I hate to be that guy, but there are open-source projects that have
mailing lists with FAR MORE than 600 people on individual lists. Mailing
lists do scale well to high numbers of members and high amounts of
activity. While we do occasionally have a few people that come in and
say "woah too much email", apparently not everyone feels that way. We
currently have 92 individuals on the discuss list. Of those 92
individuals, only 16 of them are in digest mode, which sends you the
emails from the list approximately once a day. Everyone else gets mails
from the list in their inbox as it is sent out.
My opposition to the idea of a forum comes from a few different
perspectives:
1.) It's more software to maintain. SYN/HAK's official online
self-maintained web-presence currently consists of MediaWiki, Spiff, and
Mailman. If you aren't aware, we battled spam on the wiki for MONTHS,
with me deleting literally hundreds of pages per day and blocking dozens
of accounts. Our front page was being defaced by spambots, and that was
risking our Google rankings due to the fact that there were so many spam
links. The only web apps that get hit by spam more than wikis are
forums. For reference, feel free to check this link[1] to see just how
much crap I've deleted off the wiki in the past two years.
2.) It's another account for someone to register for. Right now, for
SYN/HAK stuff alone, I currently have the following accounts that I have
to maintain credentials for: MediaWiki, Spiff, Meetup, Mailman passwords
(subscription and list admin/moderation), Square (for accepting credit
cards) and probably another dozen that I'm forgetting about. That's not
already including the credentials that I use for other things like
email, Facebook, IRC NickServ, etc. If we add a forum, that's another
web app that I, and everyone else who wishes to participate in our
discussion, has to maintain credentials for.
2a.) Pretty much everyone has email and is at least moderately familiar
with how to use it. A forum is yet another barrier to entry for
participation.
3.) Hackerspaces in general tend to gravitate toward mailing lists or
Google Groups (which are just Google's version of a mailing list with a
couple of other features). I'm not saying that we have to be like every
other hackerspace in the world, but for the most part, my research has
shown that for every hackerspace that uses a forum, there are a few
dozen that use mailing lists as their primary form of communication.
4.) It's worked for two plus years. We haven't really run into a
problem that a forum would solve yet, and honestly, I personally think
that moving discussion off to a forum would decrease the amount of
discussion activity we see. People generally don't check forums as
often as they do their email, and having things spread out across
multiple threads, subforums, etc would make it a much longer process to
get caught up with what's going on in the space.
Obviously, given that we are a do-ocracy, I can't forbid anyone from
implementing a forum, but I figured I would at least voice my opposition
to it.
Chris
[1]
https://synhak.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&offset=&limit=50000&type=delete&user=Phuzion&page=
On 11/15/2013 2:38 AM, Andrew Buczko wrote:
What's going to happen when we have 600+ members?
I still say that we should use a forum
On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 10:18 PM, Torrie Fischer
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Wednesday, November 13, 2013 15:52:35 Chris Egeland wrote:
> Hey hackers!
>
> I've been watching the mailing lists very closely for some time
now, and
> have noticed a general uptrend in the volume of email sent to the
> discuss list. Sometimes we get offtopic and go off on tangents
about
> toast, or other topics which are fun to talk about, but are
ultimately
> irrelevant to the space itself. Usually, this isn't a problem,
but for
> someone who is interested in the space, but not the minutiae of
every
> little bit of day-to-day operations, it can quickly turn into an
> overwhelming amount of email.
>
> Today, I'm asking for input on how we should proceed with the
mailing
> lists. As you may know, we currently have 5 lists, two of which are
> public, one semipublic, and two private. [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> and
> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> are the two
that everyone knows about. Members may
> know that they are automatically subscribed to
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>.
> Board members are subscribed to [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> and us sysadmin folk
> are members of [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>.
>
> My recommendation is to create an "offtopic" list, which would
have very
> very lax rules on what can be posted. Anything you want to chat
about.
> Want to debate why the RubberDucks is a terrible team name and
the Aeros
> was WAY better? Sure, no problem. Got a pothole on Market
street that
> irks you every day? Have at it. Joke threads? Toast? No
problem. The
> other side to this idea is that the discuss list would have some
basic
> rules imposed that mean that any topics to the discuss list would be
> required to be relevant to the space itself. Projects occurring
at the
> space would be relevant topics, open hours discussion, meeting
minutes, etc.
Looking through the archives, I can see three sources of
off-topicness:
* A newbie comes to SYNHAK and has no idea what the unwritten
rules for
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> are and starts an
irrelevant thread
* A newbie comes to SYNHAK and has no idea what the unwritten
rules for
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> are and makes an
irrelevant reply to an on-topic thread
* Someone who is familiar with the unwritten rules for
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> is
purposely going off-topic.
For the first two, how will they know that [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> is for off-
topic stuff if they signed a mailing list signup sheet at a booth?
Should we
tell them "If you want to hear and make mustache jokes or other
off-topic
drivel that isn't about hacking, you can subscribe to
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>."
For the third, its usually overlooked as only established members
of the
community do that and they have a feel for when it is acceptable.
Here's a solution that'll actually work: Just tell the people
going off-topic
that you don't want it on the discuss list. Usually you only need
to tell a
newbie just once and they'll learn the ropes.
The reason I know that this will work is because this is what
happens in the
real world. Have a look at archives of Usenet groups around
September of every
year before 1993. They'd get a batch of fresh-faced newbies who don't
understand the culture. The regulars would quickly jump in and
inform them
that, while they are welcome to participate, there are a few
social norms that
should be followed regarding staying on topic, being polite, and other
netiquette.
Then again, we are a do-ocracy. If someone wants to throw the
discuss list
into moderation and enforce a rule that every post is on-topic,
you're more
than welcome to take over my job as mailman administrator. I'd
feel as though
I'm being treated like a child with no manners for something I didn't
contribute to. Thats a quick way to make everyone feel unwelcome.
If someone
wants to put together a web-based forum for us to use, go ahead.
I'd wager
that none of the technically minded people who live on email will
use it for
any significant period of time.
As evidence of both of these statements being true, I encourage
folks to find
me a successful hackerspace near our end of the peer-to-peer
driven spectrum
of community involvement that satisfies both conditions which
appear to be the
ones that this thread is trying to solve:
* Doesn't use an email list as their primary asynchronous
discussion channel
* Has infallible enforcement of topicalness on their primary
discussion list
>
> So, let me know what you guys think. I'm not officially
proposing this,
> but we may chat about it at the next meeting as a discussion topic,
> because it would fundamentally mean we change how the mailing
lists are
> organized and structured.
>
> Thanks,
> Chris
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
> https://synhak.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
_______________________________________________
Discuss mailing list
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
https://synhak.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
_______________________________________________
Discuss mailing list
[email protected]
https://synhak.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
_______________________________________________
Discuss mailing list
[email protected]
https://synhak.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
