Re: [boost] Replacing the ML with a forum

sob., 7 wrz 2024 o 09:04 Andrzej Krzemienski napisał(a):

sob., 7 wrz 2024 o 01:53 Vinnie Falco napisał(a):

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On Fri, Sep 6, 2024 at 4:05 PM Andrzej Krzemienski wrote:

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śr., 26 kwi 2023 o 16:08 Vinnie Falco via Boost napisał(a):

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Before we replace the mailing list with a forum (and implement a mail gateway)

I want to be crystal clear here: no one is getting rid of the mailing list :)

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If so, do you care if

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discussions are changed to be flat (like Discourse)?

What does "flat" mean here? I am not familiar with Discourse. Could we get a sample or example?

Great question. So, "threaded" means that the messages are presented in a hierarchy. That is, when someone replies to a message the reply is nested. Multiple replies to the same message are nested at the same level. And when someone replies to a reply, it is nested relative to its reply. It is probably easier to just show you what that looks like:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Nntp.jpg

Users of Boost's mailing list want threading, which became obvious a couple of years ago when the mail provider was changed and the threading broke. I can't find the discussion on this but it is there.

The author of Discourse is very much against threading, and he is vocal about it:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/threaded-discussion-is-ultimately-too-complex-t...

The popularity of mailing lists has gone down significantly, although it is still a format which offers advantages to active contributors. Younger generations of developers prefer the immediacy of SnapChat, Discord, and platforms like Reddit over mail subscriptions. To address this need, we have been working on deploying a web-based front end to the mailing list. This feature is part of mailman 3 and it is called "HyperKitty:"

https://docs.mailman3.org/projects/hyperkitty/en/stable/

Our deployment of HyperKitty has been paused while the governance issues are being resolved and this is the latest snapshot (I don't think the messages were imported):

https://lists.preview.boost.org/mailman3/lists/

With considerable effort we can work this into a solution which allows existing contributors to use the mailing list as they are already accustomed to using, while allowing new volunteers who prefer using a browser to also participate. A side effect is that it will make browsing the archives more pleasant.

First of all, thank you so very much for making this herculean effort. Making a service that provides the new interface as well as the old interface seem like a super-hard task to me.

Now I better understand the question, so, currently, when I am using a Gmail client. 1. I receive new messages, and notifications about them, from many forums, Boost mailing list being only one of them.

Maybe I should clarify the one above. I participate in many WG21 (that is, ISO C++) "reflectors", which are, I think, also email based. I appreciate that I have a uniform interface from both these reflectors and Boost mailing list. Regards, &rzej; 2. I receive notifications (e.g. on my mobile) about replies to threads I

participate in. 3. I can see which messages I didn't read yet (they are highlighted as unread) 4. I can mark a read message as unread, so that I know I need to get back to it again. 5. I have a list of threads 6. For each thread I can see a flat sequence of messages, which are unread. 7. I can reply, and also add individuals from outside the members, to each individual message, and quote arbitrary parts of the previous content. 8. When I reply, sometimes I need to reshuffle or multiply the quoted text, or use quotes from multiple messages. 9. I do search for some words in the messages or authors' messages

I do not use the following, because I don't have them, but if you could make them work, that would be great: W1. Enable me to use Markdown in the messages (not being able to do that is a pain for me) W2. Threaded messages. I could live without them though.

Regards, &rzej