mozart / mozart2

Mozart Programming System v2
http://mozart.github.io/
BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" License
569 stars 96 forks source link

Official mailing lists are dead links #33

Closed mcandre closed 11 years ago

mcandre commented 11 years ago

The official Mozart/Oz mailing lists are dead links.

http://www.mozart-oz.org/lists/

GitHub Issues can replace the dead bug trackers, but I'm not sure where to go for Mozart communication. I tried using Google Groups, but they're full of spam, and attempts to post resulted in errors (I believe Google Groups is just a wrapper for the actual mailing lists).

In the mean time, I've started a subreddit for the Mozart/Oz community.

sjrd commented 11 years ago

Thanks for the warning.

Actually, we are aware of the situation. The server hosting the Mozart/Oz lists died some time ago, and nobody noticed because it was basically only supporting this. The system administrators at UCL are setting up a new server, and doing what they can to recover the data.

alexgian commented 11 years ago

@mcandre Yes, it will be nice when we have a proper place to discuss development. I don't have a reddit account, but I visited your link, and I love the yin-yang oz icon. I think it continues well from the square one used in mozart1, and captures something of the spirit of mozart2. I'd recommend to anyone to have a look at it, https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fpaq6erbh4u454a/unHkSHsa80 or https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fpaq6erbh4u454a/cUe6UEnc0J/yinyang-oz.svg and would definitely propose it to the dev-team for consideration.

sjmackenzie commented 11 years ago

The yin-yang is quite nice, would there be a bit of "they're copying clojure"?

Its bold and simple - I love it :-)

sjmackenzie commented 11 years ago

could we not just create a new mailing list here? https://help.riseup.net/en/about-us

sjrd commented 11 years ago

Er ... why not something more well-known, like... Google Groups? Mozart discussion are not supposed to be secret, so there's no need to go for something else.

I was up for creating mailing lists on Google Groups, but for some reason (losing subscribers, I think) that idea was discarded by UCL. I don't see why it would be different for any other mailing list provider.

sjmackenzie commented 11 years ago

Google groups is fine by me. (Personally) I just prefer the ethic of riseup.

Any group is better than no group.

I've noticed some open source projects scrapping mailing lists altogether replacing it with github issues tagged as a question. In a sense the community's issues are the language issues. It also creates tight feedback with noticeable activity surrounding the project. Who knows it might stimulate more contribution.

As we've had a few users solving the problem this way could we entertain this option till at least the mailing list is running, then reassess?

sjrd commented 11 years ago

Well, that's what we've been doing, haven't we?

sjmackenzie commented 11 years ago

Oh dear I recall bollocking out Andrew (IIRC) for posting questions on the issue list. I hoped for a clean problem-solution issue list.

Okay then lets continue (in anger! :) using the issue list to engage oz's community.

nruth commented 11 years ago

There are new lists here

It's still not too late to switch to Google Groups (which I'd also prefer) but for a project where the members frequently change it seems better to leave the administration to the university (which is more constant). Still, Google Groups can't be that difficult to manage, and has a much nicer software than whichever anachronism UCL picked?

The trick is to settle on something before the alpha launch / new site when the lists will get busy again.

sjmackenzie commented 11 years ago

Hi Nicholas,

I've noticed more projects these days dropping mailing lists altogether and just using github issues.

We have been using this approach while the mailing list was down to good effect. Might we consider this approach?

Now regarding mailing list maintenance, our company has long term goals aligning with oz, so we aren't going anywhere, from my point of view I'd happily offer long-term list support. So googlegroups is feasible.

Kind regards Stewart

nruth commented 11 years ago

I think the trouble is the mailing list will (and should) receive questions and ideas from beginners, which are out of place on an issue tracker, and will turn it into a soup.

I'll have another look at setting up google groups as that's really what I'd prefer to use. Hopefully Google won't kill it & will be easy enough for the next guy to figure out too.

sjmackenzie commented 11 years ago

Yeah I worried about the soup thing too, but its possible to tag the issues. Most importantly it brings newbies closer to the code, so they might choose to contribute or participate in other ways.

If one looks at in a certain way, a newbie's issue is really an issue that can stem right into the code base. For example - 'I can't get it to compile' - is our build system too complex? Is there a compilation error on a certain platform? If we isolate the problem on the mailing list we'll have to include links to the mailing list on an issue that needs to be created anyway. Okay oz language related usage questions are probably more frequent. So overall it might not be out of place. But this is just a point to consider. I'm okay either way.

Google cutting projects has become a pitiful norm.

Btw Peter already setup a mailing list: https://listes-2.sipr.ucl.ac.be/mozart-oz.org/lists is this still in action?

mcandre commented 11 years ago

Google Groups for the win. I interact with a lot of programming mailing lists, and the registration process is highly streamlined. It's very much a drag to use anything else.

On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Stewart Mackenzie <notifications@github.com

wrote:

Yeah I worried about the soup thing too, but its possible to tag the issues. Most importantly it brings newbies closer to the code, so they might choose to contribute or participate in other ways.

If one looks at in a certain way, a newbie's issue is really an issue that can stem right into the code base. For example - 'I can't get it to compile' - is our build system too complex? Is there a compilation error on a certain platform? If we isolate the problem on the mailing list we'll have to include links to the mailing list on an issue that needs to be created anyway. Okay oz language related usage questions are probably more frequent. So overall it might not be out of place. But this is just a point to consider. I'm okay either way.

Google cutting projects has become a pitiful norm.

Btw Peter already setup a mailing list: https://listes-2.sipr.ucl.ac.be/mozart-oz.org/lists is this still in action?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/mozart/mozart2/issues/33#issuecomment-20612323 .

Cheers,

Andrew Pennebaker www.yellosoft.us

nruth commented 11 years ago

I've registered a couple of new groups: mozart-hackers and mozart-users Feel free to join, though I'm not promising they'll be used over the UCL system just yet.

There were already 3 Google Groups matching a "Mozart Oz" search, but they're out-of-use and a bit of a mess. I've mailed owners asking about ownership transfer but am not expecting that to go well.

nruth commented 11 years ago

We decided to go with the Google groups mentioned in my previous post so I'll close this ticket. Feel free to join the groups. They're listed on the new site at http://mozart.github.io , which will soon replace (or be a redirect from) the current website.