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

Thu Jun 3 15:19:27 PDT 2021

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.

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