Re: Perhaps it's time to think about enhancements to the NANOG list...?
I cannot see how that would be any different from now things are now. My idea would be to expand the amount of categories that are available, instead of having one just one big bucket for everyone. Our mailing list is a clear indication that size does not fit all. Edward McNair Executive Director emcnair@nanog.org | +1 866-902-1336 ext. 102 | www.nanog.org NANOG | 305 E. Eisenhower Pkwy, Suite 100 | Ann Arbor, MI 48108, USA
On Mar 22, 2021, at 2:38 PM, heasley <heas@shrubbery.net> wrote:
Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 02:26:59PM -0700, Edward McNair:
We currently have a beta instance of Discourse running: https://www.discourse.org/features <https://www.discourse.org/features>
It gives us the same functionality as Mailman, with a more flexible, modern interface, and many new features. We will keep the community posted as we explore its functionality.
a big problem with forum <-> email gateways (or forums in general) is that those using the forum are even less likely to a) filter themselves (ie: decide that their "input" is useless and not reply) and b) figure out the difference between reply and reply-all and choose wisely.
On 3/22/2021 11:43 AM, Edward McNair wrote:
Our mailing list is a clear indication that size does not fit all.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Could you elaborate on that? This assumes everyone agrees with the statement. I don't think that is the case. It is certainly not the case for me. I know how to filter out subjects I don't want to read. It is easy. What happens if Discourse get bought or goes out of business? scott Just a few yuck things: "Let the community suppress spam and dangerous content, and amicably resolve disputes." (that would never be misused to suppress something the community moderators don't like...never...) "When someone quotes your post, we’ll notify you. When someone mentions your @name, we’ll notify you. When someone replies to your post… well, you get the idea. And if you’re not around, we’ll email you, too." (WTF?) "Encourage positive community behaviors through the included set of badges" (ohhh, I want a shiny badge!) "Discourse was designed for high resolution touch devices..."
One last thing before I stop. How would the numerous NANOG archives work when everything is on Discourse? The same? scott
We are not anticipating any material impacts to any subscribers, whether real people or list archivers. On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 4:03 PM scott <surfer@mauigateway.com> wrote:
One last thing before I stop. How would the numerous NANOG archives work when everything is on Discourse? The same?
scott
My interpretation of Scott's message was "what's happening to the existing archived content?". On 3/22/21 4:08 PM, David Siegel wrote:
We are not anticipating any material impacts to any subscribers, whether real people or list archivers.
Does that mean that the existing archives will both receive new messages and will the existing old content still be accessible? -- Grant. . . . unix || die
On Mon, 2021-03-22 at 16:08 -0600, David Siegel wrote:
We are not anticipating any material impacts to any subscribers, whether real people or list archivers.
The material impact of moving to discourse will be the effective loss of numerous active members. I would suspect, also, that this would include disproportionately many of it's most valued active members. Regards, K. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Karl Auer (kauer@biplane.com.au) http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer GPG fingerprint: 2561 E9EC D868 E73C 8AF1 49CF EE50 4B1D CCA1 5170 Old fingerprint: 8D08 9CAA 649A AFEF E862 062A 2E97 42D4 A2A0 616D
I don’t understand the impact. Those who are comfortable with using the mailing list via email would just keep doing what they are doing now. With the exact same email address. There should be no procedural changes. In theory, we could make the change tomorrow, and you shouldn’t notice a difference. That said, we are going to do extensive test with the board, staff, NANOG committees, and beta testers. No changes will be made without extensive testing, committee and community feedback, and board approval. We will not make any changes until we are certain that there will be adverse effects for our community. Edward McNair Executive Director emcnair@nanog.org | +1 866-902-1336 ext. 102 | www.nanog.org NANOG | 305 E. Eisenhower Pkwy, Suite 100 | Ann Arbor, MI 48108, USA
On Mar 22, 2021, at 3:46 PM, Karl Auer <kauer@biplane.com.au> wrote:
On Mon, 2021-03-22 at 16:08 -0600, David Siegel wrote:
We are not anticipating any material impacts to any subscribers, whether real people or list archivers.
The material impact of moving to discourse will be the effective loss of numerous active members. I would suspect, also, that this would include disproportionately many of it's most valued active members.
Regards, K.
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Karl Auer (kauer@biplane.com.au) http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
GPG fingerprint: 2561 E9EC D868 E73C 8AF1 49CF EE50 4B1D CCA1 5170 Old fingerprint: 8D08 9CAA 649A AFEF E862 062A 2E97 42D4 A2A0 616D
On Mar 22, 2021, at 7:24 PM, Edward McNair <emcnair@nanog.org> wrote:
That said, we are going to do extensive test with the board, staff, NANOG committees, and beta testers. No changes will be made without extensive testing, committee and community feedback, and board approval. We will not make any changes until we are certain that there will be adverse effects for our community.
It would be prudent to have a firm contractual obligation stronger than a shrink wrap ULA regarding data preservation and security. James R. Cutler - james.cutler@consultant.com GPG keys: hkps://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net cell 734-673-5462
On Mon, 2021-03-22 at 16:24 -0700, Edward McNair wrote:
I don’t understand the impact. Those who are comfortable with using the mailing list via email would just keep doing what they are doing now. With the exact same email address. There should be no procedural changes. In theory, we could make the change tomorrow, and you shouldn’t notice a difference.
That said, we are going to do extensive test with the board, staff, NANOG committees, and beta testers. No changes will be made without extensive testing, committee and community feedback, and board approval. We will not make any changes until we are certain that there will be adverse effects for our community.
One thing that I've seen recently, and something for you to test for, is the discorse integrations into mailinglists often end up with the capability for emails to be sent to the mailinglist with no context. That is to say, the discourse user's comments come to the mailinglist without the previous comment/content/quote. So you will get emails to the mailinglists with just "Yes I agree" or "That was amazing to read" without context. -Jim P.
On Mar 22, 2021, at 6:01 PM, scott <surfer@mauigateway.com> wrote:
One last thing before I stop. How would the numerous NANOG archives work when everything is on Discourse? The same?
Absolutely not! The archives on Discourse and the like, along with everything else, is subject to the marketing-driven application owner’s whims. One should not expect archives to be maintained indefinitely. And, when the vendor decides to save disk space, do not count on being informed of the decision before information goes to the bit bucket. NANOG threads from last century are still available and do not require a modern browser or, in fact, any browser. This is the genius of a group driven mailing list using basic RFC-compliant content and transport: The business purpose of the mailing list is set by the technical and social needs of NANOG and not by the financial wants of a particular vendor. What is the value of the NANOG list archive? If it is non-zero over time, do not make it dependent on the business practices of any but NANOG itself. James R. Cutler - james.cutler@consultant.com GPG keys: hkps://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net
Discourse is completely open source. We could run our own instance, if we chose to. Currently, we opted for third party hosting, but we shift to self hosting at anytime. All data is ours, and could be backed up and self-hosted in a few hours. For our beta test we imported the entire mailing list archive. It’s currently a read-only mirror of the archive. Any new posts are synced to our read-only Discourse instance. Edward McNair Executive Director emcnair@nanog.org | +1 866-902-1336 ext. 102 | www.nanog.org NANOG | 305 E. Eisenhower Pkwy, Suite 100 | Ann Arbor, MI 48108, USA
On Mar 22, 2021, at 4:39 PM, james.cutler@consultant.com wrote:
On Mar 22, 2021, at 6:01 PM, scott <surfer@mauigateway.com> wrote:
One last thing before I stop. How would the numerous NANOG archives work when everything is on Discourse? The same?
Absolutely not!
The archives on Discourse and the like, along with everything else, is subject to the marketing-driven application owner’s whims. One should not expect archives to be maintained indefinitely. And, when the vendor decides to save disk space, do not count on being informed of the decision before information goes to the bit bucket.
NANOG threads from last century are still available and do not require a modern browser or, in fact, any browser.
This is the genius of a group driven mailing list using basic RFC-compliant content and transport: The business purpose of the mailing list is set by the technical and social needs of NANOG and not by the financial wants of a particular vendor. What is the value of the NANOG list archive? If it is non-zero over time, do not make it dependent on the business practices of any but NANOG itself.
James R. Cutler - james.cutler@consultant.com GPG keys: hkps://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net
More opinions, from someone old and jaded enough to prefer IRC but quite a bit younger than the NANOG mailing list itself! I feel like Mattermost bridged into a private IRC server (Matterbridge is really good at puppetry these days: https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge) would cover the widest gamut of old hands who like IRC and newer users more familiar with slack/discord/similar platforms, without forcing people onto one or the other. (Discord bridging is also a possibility, but I cannot emphasise enough how absolutely unenthusiastic I am using Discord for anything work-related.) As for improving the mailing list experience, I think a migration to mailman3 would make interacting with the mailing list a lot more friendly for folks not used to the quirks of mailman2. Hyperkitty (the mailman3 archives renderer / web interface) is a really nice experience for browsing list archives, and has functionality to enable replies / new threads / etc, which are _super_ usable. Again, I think this would cover the widest gamut of users both new and old, whilst still remaining definitively a mailing list and allowing searching of all of the NANOG archives. Discourse is an utterly dire user experience for a larger community such as NANOG. I'm subscribed to a few Discourse instances - the mailing-list mode just isn't worth using (It does not behave like a traditional mailing list, nor a forum!) and I find the web interface sluggish and fairly unintuitive (scaling is apparently expensive): All of this seems to contribute to a much less satisfying forum experience. Cheers, a
On 3/23/21 11:37, Alfie Pates wrote:
More opinions, from someone old and jaded enough to prefer IRC but quite a bit younger than the NANOG mailing list itself!
I feel like Mattermost bridged into a private IRC server (Matterbridge is really good at puppetry these days: https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge <https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge>) would cover the widest gamut of old hands who like IRC and newer users more familiar with slack/discord/similar platforms, without forcing people onto one or the other. (Discord bridging is also a possibility, but I cannot emphasise enough how absolutely unenthusiastic I am using Discord for anything work-related.)
As for improving the mailing list experience, I think a migration to mailman3 would make interacting with the mailing list a lot more friendly for folks not used to the quirks of mailman2. Hyperkitty (the mailman3 archives renderer / web interface) is a really nice experience for browsing list archives, and has functionality to enable replies / new threads / etc, which are _super_ usable. Again, I think this would cover the widest gamut of users both new and old, whilst still remaining definitively a mailing list and allowing searching of all of the NANOG archives.
Discourse is an utterly dire user experience for a larger community such as NANOG. I'm subscribed to a few Discourse instances - the mailing-list mode just isn't worth using (It does not behave like a traditional mailing list, nor a forum!) and I find the web interface sluggish and fairly unintuitive (scaling is apparently expensive): All of this seems to contribute to a much less satisfying forum experience.
Personally, I'm not bothered by any of this at all. The state-of-the-art will naturally gravitate to where it wants to go, and the dust will settle where it does. I quite enjoy the mailing list format, but in as much as I am now running Telegram on my desktop to interact with the kids that aren't keen on the mailing list alternative of the forum, I have accepted that I will simply have to be ready and adapt to the order of the day, or get left behind in my utopia. There's no right or wrong answer... just what is. Mark.
participants (9)
-
Alfie Pates -
David Siegel -
Edward McNair -
Grant Taylor -
james.cutler＠consultant.com -
Jim Popovitch -
Karl Auer -
Mark Tinka -
scott