search

rse-aunz / rse-au

Repository for specifically Australian topics.
MIT License
44 stars 10 forks source link

Open the email group #37

Closed jni closed 5 years ago

jni commented 6 years ago

Do we really want the email group to be invite-only? It was off-putting to me, at least.

In other news, my community (image analysis) has recently adopted a unified Discourse forum, which I would consider a fantastic, more full-feature option for this group. See example here:

https://forum.image.sc/

Here is a discussion about how to run discourse as both an online forum and a mailing list:

https://forum.image.sc/t/formal-policy-for-project-to-be-a-software-partner/18834/14

A specific advantage over Google Groups is the use of tags, so that users can subscribe only to specific topics. It's also fully open source so it can be run on our own hardware.

jni commented 6 years ago

(or NeCTAR instance)

manodeep commented 6 years ago

@jni Thanks for your comment. You should be able to request to join the googlegroup - did that not work for you?

Or are you saying that the googlegroup should be open and anyone should automatically be able to sign up?

(We have previously had the googlegroup as hidden and invite-only but that is no longer the case; or at least shouldn't be)

jni commented 6 years ago

Yes, I was saying that requesting access was one step too many. ;) (And yes, I have requested it.) imho you should have to register (to prevent spam), but reading should be open. But maybe I’m missing important reasons for secrecy. =)

manodeep commented 6 years ago

Ahh I see what you mean. We are committed towards transparency and open-ness within the community, and that should extend to (at least reading) the exchanges on the mailing list. I will table an agenda item for the next Steering Committee meeting (in two weeks) #38

That example forum/mailing list looks slick -- are you willing/able to set one up for RSEs, if we wanted to go that route?

jni commented 6 years ago

I have never set up a discourse instance but I am willing to try. =)

rowlandm commented 6 years ago

I think gitter would be another option which is also quite open. Depends what we want.

On Thu, Aug 16, 2018 at 11:04 AM Juan Nunez-Iglesias < notifications@github.com> wrote:

I have never set up a discourse instance but I am willing to try. =)

— You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/rse-aunz/rse-au/issues/37#issuecomment-413388793, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAZo0jr4znmaPNV7cCiaiEYgryy3AM22ks5uRMU7gaJpZM4V9tPl .

jni commented 6 years ago

Gitter is more difficult to search / navigate later.

atruskie commented 6 years ago

IMO I find both slack and gitter offputting as they benefit from real-time interaction - as IM tools they do this well. Discourse and Google groups match the asynchronicity I'd want to have in this community and they also provide searchable history.

I haven't set up discourse either, but I want to give it a go. My own project is considering setting up a discourse instance.

rowlandm commented 6 years ago

Good points. Would it be easier then to just make the Google Group public?

On Thu, Aug 16, 2018 at 11:18 AM Anthony Truskinger < notifications@github.com> wrote:

IMO I find both slack and gitter offputting as they benefit from real-time interaction - as IM tools they do this well. Discourse and Google groups match the asynchronicity I'd want to have in this community and they also provide searchable history.

I haven't set up discourse either, but I want to give it a go. My own project is considering setting up a discourse instance.

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/rse-aunz/rse-au/issues/37#issuecomment-413391113, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAZo0riWgStuz9tvJVeGJmAk7iMxlSmOks5uRMhhgaJpZM4V9tPl .

jni commented 6 years ago

@rowlandm that's the easiest, but discourse has benefits above and beyond this:

(1) It's FOSS and controlled by us. I've been bitten enough times by Google (Reader, Notebook, Timeful, and to a lesser extent, Wave) that I dislike relying on their infrastructure. Groups in particular has been neglected for long enough that I am not super-optimistic about its future. (2) It's prettier. ;) (3) It has more mod-cons such as tagging and pings for users, which means subscribers can easily customise their notifications and interactions.

rowlandm commented 6 years ago

Fair enough. Would be great to check it out.

I do have some questions though:

On Thu, Aug 16, 2018 at 12:18 PM Juan Nunez-Iglesias < notifications@github.com> wrote:

@rowlandm https://github.com/rowlandm that's the easiest, but discourse has benefits above and beyond this:

(1) It's FOSS and controlled by us. I've been bitten enough times by Google (Reader, Notebook, Timeful, and to a lesser extent, Wave) that I dislike relying on their infrastructure. Groups in particular has been neglected for long enough that I am not super-optimistic about its future. (2) It's prettier. ;) (3) It has more mod-cons such as tagging and pings for users, which means subscribers can easily customise their notifications and interactions.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/rse-aunz/rse-au/issues/37#issuecomment-413401801, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAZo0jYwY371bfnkxWnChfuX1pl65pSkks5uRNZ1gaJpZM4V9tPl .

goldingn commented 6 years ago

I'm also a fan of discourse. The URSSI has one if anyone wants to take a look: https://discuss.urssi.us

It's not too difficult to set up, with e.g. digital ocean hosting: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-the-discourse-one-click-application-on-digitalocean

And it might make sense to get a non-gh-pages URL, and host both the website and a forum there.

But there are still time and financial costs to setting up and maintaining something like that.

rowlandm commented 6 years ago

It would be good if we had two (or three) people willing to maintain it!

On Thu, Aug 16, 2018 at 2:26 PM Nick Golding notifications@github.com wrote:

I'm also a fan of discourse. The URSSI has one if anyone wants to take a look: https://discuss.urssi.us

It's not too difficult to set up, with e.g. digital ocean hosting: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-the-discourse-one-click-application-on-digitalocean

And it might make sense to get a non-gh-pages URL.

But there are still time and financial costs to setting up and maintaining something like that.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/rse-aunz/rse-au/issues/37#issuecomment-413422054, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAZo0ksmbJ9z0yoGoCEYwqUzS5V044EUks5uRPSDgaJpZM4V9tPl .

jni commented 6 years ago
  • Is there free hosting for Discourse?

Not that I'm aware of. But a self-maintained instance is free.

  • If you set it up but have to leave the RSE community - who will maintain it?

As you mentioned, we would need buy in from more than just me for this question to have a satisfactory answer, but it's looking promising based on this thread.

  • Who will look after the backups and maintain the security patches?

I haven't looked into this in detail, but both things appear to be single-click features of the discourse software.

Dunno. Only very few people have seen those messages though... ;) More seriously, again, I haven't looked into this in detail but a quick web search shows many promising avenues to do this.

jni commented 6 years ago

I also want to clarify that I may sound like I'm pushing super hard for Discourse. I'm not, it's a gentle suggestion, I'm a newcomer to this community and more established members should weigh the pros and cons. The only thing I'm pushing hard for is a publicly-visible, easy-to-join forum.

rowlandm commented 6 years ago

No worries. I also don't want to block your enthusiasm!

On Thu, Aug 16, 2018 at 2:41 PM Juan Nunez-Iglesias < notifications@github.com> wrote:

I also want to clarify that I may sound like I'm pushing super hard for Discourse. I'm not, it's a gentle suggestion, I'm a newcomer to this community and more established members should weigh the pros and cons. The only thing I'm pushing hard for is a publicly-visible, easy-to-join forum.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/rse-aunz/rse-au/issues/37#issuecomment-413424139, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAZo0isDYHnTLHL3BZT6pMIazfb-xEknks5uRPgJgaJpZM4V9tPl .

rowlandm commented 5 years ago

HI @jni - could you also potentially look at the implications of using Discourse vs opening the Google groups?

Would that be possible?

jni commented 5 years ago

@rowlandm what do you mean exactly? Here are the pros/cons of Google vs Discourse as I see them.

In the short term I can't do the Discourse setup but around end November I should be able to spend a day on it if we get a consensus that that's what we want.

rowlandm commented 5 years ago

OK - Thanks.

I think we should open Google for now, less work. As Kerri mentioned earlier, we do need to be mindful of privacy concerns.

Maybe @mingfangwu @manodeep we should email this to the overall group and set a date for changeover, with any dissenting voices to pipe up any concerns they may have as individuals?

rowlandm commented 5 years ago

I just saw this....

https://github.com/discourse/discourse_docker