Many thanks for your thoughts. I appreciate that your time and inbox space is at a premium, and I’ll try to be careful about posting things to more than one forum.
Best, John Clements > On Nov 21, 2021, at 22:53, Sorawee Porncharoenwase <[email protected]> > wrote: > > 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 <[email protected]> > 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 > <[email protected]> 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/[email protected]/ > > … 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 > > <[email protected]> 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 > > <[email protected]> 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 [email protected]. > > 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 [email protected]. > 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 [email protected]. > 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. -- 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 [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/8a892579-a527-417b-a079-304d83d8dc10%40mtasv.net.
