Migrate to Mailing Lists to Modern Forum Software

Tue Dec 29 16:08:58 UTC 2020

I am just an occasional lurker here. But if my opinion counts (specially as
being an outsider), I think that mailing lists are extremely cumbersome. I
would certainly participate a lot more if the discussions had a more modern
and friendly format and I think that GitHub is very good at this.

Also, this mailing list is presented in a very ugly way in most popular
e-mail clients, including GMail, Hotmail and Yahoo. Perhaps it is due to
all those horrible > polluting mail replies and a lot of artificially
inserted line breaks in unfortunate places due to some arcane configuration
rule. Surely, this is not a problem of a mailing-list concept per se, but
is likely a problem of the mailing-list software.

Also, I pretty much prefer discussions to be linearized. I think that
tree-structure discussions are a confusing and very hard to follow
mess, specially when looking for archived discussions.

Further, searchability is very important, and this is something that this
mailing list severely lacks. Surely, it is possible to find an specific old
e-mail and refer to it if you need to, but doing that is much more harder
than it could be.

Also, I get some e-mails being delivery in digests of the last N recent
e-mails. Answering an specific e-mail in the middle of a digest is hell.
Also, answering to an older e-mail that was sent before you subscribed to
the mailing list is also hell.

Finally, I frequently have problems with GMail's anti-spam spuriosly
marking some e-mails from mailing lists as spam when they are legitimate.
This is unpredictable, confusing, frustrating and is generally unfixable
by mailing lists admins.

Em ter., 29 de dez. de 2020 às 00:24, Suminda Sirinath Salpitikorala
Dharmasena <sirinath1978m at gmail.com> escreveu:

> Flarum (https://flarum.org/) also provides a similar quoting facility.
>
> On Mon, 28 Dec 2020 at 23:26, <
> some-java-user-99206970363698485155 at vodafonemail.de> wrote:
>
> > I just noticed that Discourse's quote feature is also rather advanced.
> See
> > for
> > example [1]:
> > That message quotes a piece of a previous message. Within the message you
> > can
> > either expand the complete previous message where the quote came from
> > (which
> > then highlights the quoted piece within the text), or jump to the message
> > where
> > the quote came from.
> >
> > [1]
> >
> https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-only-x-consecutive-replies-in-the-same-topic/69756/20
> >
> > >
> > > In this complete discussion it is important to consider from which
> > standpoint
> > > you are discussing:
> > > There are probably two extrema:
> > > - OpenJDK contributors
> > > - "Drive-by" visitors / contributors
> > >
> > > I would assume most of the replies opposing mailing list alternatives
> > come from
> > > OpenJDK contributors:
> > > - they are familiar with mailing lists
> > > - have been subscribed for a long time
> > > - are using their company e-mail address (which is public)
> > > - use an e-mail client which supports e-mail threads; or have the
> > respective
> > >   add-ons adding support for that
> > >
> > > Personally I would consider myself to come from the second category,
> the
> > > "drive-by" visitor (or rather in general interested in the OpenJDK),
> and
> > > I would assume some of the users here arguing for a mailing list
> > alternative
> > > come from the same or a similar category. The main characteristics are:
> > > - they are not familiar with the concept of mailing lists
> > > - they have not been subscriped to the mailing list yet
> > > (- they do not have a company e-mail address, or they do not want to
> > write
> > >   from that)
> > > - their e-mail client and/or e-mail provider does not support threads
> by
> > >   default
> > > - they do not have their e-mail client set up to write in plain text,
> and
> > >   their client is not wrapping after X characters automatically
> > >
> > > Keep in mind that most subscribers are likely OpenJDK contributors and
> > therefore
> > > whatever image you will get from this discussion is heavily biased.
> This
> > might
> > > be acceptable if you are not actively aiming for new contributors from
> > outside,
> > > but I hope that is not the case.
> > >
> > > From the list above some of the pain points might already be obvious,
> > but I will
> > > sumarize them anyways:
> > > - https://mail.openjdk.java.net/mailman/listinfo provides no search
> > interface;
> > >   for someone unfamiliar with mailing lists, finding a previous message
> > is
> > >   pretty difficult
> > > - Mailing lists make it difficult to respond to past discussions if you
> > were
> > >   not subscribed back then
> > > - Viewing discussion threads is difficult if your client does not
> > support it
> > >   natively
> > >   Keep in mind that the user might just want to ask a single question,
> > telling
> > >   them to install add-on X, which might then not work or require extra
> > >   configuration, is rather discouraging.
> > > - Without company e-mail address you might not want your private e-mail
> > address
> > >   to become public. One reason might be because mailing lists are for
> > sure a
> > >   great source for spam mail authors. Another might be that you want to
> > hide
> > >   your name from Open Source projects (further reading [0]).
> > >   Creating a separate e-mail address is cumbersome, and the mailing
> list
> > might
> > >   even block your e-mail address or domain for whatever spam-related
> > reasons.
> > > - When you subscribe to a mailing list you receive all mails even
> though
> > you
> > >   might only be interested in one specific topic. Having to configure
> > mail
> > >   filters just to receive updates for one single message really does
> not
> > justify
> > >   this trouble.
> > > - Responding to messages on mailing lists can be confusing. For my
> first
> > message
> > >   on the mailing lists by accident I only responded to the person
> > answering me,
> > >   but not to the mailing list.
> > >
> > > It is also not surprising that a related general Stack Exchange
> question
> > ([1])
> > > exists; reading the comments under the question and answers is really
> > worth it.
> > >
> > > Threaded discussions (other than ones being limited to a single thread
> > level)
> > > can also have their disadvantages; [2] might be interesting to read.
> > > For example here my response would fit to anyone arguing against a
> > mailing
> > > list change, it would not have mattered to whom I have responded.
> > >
> > > As side notes: Since it has been mentioned before; Slack *does* support
> > > threads, but only one level deep. (Though I am not advocating for using
> > > Slack instead)
> > > Similarly Discourse allows replying [3] and creating a new topic as
> > reply [4].
> > >
> > > If you still decide that you need a mailing list, then could you please
> > > at least investigate switching to a more modern web interface for it,
> > > e.g. HyperKitty ([5])?
> > >
> > > And since this discussion has already drifted towards a GitHub
> critique:
> > > I don't really understand why you have chosen GitHub over a self-hosted
> > > GitLab instance (you likely have your reasons):
> > > - You are complaining about missing threads, yet GitLab has a Threads
> > feature [6]
> > > - You are censoring any GitHub comment from someone who has not signed
> > the OpenJDK
> > >   Terms of Use. This is really discouraging.
> > >   A self-hosted GitLab instance where you can control who can create an
> > >   account would likely have been better suited. Then it would have been
> > >   clearer that you do not accept comments from external users.
> > >
> > > In general there are multiple things which are quite discouraging for
> > > someone who wants to contribute to the OpenJDK. But that is a different
> > > topic and would make this discussion drift off-topic.
> > >
> > > Kind regards
> > >
> > > [0]
> >
> https://medium.com/@fommil/hide-your-real-name-in-open-source-3d67e74a8c56
> > > [1]
> >
> https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/71148/why-do-programmers-still-use-mailing-lists
> > > [2] https://blog.codinghorror.com/web-discussions-flat-by-design/
> > > [3]
> https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-new-user-guide/96331#replying
> > > [4] https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-reply-as-topic/59891/8
> > > [5] https://docs.mailman3.org/projects/hyperkitty/en/latest/
> > > [6] https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/discussions/
> >
>