[cfe-dev] [llvm-dev] Mailing List Status Update

[River Riddle via cfe-dev]

On Thu, Jun 3, 2021 at 3:20 PM James Y Knight via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

> I've just tried out discourse for the first time. It is not clear to me
> how to use it to replace mailing lists. It has a setting "mailing list
> mode", which sounds like the right thing -- sending all messages via email.
> Except that option is global -- all messages in all categories on the llvm
> discourse instance. Which definitely isn't what I want at all. I don't want
> to subscribe to MLIR, for example.
>

I don't use the "mailing list mode" personally, but it has a little note
under it that "Muted topics and categories are not included in these
emails". I think you could mute everything you aren't interested in (e.g.
MLIR) and still get emails for the things you are.

-- River


>
> In general, I'd say I'm pretty uncomfortable with switching from a mailing
> list to discourse. Discourse seems entirely reasonable to use for
> end-user-facing forums, but I'm rather unconvinced about its suitability as
> a dev-list replacement. Other communities (e.g. python) seem to have a
> split, still: mailing lists for dev-lists, and discourse for
> end-user-facing forums.
>
> I'd also note that Mailman3 provides a lot more features than what we're
> used to with mailman2, including the ability to interact/post through the
> website.
>
> Maybe someone can convince me that I'm just being a curmudgeon, but at
> this point, I'd say we ought to be investigating options to have Someone
> Else manage the mailman service, and keep using mailing lists, rather than
> attempting to switch to discourse.
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 1, 2021 at 4:50 PM Tom Stellard via cfe-dev <
> cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> We recently[1] ran into some issues with the mailing lists that caused
>> us to disable automatic approval of subscriptions.  Over the past few
>> months, the LLVM Foundation Board of Directors have been investigating
>> solutions to this issue and are recommending that the project move its
>> discussion forum from mailman to Discourse[2].
>>
>> The proposed migration plan is to move the discussion lists (e.g *-dev,
>> *-users lists) to Discourse as soon as possible.  The commit email lists
>> (*-commits lists) will remain on mailman until a not-yet-determined date
>> in the future, after which they will be replaced by something else.
>> Some commit lists alternatives include Discourse and GitHub commit
>> comments (but there may be others).
>>
>> Here are the reasons why the LLVM Foundation Board of Directors is
>> recommending this change:
>>
>> - The LLVM project discussion lists cannot be adequately maintained by our
>>    current volunteer infrastructure staff and without changes we run the
>>    risk of a major outage.
>>
>> - We are able to make this change without significant impact to user's or
>>    developer's daily workflows because Discourse supports email
>> subscriptions
>>    and posting (NOTE: if you are concerned that your workflow may be
>> impacted
>>    by this change, please contact the Infrastructure Working Group[3], so
>>    they can help test your workflow with Discourse.)
>>
>> - Discourse gives us additional features that will benefit the community:
>>    - Easy to signup and subscribe to categories
>>    - Better moderation tools.
>>    - Web-based user interface.
>>    - Ability to send announcements to multiple categories to avoid having
>> to
>>      cross-post community wide announcements.
>>
>> - A subset of the community (MLIR) have been experimenting with Discourse
>>    for over a year and are able to provide feedback about this experience
>>    to the Board of Directors.
>>
>> We did also consider one alternative, which was migrating our lists to a
>> mailman hosting service.  However, we concluded that with all the work it
>> would take to migrate our lists to another service, it would be better
>> if we moved to a service (like Discourse) that provided more features
>> than what we have now.
>>
>> We understand that moving to Discourse is a change for the community and
>> that people may be worried about this having a negative impact on their
>> participation in the project.  As mentioned above, we believe that this
>> change can be done without significant impact to anyone’s workflows.
>> If you disagree, please contact the Infrastructure Working Group, to
>> document the impact to your workflow, so we can work together to find
>> a solution for your issue.
>>
>> If you have any other questions or comments you can raise them on this
>> thread and please keep criticisms constructive and on topic.
>>
>>
>> LLVM Foundation Board of Directors
>>
>> [1] https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2021-March/149027.html
>> [2] https://www.discourse.org/
>> [3] https://github.com/llvm/llvm-iwg
>>
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>>
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