Let’s try to get a consensus on this @adw@michael. I was the one proposing this, but given the fact that:
Qubes-users will still be active (thus have new discussions that won’t be on the import - and the import is not an ongoing mirror)
The effort involved in migrating
And the possible confusion it might generate
I think we can skip this for now.
If needed we may be able to do this in the future without loosing any posts as long as we leave the forum in read-only mode during that migration operation.
That’s very strange. I quoted your post in my last post above, and it appeared in the edit window, but it disappeared once I actually posted my comment.
Im for skipping, the effort in porting and redirecting is high. docs can be updated to here and user migration will organically happen over time. there will be some duplication and im sure us mods will end up linking people who cant use a search box but thats just an inherent risk of any migration of a user facing system
This is an interesting option, especially in light of google’s interface requiring login now. It would be an alternative to mail-archive.com, and would allow (I think?) to easily search and reference threads on a mailing list.
I have made the qubes-users mirror category be muted by default to avoid mailing_list subscribers suffering double-spam (from the live one and the discourse mirror)
So in theory we’d be ready to open the mirror for anyone to see, if you agree. But before we might be able to also add the archives of past discussions there (read the next paragraph).
Found a way to easily import past qubes-users discussions
I’ve found a simpler way than this one for importing old conversations. But I need your help @marmarek or @adw – or anyone who has access to the full qubes-users archive.
Basically we’ll be remailing all the past discussions of qubes-users onto a particular discourse email (essentially simulating the mailinglist).
Here’s how we can move forward with this (two options):
option a) sending me a zip of all the qubes-users past emails (into .mbox or .eml – thunderbird or gmail and (then I do option b with them)
Shall we move forward with this? I would do it all myself but unfortunately I don’t have the full archive. If any of you doesn’t mind sending me the archive, then I can do the rest – as not to take so much time from you.
In short, we can make it read/write, but it only works qubes-users -> discourse. In other words, we can allow people to reply, but that will stay only in the forum and not get forwarded back to the mailing list (thus risking some user confusion). So I think this better implemented as a read-only archive of the mailing list.
The value of having this read-only archive would be:
yet another publicly available copy of the mailing list
through searching people would be able to find previous threads on the mailing list.
people being able to reference mailing list discussions without leaving the forum (as mentioned before)
I have a setting that should tell warn people when they try to reply to mailing list thread that it is read-only. And we can change that message.
Personally I dont see a huge benefit in this, particularly if forum
users cant reply to messages, but it should be obvious that I’m not a
“forum” user. Turning the mailing list in to a read-only resource will
just hasten its decline.
I guess it depends on how referencing to mail threads is done: if it’s
a somewhat opaque link its no use to me, or users like me.
As to the benefits of searching, I fear that the forum may end up like
Reddit - a first resource for people who dont seem to know how to search
online, or cant be bothered. There are already two searchable archives,
and good(ish) documentation.
I’ve set the still hidden mailing list read-only category to be muted by default so hopefully users like you don’t get two copies of the mailing list.
Decreasing the barrier of entry has potential to do that, but I think the discourse software does enourage users to look at previous discussions. One particular example is the following:
The only difference is is the convenience for forum users. It’ll make it easier to find and link to those past and current discussions.