I believe we are forgoing the primary function of the mailing list solution (apart from the business requirements The ASF has defined, that led to the implementation of the solution). Its core function is to get a huge amount of messages out to an immensely large population in the shortest time possible. And I think the current setup proves its worth day in, day out.
Having said that, I feel that the functionality on top of that is getting antiquated. The user experience regarding the ASF archives can be improved significantly. Think search and find. Think personalisation (my postings, filters etc when not subscribed to specific mailing lists). Think creating better insights regarding the health of the projects and projection of future loads. But also with respect to email address harvesting by third party setups. I do believe that we have the solutions in our projects for such improvements, and smart people therein being able to define the requirements and a potential solution. From thereon it is the matter of getting acceptance and if so, budget planning etc... If we were to embark on such a journey we are talking mid to long term sustainability of the ASF and its projects, but also cost and duration of change. And all needs to be factored in. Best regards, Pierre Smits *ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>* Services & Solutions for Cloud- Based Manufacturing, Professional Services and Retail & Trade http://www.orrtiz.com On Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 3:28 PM, Rich Bowen <rbo...@rcbowen.com> wrote: > > > On 01/18/2015 08:18 AM, jan i wrote: > >> Hi. >> >> I don´t like github/gitlab but agree it has advantages and disadvantages >> to >> mailing lists. >> One of the biggest and most important disadvantage is that not all >> projects >> use git and even less use github >> (even though admitted the number is climbing). >> >> I too find mailing lists outdated. Personally I favor forums, that offers >> the same as a mailing list, >> but do not require that I keep large archive on my computer just to be >> able >> to reply (a better version >> of markmail where I could reply, would really help here). >> >> I do think it is important that we keep the history, I have often searched >> in the archives for old discussions, >> but a forum offers that too. >> >> I would any day skip mailing lists, for a media that offers: >> - online archives, which allows us to send mails without breaking threads >> - is independent of any version control system (we discuss a lot of things >> not related to sources) >> - can replace all mailing list, focus here is on the private lists and >> foundation lists. >> >> Going away from mailing lists, would also mean not spending bandwidth on >> sending tons of email every day, might make some of the other services >> faster. >> > > > I've recently spoken with a number of people about HyperKitty, which is an > attempt to merge mailing list with forum. You use the interface that works > best for you - it's a traditional mailing list, but it has a slick web > forum front end if that's what you prefer. > > Unfortunately, it's part of MailMan3, which is not yet released, so it's > not something we want to rely on. But something like that may be an option > in the very near future, and give us the best of both worlds. > > See https://lists.stg.fedoraproject.org/archives/ for a demo. > > > -- > Rich Bowen - rbo...@rcbowen.com - @rbowen > http://apachecon.com/ - @apachecon >
