Can we move the activity on this list to the Forum now?

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Carlton Gibson

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Nov 28, 2022, 8:38:06 AM11/28/22
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Hi all. 

Given the issues with Tom's access to the mailing list here, and the fact that the Forum has been active for a few years now, and is a great success, I'd like to revisit whether we can move on-mass (all few of us :) over there? 

We'd enjoy the benefits of a much nicer system. We'd not have issues such as the current, and we'd be one less item in the pocket of a mega-corp. (You can rank those as you will :) 

Initially when this can up (a long time ago) Andrew and Tom discussed whether we could import the history here into the forum. I think that's unnecessary. We can still access the history here (until such a day as Google takes it away) at worst -- but, rather, if we can get an archive we could import it into read-only Datasette instance[0] — and that would likely be good enough. 

Can we move now? 

Thanks. 

Kind Regards,

Carlton


[0]: I'd happily do this. 

Roger Gammans

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Nov 28, 2022, 8:59:24 AM11/28/22
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Hi

I can't speak for others, but I personally STRONGLY value the fact that this discussion happens in my inbox, not on yet another website. 

But perhaps the forum still supports this reading mode?
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Carlton Gibson

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Nov 28, 2022, 9:06:11 AM11/28/22
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Hey Roger, 

Indeed it does. You can set up Email Mode (that may not be the actual name) and it’ll work just like a mailing list. 

You can also subscribe to just a particular category, so the Internals one would map to the discussion on this list. 



On Monday, 28 November 2022, Roger Gammans <rgam...@gammascience.co.uk> wrote:
Hi

I can't speak for others, but I personally STRONGLY value the fact that this discussion happens in my inbox, not on yet another website. 

But perhaps the forum still supports this reading mode?

On Mon, 2022-11-28 at 05:38 -0800, Carlton Gibson wrote:
Hi all. 

Given the issues with Tom's access to the mailing list here, and the fact that the Forum has been active for a few years now, and is a great success, I'd like to revisit whether we can move on-mass (all few of us :) over there? 

We'd enjoy the benefits of a much nicer system. We'd not have issues such as the current, and we'd be one less item in the pocket of a mega-corp. (You can rank those as you will :) 

Initially when this can up (a long time ago) Andrew and Tom discussed whether we could import the history here into the forum. I think that's unnecessary. We can still access the history here (until such a day as Google takes it away) at worst -- but, rather, if we can get an archive we could import it into read-only Datasette instance[0] — and that would likely be good enough. 

Can we move now? 

Thanks. 

Kind Regards,

Carlton


[0]: I'd happily do this. 

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Carsten Fuchs

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Nov 28, 2022, 10:03:07 AM11/28/22
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Hello,

unfortunately, the emails sent by the forum have long prefixes in the subject lines, e.g.

[Django Forum] [Django Internals/ORM] Multiple Database Switching

That makes the messages easy to filter by mail client software, but comes at the cost of much visual clutter that is hard to parse, e. g. when the mail client presents messages hierarchically in a thread-based view.

Best regards,
Carsten



Am 28.11.22 um 15:05 schrieb Carlton Gibson:

Tobias McNulty

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Nov 28, 2022, 10:22:53 AM11/28/22
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As someone who only just joined the forum -- I'm +1:
  • The forum has seen great adoption from what I can tell (nearly half the number of posts as django-developers during the same time period, not bad given the mailing list's head start in subscribers).
  • It seems beneficial to house future conversations in a single place, e.g., so members don't need to subscribe to both the mailing list and forum to get the full picture of current active development, set up two different sets of mail filters to tag things appropriately, etc...
Would the plan be to switch django-users as well? I think similar arguments could be made for consolidating those...

(On the other hand, I see little value in switching django-announce and django-updates, but I'm not necessarily opposed to it either, especially if there's a way to import the subscribers to those lists...)

Cheers,

Tobias McNulty
Chief Executive Officer

tob...@caktusgroup.com
www.caktusgroup.com



On Mon, Nov 28, 2022 at 9:05 AM Carlton Gibson <carlton...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey Roger, 

Indeed it does. You can set up Email Mode (that may not be the actual name) and it’ll work just like a mailing list. 

You can also subscribe to just a particular category, so the Internals one would map to the discussion on this list. 



On Monday, 28 November 2022, Roger Gammans <rgam...@gammascience.co.uk> wrote:
Hi

I can't speak for others, but I personally STRONGLY value the fact that this discussion happens in my inbox, not on yet another website. 

But perhaps the forum still supports this reading mode?

On Mon, 2022-11-28 at 05:38 -0800, Carlton Gibson wrote:
Hi all. 

Given the issues with Tom's access to the mailing list here, and the fact that the Forum has been active for a few years now, and is a great success, I'd like to revisit whether we can move on-mass (all few of us :) over there? 

We'd enjoy the benefits of a much nicer system. We'd not have issues such as the current, and we'd be one less item in the pocket of a mega-corp. (You can rank those as you will :) 

Initially when this can up (a long time ago) Andrew and Tom discussed whether we could import the history here into the forum. I think that's unnecessary. We can still access the history here (until such a day as Google takes it away) at worst -- but, rather, if we can get an archive we could import it into read-only Datasette instance[0] — and that would likely be good enough. 

Can we move now? 

Thanks. 

Kind Regards,

Carlton


[0]: I'd happily do this. 

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Adam Johnson

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Nov 28, 2022, 11:54:12 PM11/28/22
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Big +1 from me, I love the forum. It’s a lot more discoverable and powerful.

Kye Russell

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Nov 29, 2022, 12:01:17 AM11/29/22
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IMO django-announce and django-updates serve a very different purpose and I would be against moving them if it were suggested.

I am incredibly strongly in favour of moving django-developers and django-users to the forums. IMO being able to more easily trap people misusing this list as a tech support channel is itself reason enough to move. Beyond that, I’d argue that the plentiful UX issues with Google Groups, and mailing lists in general, certainly don’t do the community any favours in terms of getting more people on board. 

Kye

Andrew Godwin

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Dec 5, 2022, 6:16:04 PM12/5/22
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I did some investigation of moving django-users and django-developers to the Forum right after DjangoCon; I wanted to see if we could import all the old posts too, which we probably could, but I'm not entirely sure of the utility of that.

I will say that the forum is a lot easier to moderate - the ability to moderate after a post has gone out, rather than gating all posts behind approval if they're untrusted, is a big step in itself, not to mention the ability to remove sensitive or offensive content once it's posted.

Andrew

Kye Russell

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Jan 18, 2023, 7:04:26 PM1/18/23
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Hi all,

I find that the signal-to-noise ratio on this mailing list is (by my determination) quite bad around this time of year.

Is a move to the forum still on the cards? 

Kye

Carlton Gibson

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Jan 19, 2023, 2:31:28 AM1/19/23
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I'm trying to begin new conversations there where I can. 

The main issue is that we're still pointing people here from Trac and the Triage Workflow docs — so if there's a rough "Yeah, let's do it" we can adjust practice there. 

I expect there will always be the "How do I start?" posts. The Forum at least has a pinned post for that. ... 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-developers/dfe142b6-c535-458e-8eeb-b65c0fad951c%40Spark.

Andrew Godwin

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Jan 19, 2023, 12:15:45 PM1/19/23
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We should at least update those Trac and Triage Workflow docs to point to both, maybe with the Forum first?

Andrew

Carlton Gibson

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Jan 20, 2023, 2:24:11 AM1/20/23
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OK, I've updated the Trac wiki page to point to the forum too. (We use this as a wiki-link in responses to guide folk onwards.) 

The docs have a `|django-developers|` shortcut used in quite a few places so that needs a moment more to review and adjust. 
(I'll look at it soon-ish... — if no-one beats me to it :) 

Thanks. 
C

Alex Krupp

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Jan 26, 2023, 8:07:36 AM1/26/23
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I just submitted a proposal to create a Discourse plugin to improve the accuracy of their inbound email parsing. This would enable two things:
  • Folks who prefer to live in their inbox could continue to do so and contribute by just replying to emails. Discourse currently has reply-by-email, but it often mangles formatting and/or entirely deletes text. Once these issues are fixed, folks who like the current experience would be able to just pretend the forum doesn't exist and continue having the same experience as they currently have with Google Groups.
  • Right now importing the archives from Google Groups into Discourse isn't realistic for the same reasons; some messages will import correctly, but others will be mangled or missing text. This would also be made possible.
If this is something you care about (positively or negatively), here is the exploratory proposal:


Any feedback and/or testing would be much appreciated! Right now Discourse recognizes that this is a problem and is interested in solving it, but getting it prioritized will require folks to A) speak up saying they want it done B) test the underlying API to verify that it actually solves the problem.

Alex

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-developers/CAJwKpySDiaDx0tJDWO0YZwuG0MTzTGfxY9t9m1druBVkpvd70A%40mail.gmail.com.


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natali...@gmail.com

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May 3, 2023, 2:09:41 PM5/3/23
to Django developers (Contributions to Django itself)
Hello everyone!

I was wondering if we could make a decision about this topic. On the one hand, and as far as I understand, the forum is the preferred channel of communication. On the other hand, having multiple channels of communication can spread important discussions too thin, making it difficult to have productive conversations in one place.

As a newcomer to the contributing community, I can attest that the current situation causes some confusion. IMHO, the same applies to the chat options: there is IRC and the Discord server (though perhaps I should start a new forum topic about that in order to keep decisions separated).

In summary, I'm +1 to "move on-mass (all few of us :) over there"!

Thank you!
Natalia.

jure.er...@gmail.com

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May 4, 2023, 1:19:01 AM5/4/23
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+1

Arthur Rio

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May 4, 2023, 1:20:07 AM5/4/23
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Yes please!

Curtis Maloney

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May 4, 2023, 1:29:22 AM5/4/23
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Does the Forum allow me to get email notifications / summaries?

If not, it will mean I disconnect with that part of the community.

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Curtis

Jure Erznožnik

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May 4, 2023, 1:49:53 AM5/4/23
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This has been answered affirmatively in this very thread before.

The forum even has a "Mailing list mode" in addition to several other mailing options (including a nifty "activity summary").

LP,
Jure

Carsten Fuchs

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May 4, 2023, 2:09:35 AM5/4/23
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Hello,

unfortunately, the subject lines of the emails sent by the forum have the forum category prepended. These prefixes are long and make it difficult to parse a large number of emails quickly, which significantly reduces one of the main strengths of mail(ing-list)s.

To be honest, I'm surprised that not more mailing list members argue in favor of the mailing list.

The mailing list makes it easy to read or at least glance at every single message, if desired, while enabling readers to skip uninteresting threads quickly. This is a lot more difficult on the forum, especially with the user interface as implemented by Discourse, which wastes a lot of white space (lines with much vertical spacing, as with the topic lines on the Latest page, are difficult to parse quickly) und whose „last visit“ line is unreliable, especially if you read the forum on multiple devices (home, office, mobile, …) with possibly several tabs open at the same time.

I'm aware that I'm in a minority and that there is no way to convince the relevant people to keep the mailing-lists, but in my opinion the switch the forum is a step backwards in accessibility, usability and easy of use.

Best regards,
Carsten

Am 04.05.23 um 07:49 schrieb Jure Erznožnik:

Tim Graham

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May 4, 2023, 11:02:23 AM5/4/23
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I agree with Carsten. I find the groups.google.com web interface much easier to follow and to quickly scan and see which threads I've read and which have new activity. I follow this mailing list more closely than the forum and prefer writing to it.

Incidentally, when I look at the "Django Internals" category of the forum, I see a lot of inappropriate usage questions that get answered there rather than pointed to the correct category. Is there a way to recategorize those posts?

Ken Whitesell

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May 4, 2023, 12:06:36 PM5/4/23
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Hi Tim,

I'm one of the Moderators of the forum, and yes, I am actively working on cleaning up the categorization of the messages. (It's a slow grind, but I'm making gradual-but-reasonably-steady progress.) I do try to stay on top of new messages - but I'm also going back through existing messages.

Admittedly, I've been most focused on cleaning up the "Using Django" dumping ground. However, if there's any request for me to change my focus for a bit to get the Internals category cleaned up, I'd be more than happy to oblige.

Ken Whitesell
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Carlton Gibson

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May 6, 2023, 4:09:51 AM5/6/23
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Hey Curtis. 

The notifications settings are very flexible, and allow good filtering (to your inbox) if that's how you want them. 

For example, I'm able to get notifications for the Django Internals category, and the Async subcategory of Using Django (and then I'm able to keep up with the rest just by glancing at the latest tab.) 

The water is nice  😅
C.


natali...@gmail.com

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May 8, 2023, 7:52:26 AM5/8/23
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I'm also available to do some moderation in the forum. I'll try to chase getting moderator perms to help!
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