Moving this Google Group to GitHub Issues

[daniel.hi...@gmail.com]

This "UCSC Xena and Cancer Genomics Browser" Google Group has been a fantastic resource thus far. Kudos to the Xena team for their fantastic support.

I do feel that while the support is exceptional, we're running into several limitations based on the current interface. Specifically, posts disappear for several hours/days until they appear online -- the first time I posted, I thought Google Groups ate my message. Also the formatting options are limited/undocumented. Search and lookup features are also limited. Overall the user interface is outdated.

Has the team considered moving this mailing list to GitHub issues? Users can still receive email updates (and even treat it like a mailing list). However, you will benefit from the superior GitHub community and issues interface. The ability to write markdown will be great for readability (embedded links, tables, headings, code blocks, etc). Finally, GitHub Issues has a nice API, which isn't an immediate concern but could be useful down the road in unexpected ways. I also expect GitHub issues will bring greater visibility and eventually search engine rankings to the content and support that the Xena team has worked hard to provide.

I couldn't find much on automatically migrating existing Google Group content to GitHub Issues. Based on what I found (https://github.com/recursecenter/community/issues/268), it may be difficult. Therefore, the easiest solution may be to direct new discussion to GitHub Issues and hyperlink to legacy Google Group posts when needed.

[Mary Goldman]

Hi Daniel,

Yes, we moderate our posts since we get quite a bit of spam. This is why it takes a while for them to appear.

While google groups does have limitations, most of our users are biologists who have never used github before and do not necessarily understand how github issues work. Because of this, I am reluctant to move our google group over.

That said, we recognize that the needs of your group are beyond our typical user. If you think it would be useful to add Jing and I to your github repository and ask us questions there, we are open to this.

Best,
Mary
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Mary Goldman
UCSC Xena Browser
http://xena.ucsc.edu/

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[Daniel Himmelstein]

Hi Mary and Team,

Thanks for the feedback.

> we recognize that the needs of your group are beyond our typical user. If you think it would be useful to add Jing and I to your github repository and ask us questions there, we are open to this. 

This sounds like a great solution for us. In fact, our repositories are completely public, so anyone can comment. We have been tagging Jing using her handle (@jingchunzhu) and can start tagging you (Mary) as well when appropriate. When users are mentioned, they generally get an email alert. Mary -- do you have a GitHub handle?

Since I imagine you would like the content to also reach the Google Group, when a GitHub issue for Project Cognoma that is relevant to Xena is closed, we could send the entire conversation to the Xena mailing list. This way we don't have to wrestle with trying to get the Google Group to update in realtime with the GitHub issue (which was causing some issues before).

Does this make sense?

Best,
Daniel

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[Mary Goldman]

Hi Daniel,

This sounds great. Thank you!

My github handle is maryjgoldman.

Best,
Mary
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Mary Goldman
UCSC Xena Browser
http://xena.ucsc.edu/

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