Re: [opennic-discuss] [PROPOSAL] Migrating from Sympa to Discourse

Oops sorry, that was a typo. Those names are
so similar that I will continue to make that
mistake. Get used to it. lol

~ Ole



On Sat, 7 Jul 2018 16:26:07 -0500
Jonah Aragon <[email protected]> wrote:

> This is a discussion of Discourse, not Discord. 
> 
> Regarding voting, we’ll have a separate system, probably
> on the wiki for that. 
> 
> But currently all our systems are at the hands of a
> single person or small group of people (at best) who
> could create havoc in theory if they so chose. That isn’t
> the scenario I’m worried about, because a disgruntled
> admin could change the root zone or something equally
> sinister, for example, so it seems silly to me to focus
> on edge cases like that. 
> 
> Jonah
> 
> > On Jul 7, 2018, at 3:37 PM, <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > Perhaps I misunderstood, but I don't think that
> > Discord was intended to replace the mailing list.
> > If I understand correctly, the ML would still be
> > where voting take place.
> > 
> > ~ Ole
> > 
> > 
> > On Sat, 07 Jul 2018 15:50:33 -0400 (EDT)
> > "Daniel Quintiliani" <[email protected]> wrote:
> >   
> >> My main concern is the ability to edit messages, which
> >> could result in manipulation of votes. Even if users
> >> editing their messages is disabled, a disgruntled or
> >> dishonest admin can cause trouble. Perhaps something
> >> like groups.io would be a better idea?
> >> 
> >> --
> >> 
> >> -Dan Q
> >> 
> >> On Sat, 7 Jul 2018 13:35:39 -0500, Jonah Aragon
> >> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>   
> >>> Hello all!
> >>> 
> >>> This is going to be a pretty big proposal today, since
> >>> not much has happened in a while. TL;DR: we should
> >>> move to Discourse (but I hope you'll read the rest of
> >>> this mail anyways).
> >>> 
> >>> ## It's just a proposal.
> >>> 
> >>> I want to be clear right from the start that this is
> >>> just a proposal, nothing here is guaranteed, and the
> >>> entire point of this thread is to hear your opinions.
> >>> Before shutting it down, lets see if we can reach some
> >>> sort of agreement.
> >>> 
> >>> ## Why should we do this?
> >>> 
> >>> For quite some time, I've been thinking about ways
> >>> OpenNIC's community platforms have been a success, and
> >>> ways we could improve ourselves, especially in terms
> >>> of gaining new users and fostering regular discussion.
> >>> Times change, and a mailing list is simply a relic of
> >>> another era. I firmly believe there is a significant
> >>> group of people that would join our community, but
> >>> don't want to join a mailing list. In these modern
> >>> times, people simply expect a UI to join platforms
> >>> like this, and are a lot more comfortable there/online
> >>> versus participating via email. This is a thought I've
> >>> heard repeated by other community members here, so I'm
> >>> not alone.
> >>> 
> >>> ## Why Discourse?/Why a forum?
> >>> 
> >>> Let me just link to
> >>> https://blog.discourse.org/category/use-cases/ for an
> >>> overview, but I'll pull out some especially useful
> >>> examples below, in no particular order.
> >>> 
> >>> * Easier for new users to get started with a clean and
> >>> simple interface
> >>> * Better search and search engine indexing
> >>> * Post creation tries to be helpful, suggesting
> >>> similar topics that already exist.
> >>> * 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.
> >>> 
> >>> In an overall sense, migrating to a forum, and
> >>> Discourse in particular grants us many new features
> >>> out of the box, that aren't replicable on a list like
> >>> this, as well as flexibility in the future.
> >>> 
> >>> ## How it helps with support
> >>> 
> >>> When it comes to support, especially with integral
> >>> operating system components like DNS, which we
> >>> specialize in, what matters is that users can ask a
> >>> question and get a reply that they can feel confident
> >>> in.
> >>> 
> >>> The problem with mailing lists is that neither of
> >>> these things are really achievable on a mailing list.
> >>> If a user, who just joined this mailing list and knows
> >>> nobody, gets two differing replies, who is (s)he to
> >>> trust? A forum on the other hand can display user
> >>> reputation levels, badges, and titles that distinguish
> >>> trusted members of our community from another new
> >>> user's reply. A mailing list has nothing
> >>> distinguishing users apart whatsoever, to the point
> >>> where I still have to check peoples history and
> >>> qualifications after years of participating here.
> >>> 
> >>> Discourse specifically also helps new users by showing
> >>> "Similar Topics" when they're creating a post, ideally
> >>> pointing them to existing resources before starting a
> >>> new thread. This is impossible for new users to do
> >>> from within their mailbox, and incredibly difficult
> >>> to find via Sympa's uh, "lacking," web interface.
> >>> Features like this can prevent duplicate posts from
> >>> cluttering our platform.
> >>> 
> >>> Discourse also supports plugins (it's a Rails app)
> >>> which should allow us to look at things like issue
> >>> templates, etc. for people needing support with some
> >>> of our services like Tier 2 servers.
> >>> 
> >>> ## How it helps with announcements
> >>> 
> >>> We currently don't have a dedicated announcements
> >>> platform, making it impossible for any
> >>> organizationally relevant news to be shown to many
> >>> new users. Currently, our only option is to send it
> >>> to the mailing list, which is what we currently do,
> >>> but that leads to important information being lost
> >>> among the other threads. Discourse has supports for
> >>> sticky posts and a global announcements banner we can
> >>> use to get important messages across.
> >>> 
> >>> ## More general notes
> >>> 
> >>> Discourse has a lot of things going for it, as a
> >>> platform. Groups support for example, can help segment
> >>> our members into groups we can use for notifications,
> >>> etc. If there's a change to the root zone for example,
> >>> a quick ping to @tier2ops from our Tier 0
> >>> administrator can notify them all right away. Groups
> >>> can be invite-only or users can self-select to join
> >>> them, depending on configuration.
> >>> 
> >>> Additionally, private messages may be useful,
> >>> especially if somebody is offline on IRC, which
> >>> happens often. It also has a privacy benefit over the
> >>> mailing list: many users are a lot more comfortable
> >>> sharing usernames versus their email address.
> >>> 
> >>> ## But I love mailing lists!
> >>> 
> >>> Discourse does offer a per-user "mailing list mode"
> >>> you can enable. Now, I'm not going to try and sell
> >>> this as a 1:1 replacement for this mailing list, but
> >>> a lot of the core functionality can remain the same.
> >>> Creating new topics, replying to posts, and getting
> >>> individual replies via email should all work.
> >>> Threading works too, so the basic functionality of a
> >>> mailing list should work fine.
> >>> 
> >>> Is it a perfect replacement for this use-case? No. Is
> >>> it a worthwhile tradeoff? I think so, you tell me :)
> >>> 
> >>> ## How will this server work?
> >>> 
> >>> @fusl (Katie) will be hosting a Discourse server for
> >>> us. (As an aside, she also hosts the wiki, our two
> >>> active anycast servers, and a lot of backend stuff for
> >>> this organization). I'm hoping to get Discourse online
> >>> within the next week or two at community.opennic.org
> >>> that we can test out, which would become our live
> >>> server if this proposal is approved.
> >>> 
> >>> ## What's next?
> >>> 
> >>> Nothing immediately. I want to gather a lot of
> >>> feedback on this proposal before we proceed. I'll be
> >>> here to answer any questions, and you can also email
> >>> me privately with any questions/concerns at
> >>> [email protected].
> >>> 
> >>> After some time, exactly how long depending on the
> >>> amount/type of feedback we get on this proposal, we'll
> >>> be able to look at everything and come to a decision,
> >>> and bring it to a vote here. This time around I don't
> >>> want to rush anything, and I want to make sure we
> >>> consider everything before coming to a conclusion, so
> >>> please voice any feedback you may have. It's a pretty
> >>> big change, organizationally, and I want to make sure
> >>> we get everything right.
> >>> 
> >>> I very much hope everyone here will support me on our
> >>> journey to the modern world. Change isn't easy for
> >>> anybody, but I genuinely believe we need this to
> >>> happen. Let me know your thoughts!
> >>> 
> >>> Thanks everybody,
> >>> 
> >>> Jonah
> >>> 
> >>> 
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> >> 
> >>   
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > --------
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