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Jan Wielemaker

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Jan 29, 2019, 11:10:45 AM1/29/19
to swi-p...@googlegroups.com
Hi,

There have been several complaints about mails being lost and people not
liking Google groups for various reasons. I surely sympathise with the
latter, but the advantage of Google groups has always been that it is
trouble free from a maintenance perspective.

Mails getting lost is more severe. I was pointer at this message:
https://groups.google.com/a/isocpp.org/forum/m/#!msg/sg14/FZEWCOSyFlk/MFUXyq1YDAAJ
which suggests Google won't/doesn't support large groups any more, where
large
starts at 500-1,000 users. We currently have 931.

Ideally, of course we have a nice Prolog forum and mail list management
system :)

I think it is time to seriously consider migrating the list. One of the
options I saw is _Discourse_ (www.discourse.org). What attracts me is a
modern forum, integration with mail and integration with github.

My first set of questions are:

- Do we want a proper forum or merely a mailing list?
- Do you have good/bad experiences with discourse?
- Alternatives?
- Would you be prepared to set it up, maintain it or
act as moderator?

Thanks --- Jan

Paulo Moura

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Jan 29, 2019, 11:33:14 AM1/29/19
to Jan Wielemaker, swi-p...@googlegroups.com
Hi Jan,

I also have been looking recently for a good option to consolidate Logtalk announcements list, forums, and chat room into a single service. I inevitably come across Discourse. The advantages I see in it is that it includes an importer for the forum software I use (phpBB). For SWI-Prolog, importing the contents of the mailing list would be a high priority, I assume. That seems to be supported:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/importing-mailing-lists-mbox-listserv-google-groups-emails/79773

Discourse also offers free hosting to open source projects under a set of conditions:

https://blog.discourse.org/2018/11/free-hosting-for-open-source-v2/

May SWI-Prolog qualifies? The disadvantage I see in Discourse is the high hosting price if not hosting in own server. Self hosting also have its costs in maintenance time.

I also looked into alternatives such as spectrum.chat but didn't find so far any with same attractive feature set as Discourse.

Cheers,
Paulo
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Paulo Moura
Logtalk developer



Kay Hamacher

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Jan 29, 2019, 12:22:53 PM1/29/19
to Jan Wielemaker, swi-p...@googlegroups.com

Hi

so .. there is the concept in the German
language of "Medienbruch". I wasn't able
to find an appropriate translation to
English, though. (Like "Angst", I guess)

A "Medienbruch" appears whenever one
has different layers of communication or
orthogonal data streams that need to be
consolidated somehow (e.g. discussions,
announcements, code submissions, bug
tracking, ...) and one - probably - needs
to switch contexts, tools, applications,
.... to achieve that.

This implies that a solution, which on
the surface appears cool, imposes on
its users a mental burden in the form
of the necessity to switch contexts, to disrupt
attention.

For example: reading mailing lists in
your powerful editor of choice (be it
emacs or vi), coding in this editor, and interacting
with a VCS via the editor is less context switch
than having a web-browser for discussions, a web-
interface for git, and a JS-based, nice
looking and colorful editor running.

IMHO, infrastructure providers/
systems/frameworks like Discourse
and the like (Gitlab/Github to its full
extend), fit the bill of a "Medienbruch"
and imply lower productivity as
attention is the most valuable
resource these days.

My (very personal) rule of thumb is:
whenever a system is predominantly relying
on a web-interface then the potential
for "Medienbruch" and cumbersome workflows
which cannot be automated is huge.

But this is just a (minority?) opinion.

Best
K

Volker Wysk

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Jan 29, 2019, 12:41:14 PM1/29/19
to swi-p...@googlegroups.com
Am Dienstag, 29. Januar 2019, 17:10:38 CET schrieb Jan Wielemaker:
> - Do we want a proper forum or merely a mailing list?

I'd prefer a mailing list. For instance, you can't download and archive a
forum (without much hassle).

Bye


Peter Ludemann

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Jan 29, 2019, 1:29:33 PM1/29/19
to swi-p...@googlegroups.com
I'm surprised that Google doesn't support "large" groups because Google uses Google groups internally for all kinds of things, and many of those groups are much larger than 1000.
Maybe there's an issue with some mail systems? (e.g., my wife stopped recently experienced a problem with hotmail for receiving statements from the bank).

Also, before you decide that a mail has been lost, remember that the standard failure-handling protocol is to retry with exponential backoff, so it can take a day or two before you get a failure message.

Jan Wielemaker

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Jan 29, 2019, 1:36:31 PM1/29/19
to Volker Wysk, swi-p...@googlegroups.com
My estimate of the community is that we surely want something that can
be used as a mailinglist. The Google forum provided that as well. Seems
Discourse does the same. That, I think, also covers the worries of Kay.

That said, I also like a little more structure than the simple archives
created by e.g. mailman.

Cheers --- Jan

Jan Wielemaker

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Jan 29, 2019, 1:44:29 PM1/29/19
to Paulo Moura, swi-p...@googlegroups.com
Thanks Paulo,

On 29/01/2019 17:33, Paulo Moura wrote:
> Hi Jan,
>
> I also have been looking recently for a good option to consolidate
> Logtalk announcements list, forums, and chat room into a single
> service. I inevitably come across Discourse. The advantages I see in
> it is that it includes an importer for the forum software I use
> (phpBB). For SWI-Prolog, importing the contents of the mailing list
> would be a high priority, I assume. That seems to be supported:
>
> https://meta.discourse.org/t/importing-mailing-lists-mbox-listserv-google-groups-emails/79773
>
> Discourse also offers free hosting to open source projects under a
> set of conditions:
>
> https://blog.discourse.org/2018/11/free-hosting-for-open-source-v2/
>
> May SWI-Prolog qualifies? The disadvantage I see in Discourse is the
> high hosting price if not hosting in own server. Self hosting also
> have its costs in maintenance time.

It seems likely that SWI-Prolog qualifies for the free hosting. Fully
paid hosting is too expensive (unless some commercial partner wants to
sponsor it). On the other hand, there is 85% educational discount for
which we probably can apply as well.

I have the impression that self-hosting is fairly easy to set up. All
in all, I think that getting it running is doable, one way or another.

> I also looked into alternatives such as spectrum.chat but didn't find
> so far any with same attractive feature set as Discourse.

Good to know. I'll wait for some more feedback. If nothing blocking
or more interesting comes up, applying for free hosting as open source
project is a sensible next step.

Cheers --- Jan

Dan

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Jan 29, 2019, 2:39:59 PM1/29/19
to SWI-Prolog
Hi, 

I like the web interface of the current forum / mailing list, in particular that i can easily see the postings of the day, that it puts the latest responses / topics on the top, and that i can easily search for past discussions / responses, all in the same interface. 

If another provider has such features then it would be great. 

thanks,

Dan

Jan Wielemaker

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Jan 29, 2019, 3:16:34 PM1/29/19
to Dan, SWI-Prolog
On 29/01/2019 20:39, Dan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I like the web interface of the current forum / mailing list, in
> particular that i can easily see the postings of the day, that it puts
> the latest responses / topics on the top, and that i can easily search
> for past discussions / responses, all in the same interface.
>
> If another provider has such features then it would be great.

I think most modern software has these features. Discourse comes with a
lot more. This is a clear vote for not `just a mail list'.

My main worries are the installation and maintenance hassle, the spam
protection, control over the data and to some extend the costs. I assume
we can manage the costs, either using a free offer, sponsoring or being
low enough not to bother about the hassle.

Cheers --- Jan

Dan

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Jan 29, 2019, 3:19:39 PM1/29/19
to SWI-Prolog
Could it be possible to talk to someone relevant at Google to see if any restrictions could be removed ...

just a thought ...

Dan

On Tuesday, 29 January 2019 20:44:29 UTC+2, Jan Wielemaker wrote:

Paulo Moura

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Jan 29, 2019, 3:26:01 PM1/29/19
to Jan Wielemaker, swi-p...@googlegroups.com
Just noticed that the free hosting offer for open source projects excludes migration/import of existing data :(

James Cash

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Jan 29, 2019, 5:02:01 PM1/29/19
to SWI-Prolog
I've hosted some Discourse systems in the past and, while it wasn't my favourite experience, it wasn't too bad...That was several years ago too and I can only hope it's improved in the meanwhile. I think the VPS it ran in was something on the order of $10-$20 (USD) per month.

On the other hand, that was a private forum, so I'm not sure how good the spam protection stuff is, but I have seen, for example. Keyboardio's Discourse formum (community.keyboard.io) and that seems fairly spam-free.

James

Anne Ogborn

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Jan 30, 2019, 3:15:12 PM1/30/19
to swi-p...@googlegroups.com
just a note - discourse is not "discord", the messaging app.

That had me confused for a bit.

Jan Wielemaker

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Jan 31, 2019, 3:35:07 AM1/31/19
to Anne Ogborn, swi-p...@googlegroups.com
On 30/01/2019 21:15, 'Anne Ogborn' via SWI-Prolog wrote:
> just a note - discourse is not "discord", the messaging app.

Indeed. A possibly interesting page is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software

There are a couple of things I like about Discourse. Among them is the
option to link them to github issues. Right now issues and their
discussions are on too many places. The notion of `categories' might
help people who are only interested in e.g., version announcements or
bugs, etc.

Cheers --- Jan

> That had me confused for a bit.
>
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nicos.ang...@gmail.com

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Feb 2, 2019, 9:17:25 AM2/2/19
to SWI-Prolog

Dear Jan, all,

On Tuesday, January 29, 2019 at 4:10:45 PM UTC, Jan Wielemaker wrote:
Hi,

There have been several complaints about mails being lost and people not
liking Google groups for various reasons. I surely sympathise with the
latter, but the advantage of Google groups has always been that it is
trouble free from a maintenance perspective.

Mails getting lost is more severe.  I was pointer at this message:
https://groups.google.com/a/isocpp.org/forum/m/#!msg/sg14/FZEWCOSyFlk/MFUXyq1YDAAJ
which suggests Google won't/doesn't support large groups any more, where
large
starts at 500-1,000 users.  We currently have 931.


 I have had in the past at least one of my posts losing their way to the forum.
No amount of reposting made any difference and as far as I understood
you, as owner, never got any notifications as to the reasons.
In addition we are giving rather a substantial amount of extra data to
the provider. Finally flocking all to a single platform/company we ran
the danger of helping to close down independent competition and then be left with poor
maintenance and service closure.

Ideally, of course we have a nice Prolog forum and mail list management
system :)


 
By far the best option. The main disadvantage is that we have an abysmal
record for running co-ordinated projects. In the long run though you have
easy control and fine tuning, and you already have a web-server and a mail
package, if i recall correctly. Furthermore, it would act as a show case
for Swi's web capabilities.
You 'ld be surprised, that once you have access to this, it could be a nice
add-on to big academic projects that have interacting "customers".
Say in fields such as, the museum/information systems and health informatics.

.
I think it is time to seriously consider migrating the list. One of the
options I saw is _Discourse_ (www.discourse.org). What attracts me is a
modern forum, integration with mail and integration with github.

My first set of questions are:

  - Do we want a proper forum or merely a mailing list?
  - Do you have good/bad experiences with discourse?
  - Alternatives?
  - Would you be prepared to set it up, maintain it or
    act as moderator?

        Thanks --- Jan


In my opinion it will be good to move to something different.
I would prefer mostly email based, but for the younger audiences
web will be essential. As the forum kind of works for now,
I suggest you don't rush it, making the long term the main focal point.

I am happy to contribute code or time, but again SWI has not been run as
a collaborative project- which is the main stumbling block.
You will probably chose something that can be run by one person.

There are 2 separate issues as far as i can see. The software and the hosting.
I would be more than happy to pay an annual subscription as a user
to partially enable independent hosting of SWI. Something that provides user authentication
would be ideal and carrying SWI towards a path would suit my perceived future
needs very well.

Regards,

Nicos

---

Nicos Angelopoulos
http://stcoics.org.uk/~nicos


Jan Wielemaker

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Feb 5, 2019, 10:12:49 AM2/5/19
to nicos.ang...@gmail.com, SWI-Prolog, swip...@discoursemail.com
Hi Nicos,

Thanks for your input. I'm Cc'ing the new location of the forum. It is
now kindly hosted for free at discourse.group. Yes, a nice Prolog based
solution would be great and we have a lot of the stuff to build it from.
Still, I doubt we have the resources to get and keep this working.

Discourse seems to be a clean and open system. We now have three admins
(James Cache, Anne Ogborn and me), so I think we are in good shape.

Cheers --- Jan
> <http://www.discourse.org>). What attracts me is a

Anne Ogborn

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Feb 5, 2019, 8:49:50 PM2/5/19
to SWI-Prolog, swip...@discoursemail.com
Something I would emphasize as we discuss list solutions.

As a project, the honest fact is that we have, basically, a single Jan.

While many other people contribute, we're very thinly spread for this sort of work.

A big bike shed over the tech of the mail list comes at a cost.





Ben Engbers

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Feb 6, 2019, 3:30:11 AM2/6/19
to SWI-Prolog
Hi Jan,

I prefer a forum. My experience with mailing lists is that I automatically move the mail to another map and than usually they get out of sight.

The main advantage to me is that a forum gives a quick overview of all the topics. Another usefull advantage - at least for me - is that when visiting a forum, you quickly learn which members are most autorative on their topics. This saves a lot of time.

Cheers,
Ben

Op dinsdag 29 januari 2019 17:10:45 UTC+1 schreef Jan Wielemaker:

Raivo Laanemets

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Feb 6, 2019, 10:48:32 AM2/6/19
to SWI-Prolog
Discourse is likely the best option. The software is Open Source, so it's sustainable even after Discource
as company gets acquired or is shut down (it's just another VC-backed startup now).

I also use this reading workflow. I don't have patience to go though every reply to every topic through my mail
inbox. I even use GG web interface to write replies here and only read topics that are interesting to me.
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