scala-user shutting down soon

[Heather Miller]

Hi all,

Following the success of Discourse as a replacement for all other
Scala mailing lists (scala-internals, scala-language, scala-sips,
scala-debate), we have decided to follow suit in migrating scala-user
to a shiny new Discourse forum focused only on user questions and
answers at https://users.scala-lang.org

To facilitate this move, we have removed signups to scala-user, and in
coming weeks we will shift scala-user to read-only.
All conversations will remain archived on Google Groups. The intended
replacement for these lists is the https://users.scala-lang.org
Discourse forum/mailing list. So please head over there and sign up if
you're interested in participating in discussions that previously
belonged on scala-user.

In general Discourse is a significant improvement for discussing code
via email. Discourse is set up to be used in mailing list mode. That
is, you receive discussions to your inbox, and can reply to them via
email. It's also a forum that gives all kinds of statistics,
upvoting, and polls. You can do syntax highlighting etc, and posts can
be written in Markdown.

As of now, these are the recommended channels for discussing Scala:

Mailing list/forum:
* Scala Users: https://users.scala-lang.org - a central place for
lasting, threaded discussions related to; learning about Scala from
fellow Scala users. This is a good place for coding help, beginner questions,
etc.
* Scala Contributors: https://contributors.scala-lang.org/ - a central place for
lasting, threaded discussions related to; development work on the
Scala compiler, Scala Improvement Proposal discussions (proposals for changes
to the language or compiler), Scala Platform discussions, or
debates/discussions typically found on scala-debate or scala-language. There
are tags for each of these topics in Discourse, so it's possible to subscribe
to only a subset of these topics.

Real-time discussion:
* https://gitter.im/scala/scala - a relaxed chat room about all things Scala.
Library questions, language questions, etc.
* https://gitter.im/scala/center - a discussion channel about Scala community
governance, processes, the Scala Platform, online courses, and general updates
about projects and things going on at the Scala Center.
* https://gitter.im/scala/contributors - a place to Scala internals and open
source work with contributors.
* https://gitter.im/scala/moocs- a place to talk about all Scala MOOCs

Please don't use gitter for community-wide discussions that are meant
to be persisted. Gitter is best for ephemeral discussions, quick
questions, chats, sanity checks, etc. If you want to promote a topic
for community-wide discussion that was hatched in a Gitter chat,
please do so in Scala Contributors. While Gitter is indexed by Google,
finding points made in Gitter tends to be difficult amongst all of the
other chats/jokes/etc that tend to take place there. Thus, questions
or arguments posts meant to be persisted belong on Scala Users or
Scala Contributors.

Cheers,
Heather

--
Heather Miller
EPFL, Scala Center
Executive Director, Research Scientist
http://people.epfl.ch/heather.miller

[Roland Kuhn]

Even though this was foreseeable, I am still saddened by this move. It will likely mean that won’t keep up to date with Scala in the same way that was conveniently possible before. Requiring users to open yet another browser tab and poll that regularly is a big step backwards from a mailing list. Before someone suggests email notifications please consider that these are significantly less useful than just properly threaded email discussions because upon receiving a notification I now have to switch programs and contexts in order to see the full discussion.

In any case, just my two cents. There probably has been a discussion about this elsewhere that I did not notice.

Regards,

Roland

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "scala-user" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scala-user+...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Seth Tisue]

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 7:53 AM, Roland Kuhn <goo...@rkuhn.info> wrote:

Before someone suggests email notifications please consider that these are significantly less useful than just properly threaded email discussions

The emails Discourse sends aren't just notifications — they're the actual discussions. They include the whole text of the message, and they're properly threaded in your email client. You can reply by email, you don't need to go to the browser, either to read or to reply.

Try it, it's fine! Lots of us have been using contributors.scala-lang.org in this manner for some time now.

Seth

[Roland Kuhn]

:-) Funny!

No, of course I tried it, I think you noticed when I signed up for the contributors forum, and on my MUA the notifications (that do contain the text) do not thread properly. What I see is one thread per topic per participant, which is not very helpful. Cursory inspection of the mail headers revealed missing In-Reply-To and References headers in some but not all cases.

Regards,

Roland

Seth

[Heather Miller]

Hi Roland,

Discourse is in mailing list mode. That means behaves as a mailing list. So, the way you use it is the same as scala-user plus you get syntax highlighting, markdown syntax, etc. (You don't have to open another browser tab or visit the Discourse page at all if you don't want to.) I use contributors.scala-lang.org almost exclusively from my email client.

So it shouldn't be that much of a tragedy... 

Cheers,

Heather

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "scala-user" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scala-user+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Heather Miller]

I get properly threaded conversations. No missing reply-tos for me.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scala-user+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "scala-user" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scala-user+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Seth Tisue]

same here, never had any problem with this. I'm using Gmail.

Roland, what email client are you using? Perhaps there's something about this at https://meta.discourse.org, which is where people talk about problems with Discourse itself.

[Roland Kuhn]

Take as an example the modularization thread:

Seth @ 5:23 references message topic/635/12...@contributors.scala-lang.org, which is …

nafg @ 4:26, but that does not reference a message but “the thread”, which apparently macOS Mail does not understand (and I’m not surprised, because there is no message with ID topic/6...@contributors.scala-lang.org to link to)

And no, switching to Gmail is not an option.

17 mars 2017 kl. 16:30 skrev Seth Tisue <seth....@lightbend.com>:

same here, never had any problem with this. I'm using Gmail.

Roland, what email client are you using? Perhaps there's something about this at https://meta.discourse.org, which is where people talk about problems with Discourse itself.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "scala-user" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scala-user+...@googlegroups.com.

[Heather Miller]

Hi Roland,

I don't think anyone suggested that you switch to Gmail. I think Seth was just pointing out what email service he is using and reporting no issues threading with it. I too use Gmail and have no issues with threading.

What email client do you use? Maybe there's a known bug we can do something about in our Discourse installation to fix this?

Cheers, 

Heather

[Oliver Ruebenacker]

     Hello,

  Sad, sad, sad.

  I signed up to Scala contributors on Discourse and I only get summary notifications. Would be nice if it worked like a mailing list, but currently it doesn't for me. Possibly I could set it up, but first I'd have to learn more about Discourse, a service I'm not using for anything else. and I haven't heard of before.

  This makes Scala less accessible for most people. I don't see any benefit that Discourse could possibly have that would compensate for that loss.

      Best, Oliver

 

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 11:41 AM, Roland Kuhn <goo...@rkuhn.info> wrote:

Take as an example the modularization thread:

Seth @ 5:23 references message topic/635/1296@contributors.scala-lang.org, which is …

nafg @ 4:26, but that does not reference a message but “the thread”, which apparently macOS Mail does not understand (and I’m not surprised, because there is no message with ID topic/635@contributors.scala-lang.org to link to)

And no, switching to Gmail is not an option.

17 mars 2017 kl. 16:30 skrev Seth Tisue <seth....@lightbend.com>:

same here, never had any problem with this. I'm using Gmail.

Roland, what email client are you using? Perhaps there's something about this at https://meta.discourse.org, which is where people talk about problems with Discourse itself.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "scala-user" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scala-user+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "scala-user" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scala-user+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Oliver Ruebenacker

Senior Software Engineer, Diabetes Portal, Broad Institute

[Roland Kuhn]

Hi Heather,

I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything, the sentence about Gmail was triggered by the evidence so far pointing in the direction that it does indeed work with Gmail. Trouble with other clients was probably not discovered because a) Gmail is prevalent and b) I had intended to raise the issue over the weekend but you were a bit quicker with the announcement.

Yes, it would be nice if this was something that can be fixed in Discourse. Given that we would essentially switch from a working mailing-list to a currently-somewhat-broken-but-then-fixed mailing-list, may I ask what is the reason for this upheaval?

Regards,

Roland

[Seth Tisue]

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 8:48 AM, Oliver Ruebenacker <cur...@gmail.com> wrote:

  I signed up to Scala contributors on Discourse and I only get summary notifications. Would be nice if it worked like a mailing list, but currently it doesn't for me

Visit https://contributors.scala-lang.org/users/sethtisue/preferences (substitute your own username for "sethtisue"), check the "Enable mailing list mode" checkbox, done.

[Seth Tisue]

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 8:41 AM, Roland Kuhn <goo...@rkuhn.info> wrote:

Take as an example the modularization thread:

Seth @ 5:23 references message topic/635/1296@contributors.scala-lang.org, which is …

nafg @ 4:26, but that does not reference a message but “the thread”, which apparently macOS Mail does not understand (and I’m not surprised, because there is no message with ID topic/635@contributors.scala-lang.org to link to)

Thanks for supplying details. I'll work on turning this into a proper bug report.

A quick search of https://meta.discourse.org shows that other problems in this area were fixed once they were reported (e.g. https://meta.discourse.org/t/emails-not-threaded/44444/12).

Seth

[Roland Kuhn]

Thanks, Seth! As I said, I was planning on raising this properly, this discussion just occurred a few hours too early.

Regards,

Roland

[Oliver Ruebenacker]

     Hello,

  Thanks! Would it make sense to have that set by default?

  But it still is very nice about Google Groups that I can use my Google account. That Discourse requires yet another account is a hassle.

  Do I get that right that you have your own installation of Discourse? Who owns that? Aren't you afraid that some one might hack it and steal people's credentials?

     Best, Oliver

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "scala-user" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scala-user+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Seth Tisue]

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 9:04 AM, Oliver Ruebenacker <cur...@gmail.com> wrote:

  But it still is very nice about Google Groups that I can use my Google account. That Discourse requires yet another account is a hassle.

Do you have a GitHub account? On our Discourse, you can just use that.

[Heather Miller]

Hi Olivier,

As of like 30-40 minutes ago, users.scala-lang.org is set to mailing list mode by default. 

When we started contributors.scala-lang.org, mailing list mode wasn't set by default (I didn't realize it wasn't default) – a day or two after we created it and opened it up, I made mailing list mode default once it became evident that it wasn't default. 

So the fact that contributors.scala-lang.org wasn't by default in mailing list mode for you must've been because you signed up before I was able to make mailing list mode default. 

If you sign up for users.scala-lang.org now, it should be set to mailing list mode by default. So, no action should be necessary :-)

About Google accounts – I can enable Google logins. Right now we allow only GitHub logins or sign ups via email. But if people would prefer, I can add Google logins so people can use their Google accounts with Discourse. Just say the word.

Cheers,

Heather

[Seth Tisue]

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 9:23 AM, Heather Miller <heather....@gmail.com> wrote:

About Google accounts – I can enable Google logins. Right now we allow only GitHub logins or sign ups via email. But if people would prefer, I can add Google logins so people can use their Google accounts with Discourse. Just say the word.

on users.scala-lang.org, Google accounts too yes please!

(on contributors.scala-lang.org, I still think it makes sense to strongly encourage people to participate using their usual GitHub identities, since all Scala repos are on GitHub)

[Oliver Ruebenacker]

     Hello,

  Yes, please enable Google login!

     Best, Oliver

[Hugo Ferreira]

Seems like the Google button is broken. I get:

400. That’s an error.

Error: redirect_uri_mismatch

The redirect URI in the request, http://users.scala-lang.org/auth/google_oauth2/callback, does not match the ones authorized for the OAuth client. Visit https://console.developers.google.com/apis/credentials/oauthclient/524049836445-hgob0psker7e6cp6k8rv4v559jnkur5t.apps.googleusercontent.com?project=524049836445 to update the authorized redirect URIs.

HTHs

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scala-user+...@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Oliver Ruebenacker

Senior Software Engineer, Diabetes Portal, Broad Institute

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "scala-user" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scala-user+...@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Heather Miller]

Yep, I tried to enable Google authentication but there was a bug. Working on it :-) 

Google logins will be enabled (eventually), I promise!

[Rex Kerr]

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 7:38 AM, Heather Miller <heather...@epfl.ch> wrote:

Hi all,

Following the success of Discourse as a replacement for all other
Scala mailing lists (scala-internals, scala-language, scala-sips,
scala-debate)

What are the criteria used to deem it a success?  There was a flurry of initial activity and now it seems to have died down to about the same level as all the other mailing lists combined (i.e. a few messages a month).  Also, if people are mostly using Discourse in mailing list mode, it suggests that people are replacing a mailing list with a different mailing list, which isn't a very big endorsement of the idea of moving off an established mailing list.

 

, we have decided to follow suit in migrating scala-user
to a shiny new Discourse forum focused only on user questions and
answers at https://users.scala-lang.org

Unlike the other mailing list, this one has ~200 posts per month.  That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done for other (e.g. organizational) reasons, but I anticipate it being quite difficult to get activity back up to this level.  Inertia and all.  Hopefully I'm wrong.

(The Google login will probably help when debugged.)

  --Rex

[Seth Tisue]

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 11:19 AM, Rex Kerr <ich...@gmail.com> wrote:

What are the criteria used to deem it a success?  There was a flurry of initial activity and now it seems to have died down to about the same level as all the other mailing lists combined (i.e. a few messages a month).

Eh? No, I don't think that's true at all — not even close.

I haven't gathered full numbers, but a quick glance at contributors.scala-lang.org shows 39 threads with activity in the last month. It's been hugely more active than the main thing it replaced, namely the scala-internals group.

Also, I think a lot of the traffic that used to go to scala-language and scala-debate will end up on the users forum, not the contributors forum, so I don't think it would be accurate to count all of the traffic on those lists as evidence that anything has "died down" so far as a result of the transition.

Also, if people are mostly using Discourse in mailing list mode

I don't think we know that. For example, I have the "mailing list mode" enabled, yes, and I get the emails. But I use the web interface heavily — every day, or nearly. (Especially for posting and for reviewing past discussions.)

A few people have now questioned whether Discourse offers any substantial additional features beyond what Google Groups has. I think Heather already partially addressed that in her announcement. It's also addressed extensively at http://www.discourse.org/about/ .

And, my personal list of features that I consider especially important, and huge upgrades from Google Groups include:

* Classification (and re-classification) of posts by topic

    * Replacing a confusing profusion of groups, we have two main places to go, with unified searching

* Markdown and syntax highlighting of code

* Ability to edit and delete your own posts if you realize you made a mistake

* Way better moderation features overall, hopefully leading to improved overall friendliness and sense of community

* "Likes", just like Twitter and Facebook and GitHub Issues — maybe it seems silly, but I really think it isn't, I think it's really important to be able to express encouragement towards something without having to waste a whole actual post on it. There's a reason every online platform has this now (except Google Groups, which hasn't changed in a decade).

Other people's lists might look a bit different.

If Google Groups was already giving you everything you wanted or needed, great. I think you're losing very little from the transition. But on the other hand, I really believe this is a hugely beneficial upgrade, a gigantic leap forward.

If you're having trouble envisioning how well this could work and how good this upgrade could be for the Scala community, I'd suggest checking out https://users.rust-lang.org.

[Rex Kerr]

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 1:22 PM, Seth Tisue <seth....@lightbend.com> wrote:

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 11:19 AM, Rex Kerr <ich...@gmail.com> wrote:

What are the criteria used to deem it a success?  There was a flurry of initial activity and now it seems to have died down to about the same level as all the other mailing lists combined (i.e. a few messages a month).

Eh? No, I don't think that's true at all — not even close.

I haven't gathered full numbers, but a quick glance at contributors.scala-lang.org shows 39 threads with activity in the last month. It's been hugely more active than the main thing it replaced, namely the scala-internals group.

Ah, so it does.  When I went to look at it, it mysteriously didn't show me most of that.

It also gives me digest updates, which also mysteriously don't show me most of the content.

So I retract my comments.

Most of it was predicated on assuming that my inability to see content on the site or get it emailed to me in summary digests reflected an actual lack of content, rather than a display issue.  All the advantages don't matter very much if people don't use it.

I've switched to mailing list mode now to hopefully avoid these problems in the future.

  --Rex

[Seth Tisue]

weird, not sure what happened there

if anyone else sees something like this happening, let us know and we'll do our best to sort it out. (this isn't a problem I've seen reported before? hopefully it's rare.)

thanks Rex

[Rex Kerr]

I figured out that the digests basically never show me ongoing activity in old threads, which explains why those look sparse.

I'm not sure what was up with the main page display; I can't remember it clearly enough to know if there was some pattern.  My hunch is that it was showing one category while telling me "all categories" at the top.

 --Rex

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "scala-user" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scala-user+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Bardur Arantsson]

On 2017-03-17 21:42, Rex Kerr wrote:
>
> I've switched to mailing list mode now to hopefully avoid these problems
> in the future.
>

Alas, that doesn't work for those of us using the amazing GMANE.org to
handle our mailing lists.

Don't get me wrong... I suspect we're a dying breed, and I don't really
expect many people to care, but I mention it just for posterity and as
an example of our collective fickleness for "shiny" in favor of "good"
amd "works for everyone". At least Discourse does support mail-like
functionality, but I probably won't bother joining since it's a lot more
effort than "Subscribe to Newsgroup". Oh, well -- I'm a dinosaur anyway.

Regards,

[Hugo Ferreira]

Thank you.

[Jérôme M. Berger]

On 03/17/2017 03:38 PM, Heather Miller wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Following the success of Discourse as a replacement for all other
> Scala mailing lists (scala-internals, scala-language, scala-sips,

> scala-debate), we have decided to follow suit in migrating scala-user

> to a shiny new Discourse forum focused only on user questions and
> answers at https://users.scala-lang.org
>

> To facilitate this move, we have removed signups to scala-user, and in
> coming weeks we will shift scala-user to read-only.
> All conversations will remain archived on Google Groups. The intended
> replacement for these lists is the https://users.scala-lang.org
> Discourse forum/mailing list. So please head over there and sign up if
> you're interested in participating in discussions that previously
> belonged on scala-user.
>
> In general Discourse is a significant improvement for discussing code
> via email. Discourse is set up to be used in mailing list mode. That
> is, you receive discussions to your inbox, and can reply to them via
> email. It's also a forum that gives all kinds of statistics,
> upvoting, and polls. You can do syntax highlighting etc, and posts can
> be written in Markdown.
>
Except that AFAIK Discourse does not allow NNTP access…

Jerome
--
mailto:jebe...@free.fr
http://jeberger.free.fr
Diaspora*: https://framasphere.org/u/jeberger

[Daniel Barclay]

Jérôme M. Berger wrote:
> On 03/17/2017 03:38 PM, Heather Miller wrote:

>> ...

>>
>> In general Discourse is a significant improvement for discussing code
>> via email. Discourse is set up to be used in mailing list mode. That
>> is, you receive discussions to your inbox, and can reply to them via

>> email. ...

>>
> Except that AFAIK Discourse does not allow NNTP access…

Does it even do normal e-mail style (in-line) quoting (as in the ">"-marked
quoting above)? None of the Discourse-sent e-mail messages I've seen have
any in-line quoting. (Does Discourse not support that, is it just that no
one is using that?)

If it doesn't make it as easy as e-mail does to identify which part of
the text of a previous message your answer is referring to, I don't think
it's a "significant improvement."

Daniel

[Naftoli Gugenheim]

Yeah it's nice it has a mailing list mode, but there's a real impedance mismatch between what Discourse is and an​ email thread.

I for one find the cognitive barrier to responding to a question much higher with Discourse, and am much less likely to respond.

[Rex Kerr]

Indeed.  It is happy to mess up quotes (even though it supports them), and at least for me it's incredibly slow compared to a mailing list (~10 minute delay either way), I guess to allow time for questions to be edited, or maybe just to allow bazzes to be quuxed?

So the mailing list is fine for letting me know what I've missed, but I don't want to use it to actually interact.  Easy enough to log in, I guess, but the activation barrier's higher.  Maybe that's okay if, once activated, things are nicer.  (Which they are in some ways.)

  --Rex

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scala-user+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "scala-user" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scala-user+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Seth Tisue]

fwiw, personally I read new messages in my email client, and then if I want to reply, I click "Visit topic" and post in the web interface, mainly in order to have access to the Markdown preview, but also other niceties.

[Naftoli Gugenheim]

That's what I've been doing... except for when I haven't, which I think is much more frequent with Discourse.

As I said, it's a bigger cognitive barrier, and I think lowering that is the key to newbies getting more of their questions answered. A lot of times people think they're being ignored for some reason when for whatever reason their question didn't get a response (sometimes that's because people don't realize how hard to understand their question was).

I'm not saying that formula points unambiguously away from discourse, but I think this should be addressed.

Here's a radical idea. How about instead of introducing a new forum and simultaneously shutting down an old one, we announce at the outset a tentative "sunsetting" timeline, perhaps replace the old monthly rules of conduct notices with a reminder to use discourse instead... and after a few months we can decide then if it's really worth shutting down.

On Tue, Mar 21, 2017 at 12:40 PM Seth Tisue <seth....@lightbend.com> wrote:

fwiw, personally I read new messages in my email client, and then if I want to reply, I click "Visit topic" and post in the web interface, mainly in order to have access to the Markdown preview, but also other niceties.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "scala-user" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to scala-user+...@googlegroups.com.