Re: [DISCUSS] moving email lists to Discourse

[Joan Touzet]

On 2020-03-15 11:02 a.m., Reddy B. wrote:

However, if you are an outsider looking for context that was discussed 2 years ago, 
even Couchdb's official archive 
website does not have a 
search function. There may be a way but this is clearly not as user friendly than 
something like discourse.


That archive has been retired, though it's still online for some time 
yet. Try this one for a much better experience, with search:


https://lists.apache.org/list.html?dev@couchdb.apache.org


So far I have never subscribed to email notifications on these platforms, I just visit 
the website and have no problem with that. Moreover something like Discourse even groups 
the topics that were discussed "since you last visited". Just sharing my 
experience since many people may be similar.


It's harder for those of us who actively maintain the software as part 
of our daily routine to switch from a "push" to a 'pull" model for these 
things, but it is absolutely easier for people only looking to ask a few 
questions and get answers - that's for sure.


That said, I rely entirely on email from GitHub to stay abreast of our 
code changes and pull requests. I think I'd be sunk if I had to use the 
activity feed on GitHub's website.


-Joan "social distancing works" Touzet

Re: [DISCUSS] moving email lists to Discourse

[Steven Le Roux]

Just wanted to share that as a user, I'm a big fan of the FDB digest sent
by discourse (FoundationDB Summary).

Great readability and save me a lot of time.

On Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 3:32 PM Garren Smith  wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> The CouchDB slack channel has been a real success with lots of people
> asking for help and getting involved. The main issue is that it is not
> searchable so we often get people asking the same questions over and over.
> The user mailing list is great in that sense that if you have subscribed to
> it you have a searchable list of questions and answers. However, it's
> really not user-friendly and judging by the fact that it has very low user
> participation I'm guessing most people prefer to use slack to ask
> questions.
>
> I've been really impressed with how the FoundationDB forum[1] and the rust
> internal forum work [2]. I find them easy to use and really encourage
> participation. I would like to propose that we move our user and dev
> discussion to Discourse or a forum that works as well as Discourse. I think
> that would make it really easy for users of CouchDB to look up answers to
> questions and get involved in the development discussion.
>
> I haven't checked yet, but I'm sure we could get all discourse threads to
> automatically email back to the user and dev mailing list so that we still
> fulfill our Apache requirements.
>
> I know its a big step away from what we're used to with our mailing lists,
> but I think it would definitely open up our community.
>
> Cheers
> Garren
>
>
> [1] https://forums.foundationdb.org/
> [2] https://internals.rust-lang.org/
>

RE: [DISCUSS] moving email lists to Discourse

[Reddy B .]

To add my two cents, I personally engage much more on communities using 
discourse or some modern Forum engines, than on those relying on mailing lists.

As far as browsing archives is concerned, I personally always find it painful 
to browse email archives to find relevant information. Maybe if you have been 
part of the community from day 1, and you have been storing all emails locally, 
then launching a search in your email client is convenient (but even then, the 
quality of your results will depend on the search implementation of your email 
client + what about if you're not using your regular computer). However, if you 
are an outsider looking for context that was discussed 2 years ago, even 
Couchdb's official archive 
website does not have a 
search function. There may be a way but this is clearly not as user friendly 
than something like discourse.

I would also note that beyond archive scenarios, one major benefit of tools 
like Discord that people often fail to verbalize is that they capture social 
dynamics around a topic/issue. You can see how many people viewed a topic, 
liked a post etc... It is so valuable to know that the piece of information you 
have found helped the original poster, or was "blessed" with a like by a senior 
member of the community.

This also helps the archiving scenario since you have very helpful activity 
feeds, which also allow you to stay on top of your preferred communities 
quickly. If questions are redundant you can link to the previous topic easily 
or even merge topics. Referencing former discussions on emails is much more 
difficult and impractical. My observation is that people just get tired of 
answering the same question and ignore new posters or start replying with 
one-liners.

So far I have never subscribed to email notifications on these platforms, I 
just visit the website and have no problem with that. Moreover something like 
Discourse even groups the topics that were discussed "since you last visited". 
Just sharing my experience since many people may be similar.


De : Dave Cottlehuber 
Envoyé : dimanche 15 mars 2020 14:36
À : dev@couchdb.apache.org 
Objet : Re: [DISCUSS] moving email lists to Discourse

On Fri, 13 Mar 2020, at 14:35, Naomi Slater wrote:
> apparently GitHub has discussions now. it's still in beta, but you can
> specifically request it if you want it if you contact support, I think
>
> e.g., https://github.com/zeit/next.js/discussions
> 

interesting.

> I'm interested to know what we think about this and how this
> might/could fit into our plans for user support, discussion, etc.
>
> > On 13 Mar 2020, at 00:41, Arturo GARCIA-VARGAS  wrote:
> >
> > I'm sure Discourse is a fantastic thing (never used it!) but for us 
> > dinosaurs that still use Email it would be a bad move.
> >
> > Plain text rulez

I concur.

My 2c is that I have become a unix greybeard in habit, if not physical
attributes. I feel that neither slack nor discourse facilitate being
involved in multiple communities concurrently, they are actively hostile to
it. I spent significantly less time in discourse/slack vs irc/email
communities.

The rust discourse, and others that I follow, truncate outbound emails,
and also limit the numbers of outbound messages, effectively making it
not really email, and forcing you to browse the site. This is significantly
slower than churning through a stash of emails to catch up.

That said, user convenience trumps developer satisfaction. If the flock
is moving off mailing lists, then the shepherd should follow.

A+
Dave

Re: [DISCUSS] moving email lists to Discourse

[Dave Cottlehuber]

On Fri, 13 Mar 2020, at 14:35, Naomi Slater wrote:
> apparently GitHub has discussions now. it's still in beta, but you can 
> specifically request it if you want it if you contact support, I think
> 
> e.g., https://github.com/zeit/next.js/discussions 
> 

interesting.

> I'm interested to know what we think about this and how this 
> might/could fit into our plans for user support, discussion, etc.
> 
> > On 13 Mar 2020, at 00:41, Arturo GARCIA-VARGAS  wrote:
> > 
> > I'm sure Discourse is a fantastic thing (never used it!) but for us 
> > dinosaurs that still use Email it would be a bad move.
> > 
> > Plain text rulez

I concur.

My 2c is that I have become a unix greybeard in habit, if not physical
attributes. I feel that neither slack nor discourse facilitate being
involved in multiple communities concurrently, they are actively hostile to
it. I spent significantly less time in discourse/slack vs irc/email
communities.

The rust discourse, and others that I follow, truncate outbound emails,
and also limit the numbers of outbound messages, effectively making it
not really email, and forcing you to browse the site. This is significantly
slower than churning through a stash of emails to catch up.

That said, user convenience trumps developer satisfaction. If the flock
is moving off mailing lists, then the shepherd should follow.

A+
Dave

Re: native encryption for couchdb 4.0?

[Dave Cottlehuber]

On Thu, 12 Mar 2020, at 17:35, Robert Samuel Newson wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Yes, platform independent, it's not custom C work, just calls into the 
> existing crypto module.
> 
> Invisible at the API layer, it's all about the protection of data at 
> rest within FDB.

Hey Bob,

Quietly excited about this - I could use this already - I've had horrible
work-arounds in the past to have encrypted .couch backups.

A+
Dave