[CentOS-devel] RFC (Request for Comments) : future of lists.centos.org (aka centos mailing-lists)

Thu May 11 14:27:18 UTC 2023
Stephen Smoogen <ssmoogen at redhat.com>

On Thu, 11 May 2023 at 09:59, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Thu, May 11, 2023 at 9:42 AM Trevor Hemsley
> <trevor.hemsley at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 11/05/2023 13:35, Josh Boyer wrote:
> > > Fedora has a Discourse instance and we've had some CentOS topics
> > > there.  The CentOS lists are pretty low-traffic.  Perhaps we can just
> > > migrate to Discourse and not have to run our own mailman instances and
> > > servers?
> >
> > Discourse is [expleteive deleted] horrible. Please don't.
>
> Can you describe what value the existing mailing list has for you and
> why Discourse wouldn't provide that?
>
>
The value I have is mainly the following:
1. I have existing filters which work and tools to read my email in ways
which work for me.
2. I have found the discourse2email to be 'flaky' several times in the past
with my replies never getting to the site and the message output in a form
which hurts my head in fonts/layout.
3. I have tried to use the discourse website for several years and find
that its way of working isn't how my brain deals with communication. Like
most forums, I get frustrated enough that I find my communication ability
turns angry. This isn't unique as many people who hate mailing lists report
the same reaction.. their brains don't process the information that way and
react poorly to continual usage.

That said, the number of emails on CentOS have dropped greatly, and I know
that the amount of work needed to make mailman3 work is not anywhere as
simple as mailman2 was. I don't think running a sole-purpose mailing list
server is going to make sense for the amount of work now needed.

so I think the possible options are:

Option 1: move to EL-8 mailman2 til next June.. then punt to 2,3,4
Option 2: volunteer and do the work to make mailman3 work (this needs
packaging, webwork, database work, importing of old archives, resubscribing
n people, etc).
Option 2b: volunteer and use a different supportable mailing list software
(this needs...)
Option 3: discontinue email lists and have Fedora discourse run threads.
Option 4: move the mailing lists to another organization and let them
manage the email (this needs ...)




> I'm looking at how frequently most users post and it seems to be
> relatively low volume.  Maybe just setting Discourse options to email
> you would cover the read-only nature most people seem to have with the
> lists?
>
> josh
>
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-- 
Stephen Smoogen, Red Hat Automotive
Let us be kind to one another, for most of us are fighting a hard battle.
-- Ian MacClaren
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