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

Wed Jun 16 04:12:15 PDT 2021

On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 12:58 PM Aaron Ballman via cfe-dev <
cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 14, 2021 at 5:41 PM James Y Knight via cfe-dev
> <cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Jun 3, 2021 at 6:19 PM James Y Knight <jyknight at google.com>
> 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.
> >
> >
> > FWIW, it would seem that one secret trick here is to NOT check "mailing
> list mode" -- that option is mostly there to confuse you, I guess.
> >
> >> 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 that last point, I've gone ahead and asked the folks at osci.io
> ("Open Source Community Infrastructure") if they'd be willing to host our
> mailing lists. They are a group at RedHat whose mission is to support
> infrastructure for open-source community projects, and they host mailman3
> lists for a number of other open-source groups, already (
> https://www.osci.io/tenants/). So, I believe they have the necessary
> experience and expertise.
> >
> > They have said they indeed are willing and have the capacity to run this
> for us as a service, if we'd like. We'd still need to be responsible for
> things like list moderation, but they'd run the mailman installation on
> their infrastructure. In my opinion, we ought to take this option, rather
> than trying to push a migration to discourse.
> >
> > To me, it seems this would be a much clearer upgrade path, and would
> solve the hosting/volunteer-admin issue -- including for commit lists --
> giving the current maintainers quicker relief from the undesired task of
> running the list service. Additionally, since it would be a migration to
> Mailman3, we would get many of the additional features mentioned as
> desirable, e.g. searchable archives and posting from the website.
>
> Thank you for checking into a mailman3 hosting option, I think this
> approach would make me feel the most comfortable (far more comfortable
> than switching to Discord).
>

+1 this sounds like a great option to me.

> >> 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
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> cfe-dev mailing list
> >>> cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org
> >>> https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > cfe-dev mailing list
> > cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org
> > https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev
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