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

[David Blaikie via llvm-dev]

On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 7:40 AM Matt P. Dziubinski via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

> On 6/15/2021 12:58, Aaron Ballman via llvm-dev 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).
>
> I also find Mailman 3 friendlier than Discourse from the UX point of view.
>
> Currently Discourse doesn't directly support standard search
> functionality in web browsers,


Could you describe what's missing/not working in more detail? At least I
can use my browser (Chrome)'s search functionality to find words in both
the pages linked below.


> requiring workarounds like using the
> print preview: Compare
> https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-unload-on-scroll/173975 and
> https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-unload-on-scroll/173975/print
>
> Looking at python-dev Mailman 3 interface doesn't seem to suffer from
> this issue:
> https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/
>
> Best,
> Matt
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