Re: Please stop sending Github messages to the ML

[Painter, Jeff]

Someone (I forget who) told me that many of the people discussing 
standard_names would not want to deal with the additional complexities of 
Github.

From: Brian Eaton <ea...@ucar.edu>
Date: Wednesday, November 7, 2018 at 2:41 PM
To: "Painter, Jeff" <paint...@llnl.gov>
Cc: "e.r.g.quaegheb...@tudelft.nl" <e.r.g.quaegheb...@tudelft.nl>, 
"cf-metadata@listserv.llnl.gov" <cf-metadata@listserv.llnl.gov>
Subject: Re: Please stop sending Github messages to the ML

Erik,

> I don't have a view of the whole setup, so I may be missing some aspects
> that complicate this. But even then, it may be worth the effort.

The piece you're missing is that I'm trying to get Mailman support off of
my plate; not make it a more integral part of the system.  The CF
conventions activities are supported at LLNL, not at NCAR.  The original CF
website which I created at NCAR was moved to LLNL quite a few years ago,
but for reasons I've never understood it wasn't possible, at least at that
time, to support a Mailman server there.  So it stayed at NCAR, and has
been stuck here ever since.

Again, I don't really see why moving all discussion to github wouldn't be
preferable to having discussions on both github and a Mailman list
(wherever that list might reside).  But I'm not a github expert so don't
know whether there are drawbacks to having all the discussions there.

Brian


On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 3:14 PM Painter, Jeff 
<paint...@llnl.gov<mailto:paint...@llnl.gov>> wrote:
It certainly is a hack!  When we set up this two-list system long ago, LLNL's 
lists were managed by Majordomo.  No they are run by LISTSERV.  I don't know 
whether LISTSERV supports flexible topics within the list.

On 11/7/18, 1:58 PM, "Erik Quaeghebeur" 
<e.r.g.quaegheb...@tudelft.nl<mailto:e.r.g.quaegheb...@tudelft.nl>> wrote:

    Dear Brian,


    > I don't believe that 
cf-metadata@listserv.llnl.gov<mailto:cf-metadata@listserv.llnl.gov> is a 
mailman list.  The
    > cf-metadata mailman list (which I administer at NCAR) is
    > cf-metad...@cgd.ucar.edu<mailto:cf-metad...@cgd.ucar.edu>.  The LLNL 
server is the one that gets the github
    > notifications and sends them to *mostly* the same people who are members 
of
    > the mailman list.  I say mostly because the membership in these lists is
    > synchronized by hand.  When people sign up or remove themselves from the
    > mailman list, I send this information to Jeff Painter who then makes the
    > changes at LLNL.  We originally set things up like this so that people
    > didn't need to sign up in two places to follow the discussions that were
    > happening on the mailman list and on the trac server at LLNL.  As github
    > has replaced trac the current system was set up.

    I understand the logic, but this sounds like a hack. It seems this can be
    dealt with as follows:

    * You as cf-metadata admin creates topics as needed
    * LLNL list traffic is sent to the cf-metadata list using one or more
    specific topic that people can (un)subscribe (from) to.

    It seems to me such an approach would have multiple advantages:

    * No need to (manually) sync users
    * Users are in control of selecting topics
    * Reverse traffic is likely possible by users sending mail to the
    appropriate topic (how exactly this works, I don't know, but it would
    surprise me if this were not possible)

    I don't have a view of the whole setup, so I may be missing some aspects
    that complicate this. But even then, it may be worth the effort.


    Best,

    Erik