself is too centralized, but > Mailman is necessarily centralized too. > > And this isn't always a positive: formatting of styled, quoted, and even > plain text is quite varied among email clients, so popular threads often end > up looking like huge messes. > > > 5. Does not require you to proactively check swift-evolution. > Email notification settings, or full-on mailing list mode, or RSS, can solve > this. > > > 6. Supports offline reading and drafting. > Mailing list mode or RSS / reply-by-email. > > > 7. Supports clients with alternate feature sets. > Discourse has RSS feeds and JSON APIs. > > > 8. Supports bot clients for both sending (like the CI bot) and receiving > (like Gmane). > Discourse has an API > <https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-api-documentation/22706> which can be > used for posting. It also supports bot-like plugins > <https://github.com/discourse/try-bot/blob/master/plugin.rb> which can > respond to various events, although I imagine that requires self-hosting. > External bots interested in receiving would probably need to poll RSS, or > just make use of mailing list mode as a receive hook. > > > 9. Supports user-specific automatic filtering. > Topics and categories in Discourse each support a range of notification > options from "watching" to "muted". My understanding is that these settings > are respected by mailing list mode. > > > 10. Users can privately annotate messages. > Discourse has "bookmarks", basically a way of saving individual posts/replies > for yourself. Users can also send themselves private messages > <https://meta.discourse.org/t/support-multiple-new-topic-drafts/7263/15?u=jtbandes> > for note-taking purposes. > > > 11. Drafts and private messages are not visible to any central administrator. > I'm not sure whether Discourse drafts are saved on the server. Moderators are > restricted from viewing private messages > <https://meta.discourse.org/t/permission-changes-moderators-have-less/12522>. > Of course, you can always contact someone via other means. > > > 12. History is stored in a distributed fashion; there is no single point of > failure that could wipe out swift-evolution's history. > This is a fair point. But: > - The Git repository of proposals is distributed. > - Discourse is as easily backed up as any other computer system: > https://meta.discourse.org/t/configure-automatic-backups-for-discourse/14855 > <https://meta.discourse.org/t/configure-automatic-backups-for-discourse/14855> > - Users who would like a low-fidelity local copy for themselves can enable > mailing list mode. > - Anyone is free to access/archive publicly accessible content using the APIs. > > > 13. Usually the medium of choice for large-scale, long-running open source > projects. > > Is that just because people already know how to use email? Is it because the > projects are so long-running that email was the best/only choice when they > started? I'm not sure anyone has done real academic research on the use of > mailing lists in open source projects. If someone can find any, I'd be > interested to read it. > > > I could probably go on, but I'll stop here for now. > > I would love to have a great web archive for swift-evolution—something with a > really solid search function, good threading, and most of the other niceties > of forums. It'd even be nice to have an upvote feature. But these are all > things that you could do without taking swift-evolution off of email. > > This seems like status quo bias to me. It's just as valid to *start* with a > great forum system, and build any desirable additional features on top, as it > is to start with a mailing list and build additional features on top. > (Discourse being open-source is a pretty big advantage in terms of the > ability to add features.) > _______________________________________________ > swift-evolution mailing list > swift-evolution@swift.org > https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
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