time to move off google groups?

[Neil Van Dyke]

Sadly, I recommended wait&see before, but I think it's probably time to
move Racket email lists off of Google Groups, and also to resume hosting
the email archives on "racket-lang.org", ASAP.

The last straw is that it looks like at least some posts (perhaps many)
to Racket lists are no longer findable in Google Groups, using Google
search itself.[*]

This is bad for Racket effectiveness, promotion, and history.

Even if this was a fluke, this isn't a good sign.  (It's well-known in
industry that Google is willing to cancel even popular services,
sometimes replacing them with unpopular things.  It could be that
priorities have already shifted away from Google Groups.)

As for what to move to, it looks like some of the previous self-hosted
setup is probably still there, as hinted at on
"https://lists.racket-lang.org/".  It will need someone to do the
sysadmin work for the one-time setup and move, and whatever operations
load is involved with MailMan (vs. the presumably lower load with Google
Groups).

A separate task is recovering the missing years of archive, since around
May 2015.  Hopefully, a couple people have complete archives from their
own personal subscriptions, in some format like mbox, and only has to
make sure that no non-public messages got in there, and to check the two
archives against each other (for confidence that nothing was missed).


[*] Yesterday, I tried to link to the canonical copy of a "racket-users"
post from late 2017, and the only Google hits were for
"mail-archive.com", nothing for Google Groups.  Even when I went and
copied part of the Subject value from the "mail-archive.com" copy, and
searched for it verbatim on Google.  I started to try to see whether
that particular post had simply been deleted from Google Groups, but did
not see a way to navigate by time (other than a very slow infinite
scroll back from today).  I then tried some other searches for
"racket-users", and was not getting hits on Google Groups.  I didn't
investigate this much.  I also just reproduced this problem just now.

[Matthew Flatt]

Can we please stop having posts about how the mailing list should work,
unless that post contains the phrase "I volunteer"?

Maybe the mailing list archive fell out of Google search results
because the archive itself fell off the web for a week or two. Because
the archives were hosted on a machine that we manage, and that machine
died. Yes, we should do things differently. But if we still had been
managing the mailing lists through mailman the way we used to, the
Racket lists would have been disabled entirely for a week or two.

I understand frustration with some of our infrastructure, but the main
developers of Racket can only do so much. For the mailing list
specifically, the Racket community has failed to step up.

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[Neil Van Dyke]

It sounds like people feel disappointed/frustrated that non-core hasn't
volunteered on this, and I'm sorry about that.

I'm sorry I can't volunteer on this myself right now (like many, I'm
currently slammed with even higher priorities), but I thought Racketeers
would want to know about a worsening problem.

It seems bad for Racket if its main forum posts become no longer exposed
or findable in Google searches.

[Neil Van Dyke]

BTW, sorry I wasn't clear, and this might be important to mention... I
was referring to something separate from recent/current problems with
lists.racket-lang.org -- I'm talking about Google searches not showing
posts *that happened since switching to Google Groups*, so those posts
wouldn't be found in the racket-lang.org archives anyway.

(Google searches used to readily find the posts in Google Groups, and as
top hits.  Now, I'm finding Google searches have *no* hits for
particular posts in Google Groups, nor in any of the supposed
mirrors/archives, except for one, and that archive isn't looking like it
might be around long either.)

[Sam Tobin-Hochstadt]

I just tested this, with the subject "CI improved for Racket" (from
April, on this list). For me, the Google Groups archive entry is the
first result for that query, when quoted.

Sam

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[Robby Findler]

Thanks, Neil for alerting the community to the problem.

As a long-time member of the Racket world, I'm sure you are aware of
the difficulties we have had trying to make sure we have the right
community discussion forum IT infrastructure.

Perhaps the next time someone takes the time to investigate and
support an alternative, we will be free of these problems. Until then,
I hope that you recover from whatever fallout of said slammage.

Robby

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[Greg Hendershott]

Sam Tobin-Hochstadt <sa...@cs.indiana.edu> writes:
> I just tested this, with the subject "CI improved for Racket" (from
> April, on this list). For me, the Google Groups archive entry is the
> first result for that query, when quoted.

I see that reuslt, too. (I thought the difference might arise from using
Google search while logged in to a Google account, or not. But I tried
from a private browsing window and still got that result. Only when
quoted.)


I imagine many open source projects are in a similar boat. Does the
Software Freedom Conservancy offer any help with mailing list servers?
Hosting and/or administering and/or funding?

[Joel Dueck]

I would like to suggest at least considering the use of a Fossil repository as a forum/mailing list replacement. See https://fossil-scm.org/fossil/doc/trunk/www/forum.wiki for info or the Fossil forum (https://fossil-scm.org/forum/forum) for a working example.

In this way, the forum/list's history would be contained in a single file served by a single no-dependency binary. No MySQL or other RDBMS needed, only Apache or some other web server in front, and a working sendmail configuration. I would also make some simple changes to the web UI to strip out unneeded features.

The only downside I see is it would no longer be possible to post via email. Users could configure their accounts to receive emails per-post or daily digest, but to post you'd have to open a web browser.

On the other hand, by using Fossil anyone would be able to clone and sync the entire forum, read it and even respond while offline using their local copy.

As to volunteering, I’d be happy to volunteer to set up a temporary test instance on a server of my own if there is interest. Ideally the permanent one would run on PLT-owned hardware sitting behind an IP address that is approved to send email from a Racket-related domain (SPF records &c).

[Neil Van Dyke]

'Joel Dueck' via Racket Developers wrote on 5/21/19 1:53 PM:]

> The only downside I see is it would no longer be possible to post via
> email.

To whomever volunteers to do the implementation and the requirements
analysis: please don't break email.

(To take Rust as an example, their current insistence on strangely
anti-open Web forums, Discord, etc. is a barrier to participation for me
and people who feel similarly.)

[Jack Rosenthal]

On Mon, 20 May 2019 at 15:44 -0400, Neil Van Dyke wrote:
> A separate task is recovering the missing years of archive, since around May
> 2015.  Hopefully, a couple people have complete archives from their own
> personal subscriptions, in some format like mbox, and only has to make sure
> that no non-public messages got in there, and to check the two archives
> against each other (for confidence that nothing was missed).

The owner of the group can do a "takeout" of the data. This is a GDPR
requirement.

--
Jack M. Rosenthal
http://jack.rosenth.al

[Neil Van Dyke]

FWIW, I'm now able to find posts that I couldn't before, using Google.

So I think there's less sense of urgency to move, but I'd still strongly
recommend self-hosting the canonical archive on racket-lang.org, and
also consider moving list hosting, once someone is able to volunteer.

(Depending on when that happens, I can tentatively volunteer to do a
small part of it: checking a dump of posts from Google Groups against
someone's personal archives, to try to make sure nothing was lost; and
converting from whatever formats those are in, to whatever format the
canonical archive wants.)

[Jens Axel Søgaard]

Is there an official statement from Google with respect to Google Groups?
The latest information on the Google Blog suggests that they are actively making updates to improve it.

https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/search/label/Groups

I am beginning to think the rumour of Google Groups closing is a misunderstanding.
Probably due to the closing of Google+ which also had something named Groups.
Maybe even Google+ Groups?

/Jens Axel

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[Paulo Matos]

I strongly agree here. Email is still a great communication medium and I
would hate to lose that. I find participating in discord forums without
an alternative infuriating.

--
Paulo Matos

[Paulo Matos]

On 20/05/2019 22:02, Matthew Flatt wrote:
> Can we please stop having posts about how the mailing list should work,
> unless that post contains the phrase "I volunteer"?
>

Kudos to this.
I am very happy about this strong message and wish it would come more
often from the senior team. There needs to be more volunteering from the
community and I am happy this is being acknowledge now.

I cannot say 'I volunteer' just now as I am traveling and haven't
thought through the problem but I am happy to do it if the community
sees its necessary. Maybe there can be a small group of people to sort
this one out? Is anyone out that there would volunteer into a team to
fix this _if_ deemed necessary? Hopefully someone with more sysadmin-fu
than myself.

Thanks,

--
Paulo Matos

[Neil Van Dyke]

Jens Axel Søgaard wrote on 5/22/19 4:12 AM:

> I am beginning to think the rumour of Google Groups closing is a
> misunderstanding.
> Probably due to the closing of Google+ which also had something named
> Groups.

I don't want to drag racket-dev into point-by-point pros&cons (we knew
from the start that Google Groups was a pragmatic compromise), and
people are visibly already sick of this topic, but I should clarify this:

I haven't heard of anyone who admins a Google Group confusing that with
Google+.

The concerns I've heard about Google Groups come from people who admin
them, and I've seen some of those same problems myself as an admin, even
with only 2 small lists.  That's why I said "last straw" when I found
posts were not showing up in Google searches.

Now that the posts are showing up in Google again, there's less urgency
to move, but I think Racket will be better off if one of the
universities steps up with a properly-maintained mailing list server,
or, secondarily, some heroically altruistic volunteer can set up and
operate it.

(This used to be a solved problem.  Universities or departments would
run an email list server, including for research projects in which the
university had an interest, it would work, and department/group staff or
grad students with RAs/TAs would spend small amounts of time on the
side, taking up whatever gaps in that university-wide service, like
moderating, or working on a research group Web site.  Or it can be done
with community volunteers, but some of the universities are getting
valuable research cred related to this.  Not all research exposure comes
from conference attendees and whomever reads the occasional journal
article on old stuff.  And operating an email list server for the
university should be negligible in their campus-wide IT budgets.  One of
the universities has done an amazing job with very aggressively and
famously advancing its rankings, in addition to having top research, and
appears flush with funds, so it seems ridiculous that any
academically-prominent research project there can't just get a working
email list server the university maintains for any fac/staff/students
that needs it.  If additional argument is needed, you can just point to
the current scandals as the systemic abuses of some prominent social
media companies are starting to come into public view.  The university
used to be a venue and guardian of discourse and the marketplace of
ideas, and that's still a role for it, even as they rush to one-up each
other on posh new gym and housing facilities to attract the most
affluent students.)