Discourse - Mailing list mode

[James Platt]

I notice that Discourse has a "mailing list mode" which you can set in the preferences. I haven't had a chance to evaluate it much yet but, what I'm hoping for is that this will allow me to use the forum pretty much the same way as I have been using Google Groups all along. I just realized, after catching up with some older messages on this list, that I have been presuming, thus far, that the whole point of Discourse was to have basically the same functionality as Google Groups from the standpoint of managing the email list but also have different (hopefully better) features at the server/web site end. Are others not seeing it this way? List mode is not default so you do have to explicitly go in and set it. With Google Groups, list mode is default but you can turn that off and only read messages on the server. So I'm not seeing this change as that much of a big deal unless I'm wrong about the email end for Discourse

[George Neuner]

It's a big deal if you are (or were) following multiple groups.

In the last ~10 years, a lot of the old groups have abandoned NN for
web forums ... some due to spam in unmoderated groups, but it seems to
me mostly that the change has been driven by pandering to youngsters
who won't be caught dead using a simple text based service (except, of
course, for SMS which they can't live without).

Where once you could monitor many groups with just a news reader OR an
email client, now you need both because many mailing lists are no
longer on NNTP and many newsgroups no longer support email access. And
then you have to monitor a plethora of web forums to follow the groups
that have gone over entirely to those platforms.

So where you once had one program that handled all your news needs,
now you need 2 or 3 different programs (NN reader, web browser, maybe
separate email client). Keeping your own archives of interesting
discussions - if you even /can/ keep archives (web forums) - has
become much more difficult and time consuming, and you have to look in
multiple places to find things.

[Yes, I use Thunderbird for email and I know it has NNTP also ... but
it can't share/sync its NN folders across multiple machines. I don't
know of any program that does BOTH email and NNTP that /can/ sync
everything across machines. Walking around with a USB drive is a
non-starter.]


Change for the sake of change is not a win. I don't mind Discourse so
much because it has mailing list support, but I am bothered by the
principle.

YMMV,
George

[James Platt]

On Dec 8, 2021, at 10:45 AM, George Neuner wrote:

> It's a big deal if you are (or were) following multiple groups.

I don't understand. Why is this an issue? I find it very convenient to filter each group into it's own folder in email. If this were a non-technical group, you wouldn't expect everyone to know how to do that but anyone who is a programmer ought to have no problem configuring filters and folders.

[George Neuner]

If you had continued reading, you would have seen my comment that NOT
ALL news groups support list distribution or posting via email. NNTP is
not email.  Usenet group moderators[*] can choose how to make their
groups available: the default is via list distribution and NNTP both,
but the moderator can deliberately disable one or the other - or only
enable digests via email, or disable posting.

My complaint is having to read some things via NNTP and others through
email because, while there are programs that do both, I haven't found
any single program that does BOTH WELL.  And that is without even
considering the growing number of ... don't want to confuse by saying
"groups", let's call them "crowds" ... that have abandoned Usenet
entirely in favor of web forums.

George

[*] even unmoderated groups have a moderator/administrator - by default
it is whoever started the group.

[John Clements]

Your points are well taken, and moving away from a traditional mailing list is not a decision that we took lightly; the fact is that we were simply *failing* when it came to moderating the mailing list as run by google groups, and running one through mailman was even worse. It appears that discourse will allow us to spread the load of moderating the group across the members of the group, rather than depending on one or two points of failure.

BTW, lest you think that I think that discourse solves all our problems: it’s becoming apparent to me that setting up posting via email is frankly difficult; I think that monitoring the list using mailing-list mode is plausible, but posting, at this point, is not. I guess I shouldn’t be shocked: that’s the whole problem with email, it’s not authenticated in any reasonable or widely used way.

Regardless, I’m happy with the move: we have about 181 people registered, and the volume there looks robust and sustainable.

John

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[James Platt]

> If you had continued reading, you would have seen my comment that NOT ALL news groups support list distribution or posting via email. NNTP is not email. Usenet group moderators[*] can choose how to make their groups available: the default is via list distribution and NNTP both, but the moderator can deliberately disable one or the other - or only enable digests via email, or disable posting.

I did read that part. I just didn't understand what you mean. I still don't. NNTP is not involved here, with the Racket community, as far as I know. The one thing that is clear is that NNTP is one of the many different technologies which these forums can get fragmented across. That is a problem. NNTP was originally designed to manage bandwidth way back when transfer of plain text was an issue. Today, text is trivial next to Bit Torrent, Netflix and other things which use up orders of magnitude more bandwidth. I haven't used NNTP in more than a decade now so I don't know if there have been improvements but, from what I remember, there is no reason to use it today. I can't think of any advantage it has over any other technology at all. If it does, let me know. Sometimes it's good to take another look at an old technology which you thought was basically dead. It's been, what? about 20 years, since an NNTP server was considered one of the basic services which you get from your ISP.

[Stephen De Gabrielle]

> it’s becoming apparent to me that setting up posting via email is frankly difficult; I think that monitoring the list using mailing-list mode is plausible, but posting, at this point, is not.

I had a chat with a Discourse consultant and they thought posting by email was possible if you self host, but self hosting with mailing list would require both a hosting provider, and a send mail provider (he uses digital ocean with sendgrid or mailgun). Receiving email is handled by the 'mail receiver container' if you are self hosting.  

It was a casual conversation, and I don't know him well.  It would be good to know if other PL communities have done this

stephen

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[Sam Tobin-Hochstadt]

It appears that enabling this is quite simple. I believe I have set it
up so that emailing racket+unca...@discoursemail.com should
create a new topic in the Uncategorized category. Feel free to test it
out.

Sam

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[John Clements]

I just tried it, from a new account that wasn’t associated with an account, and it looks like it went through … which is actually kind of frightening. Can’t a random spammer just send email to this address? I considered doing it as a stunt, but decided it would be nicer to ask about it first.

John

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[Stephen De Gabrielle]

Thanks to Sam you can now post to discourse via email with the address rac...@discoursemail.com

You do need to use the address you signed up with.

if you use addresses like myaddre...@gmail.com ... I'm not sure - I don't have a quick way to test sending with this sort of address. 

Stephen

[Laurent]

Would it be possible to allow only sending to racket...@discoursemail.com and filtering out those sent to just racket@...? Maybe that could avoid *some* spam. Not sure how effective that would be though.

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