(low-frequency) mailing lists | suggestions & summary of prior thread

[Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss]

Follow-up discussion to the post "Inactive mailing lists".

tl;dr There are three topics discussed here:

   1. For mailing list admins: *Suggestions For Information To Add To 
Mailing List Descriptions*
   2. For mailing list communities: *Moving Certain Groups To Discourse?*
   3. For everyone: *Summary Of Prior Discussion About Inactive / 
Infrequently Used Lists*

As always, the discussion is open for your feedback and ideas!

_1. Information To Add To Mailing List Descriptions_

If you are a list admin, consider adding the following to the mailing 
list description. This way subscribers are well-informed about the 
communication channels used for your project/community:

   * Other communication channels for this project and their intended 
use (e.g., for announcements, user support, live chat, etc.)
   * Relevant links for the project (e.g., website, wiki, etc.)
   * Intended scope for the list (i.e., what it is for / not for)
   * Policies regarding moderation, code of conduct, etc.

For examples, see:

   * Energy-efficiency: 
https://mail.kde.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/energy-efficiency
   * Kde-soc: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-soc
   * Visual-design: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/visual-design

_2. Moving Certain Groups To Discourse?_

Beyond typical forum functionality, Discourse integrates well with email 
and RSS. Something to consider for low-frequency mailing list groups: 
there may be projects and communities that benefit by officially moving 
communication to Discourse. Although I have no data to back up the 
claim, I suspect having users interact on a more active platform could 
generally increase engagement within KDE.

A nice feature of Discourse is: for mailing list subscribers who wish to 
continue receiving posts in their mail clients, it is possible to follow 
discussions via RSS or by enable mailing list mode in Discourse. It 
takes some setting up; see below for more.

A few language and country-specific communities already have made a move 
to Discourse. See:

    https://discuss.kde.org/c/local-communities/

Some of these groups also have low traffic mailing lists. Unless current 
list subscribers also move to Discourse, there is the risk of fracturing 
the community as list subscribers are seperated from the people at the 
forum. In this case, archiving and closing the infrequently-used mailing 
list might be beneficial. Of course, that is for the list admin and 
relevant community to decide.

Info about using Discourse with email and RSS:

   * Users can enable "Mailing list mode", which allows one to receive 
and respond to posts via email (i.e., just like a mailing list). By 
default, users receive posts to /all/ categories -- limiting posts to 
specific categories requires manually "muting" the other categories. See 
the community wiki for more detail, including how to mute categories:

     https://community.kde.org/KDE.org/KDE_Forums#Mailing_List_Mode

   * Alternatively, one can follow specific categories, tags, etc. as an 
RSS feed. Again, see the community wiki for details:

     https://community.kde.org/KDE.org/KDE_Forums#Following_RSS_Feeds

_3. Summary: Prior Discussion About Inactive Mailing Lists_

Here are some bullet points from the discussion about inactive / 
infrequently used mailing lists. For the full thread, go to:

    https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2023q2/007577.html

   * Some lists deliberately have archiving disabled, so an empty 
archive is not necessarily an indicator of no activity.
   * Some lists are primarily used for following bug reports (e.g., 
*-bugs) or commits.
   * Subscribing to a low traffic email list is rarely something people 
notice, and the UI of mail clients rarely gets in the way. By contrast, 
the UI of e.g. Matrix very much gets in the way of staying in 200 low 
traffic channels.
   * Low email traffic does not mean subscribers will not answer 
appropriate posts sent to it.
   * Unless current subscribers also make the move to a new channel, 
moving discussion to a new platform risks separating the people who have 
answers (the current subscribed people) with the people who have the 
questions (the people redirected elsewhere).
   * For lists that are unquestionably no longer in use, please file a 
sysadmin ticket and they will get removed.
   * See this ticket for mailing lists that have been or will be removed 
as a result of the discussion: https://phabricator.kde.org/T16387

Cheers,
Joseph

-- 
Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss
KDE Internal Communications & KDE Eco Community Manager
OpenPGP: 8FC5 4178 DC44 AD55 08E7 DF57 453E 5746 59A6 C06F
Matrix: @joseph:kde.org

Generally available Monday-Thursday from 10-16h CET/CEST. Outside of 
these times it may take a little longer for me to respond.

KDE Eco: Building Energy-Efficient Free Software!
Website: https://eco.kde.org
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