Re: (low-frequency) mailing lists | suggestions & summary of prior thread

[Nate Graham]

I get emails when people reply to my messages directly. And if you want 
replies to threads you've posted in, you can subscribe to the thread 
manually.


All of these behaviors are also user-configurable, of course--just like 
any sane forum.


Nate



On 5/24/23 16:18, Albert Astals Cid wrote:

El dimecres, 24 de maig de 2023, a les 9:35:38 (CEST), Joseph P. De Veaugh-
Geiss va escriure:

On 5/24/23 00:03, Albert Astals Cid wrote:

El dimarts, 23 de maig de 2023, a les 14:10:37 (CEST), Joseph P. De
Veaugh-


Beyond typical forum functionality, Discourse integrates well with email
and RSS. Something to consider for low-frequency mailing list groups:
there may be projects and communities that benefit by officially moving
communication to Discourse. Although I have no data to back up the
claim, I suspect having users interact on a more active platform could
generally increase engagement within KDE.

A nice feature of Discourse is: for mailing list subscribers who wish to
continue receiving posts in their mail clients,


Is it really? I remember once that i visited, commented on a post and
never
ever got emails when people answered me on that post. I am not a crazy
person that plans visiting discuss.kde.org every 5 minutes just in case
someone has answered me, the site must send me an email and in my 1 time
experience it failed to do so.


Is this with "mailing list mode" enabled?


No, because it from your description it doesn't seem what i want at all.

   I do not want to get emails for all the posts sent to all the places in the
site.
   I do not want to answer to things via email

I just want a sensible notification policy in which when someone answers to
something i posted I get a notification by email.



I think what you are describing is related to general email settings for
notifications. This can be found under Profile > Preferences > Emails.
This looks like the relevant place: "Email me when I am quoted, replied
to, my @username is mentioned, or when there is new activity in my
watched categories, tags or topics." Perhaps check your settings there?

Note there may also be relevant settings under Profile > Preferences >
Tracking for "tracking" and "watching", word choices which do not make
the distinction clear, in my opinion. Right now I am not well-informed
about the options here.


It is broken, it seems watching is more intense than tracking (which my non
English brain disagrees with) and watching is what i want. It also seems
broken in which you have to set it tracking and then to watching again for it
to actually work? (according to some random forum posts)

So what i want is apparently "When I post in a topic, set that topic to
Watching"

Let's see if i ever post to discuss.k.o again it works as promised.

Cheers,
   Albert



However, I am testing "mailing list mode" and I receive dozens of emails
a day for the categories I did not mute (see info below). I have not
tested the reply by email function yet, though.

Cheers,
Joseph


it is possible to follow
discussions via RSS or by enable mailing list mode in Discourse. It
takes some setting up; see below for more.

Info about using Discourse with email and RSS:
 * Users can enable "Mailing list mode", which allows one to receive

and respond to posts via email (i.e., just like a mailing list). By
default, users receive posts to /all/ categories -- limiting posts to
specific categories requires manually "muting" the other categories. See

the community wiki for more detail, including how to mute categories:
   https://community.kde.org/KDE.org/KDE_Forums#Mailing_List_Mode
 
 * Alternatively, one can follow specific categories, tags, etc. as an


RSS feed. Again, see the community wiki for details:
   https://community.kde.org/KDE.org/KDE_Forums#Following_RSS_Feeds

Re: (low-frequency) mailing lists | suggestions & summary of prior thread

[Albert Astals Cid]

El dimecres, 24 de maig de 2023, a les 9:35:38 (CEST), Joseph P. De Veaugh-
Geiss va escriure:
> On 5/24/23 00:03, Albert Astals Cid wrote:
> > El dimarts, 23 de maig de 2023, a les 14:10:37 (CEST), Joseph P. De
> > Veaugh-
> > 
> >> Beyond typical forum functionality, Discourse integrates well with email
> >> and RSS. Something to consider for low-frequency mailing list groups:
> >> there may be projects and communities that benefit by officially moving
> >> communication to Discourse. Although I have no data to back up the
> >> claim, I suspect having users interact on a more active platform could
> >> generally increase engagement within KDE.
> >> 
> >> A nice feature of Discourse is: for mailing list subscribers who wish to
> >> continue receiving posts in their mail clients,
> > 
> > Is it really? I remember once that i visited, commented on a post and
> > never
> > ever got emails when people answered me on that post. I am not a crazy
> > person that plans visiting discuss.kde.org every 5 minutes just in case
> > someone has answered me, the site must send me an email and in my 1 time
> > experience it failed to do so.
> 
> Is this with "mailing list mode" enabled?

No, because it from your description it doesn't seem what i want at all.

  I do not want to get emails for all the posts sent to all the places in the 
site.
  I do not want to answer to things via email

I just want a sensible notification policy in which when someone answers to 
something i posted I get a notification by email.

> 
> I think what you are describing is related to general email settings for
> notifications. This can be found under Profile > Preferences > Emails.
> This looks like the relevant place: "Email me when I am quoted, replied
> to, my @username is mentioned, or when there is new activity in my
> watched categories, tags or topics." Perhaps check your settings there?
> 
> Note there may also be relevant settings under Profile > Preferences >
> Tracking for "tracking" and "watching", word choices which do not make
> the distinction clear, in my opinion. Right now I am not well-informed
> about the options here.

It is broken, it seems watching is more intense than tracking (which my non 
English brain disagrees with) and watching is what i want. It also seems 
broken in which you have to set it tracking and then to watching again for it 
to actually work? (according to some random forum posts)

So what i want is apparently "When I post in a topic, set that topic to 
Watching"

Let's see if i ever post to discuss.k.o again it works as promised.

Cheers,
  Albert

> 
> However, I am testing "mailing list mode" and I receive dozens of emails
> a day for the categories I did not mute (see info below). I have not
> tested the reply by email function yet, though.
> 
> Cheers,
> Joseph
> 
> >> it is possible to follow
> >> discussions via RSS or by enable mailing list mode in Discourse. It
> >> takes some setting up; see below for more.
> >> 
> >> Info about using Discourse with email and RSS:
> >> * Users can enable "Mailing list mode", which allows one to receive
> >> 
> >> and respond to posts via email (i.e., just like a mailing list). By
> >> default, users receive posts to /all/ categories -- limiting posts to
> >> specific categories requires manually "muting" the other categories. See
> >> 
> >> the community wiki for more detail, including how to mute categories:
> >>   https://community.kde.org/KDE.org/KDE_Forums#Mailing_List_Mode
> >> 
> >> * Alternatively, one can follow specific categories, tags, etc. as an
> >> 
> >> RSS feed. Again, see the community wiki for details:
> >>   https://community.kde.org/KDE.org/KDE_Forums#Following_RSS_Feeds

Re: Retirement of IRC Services and KDETalk.net (Jabber)

[Christian]

Am Mittwoch, 24. Mai 2023, 15:06:12 CEST schrieb Carl Schwan:
> On Monday, 22 May 2023 00:26:09 CEST argonel wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> > I would argue that the low usage is in part due to lack of awareness.
> > It has a one-line mention on the "Internet Relay Chat" community wiki
> > page (which wasn't added until 2019) that doesn't even explain the
> > benefits of using it.

> I understand that this requirement is due to some technical issues, as IRC
> doesn't support having so many connections open at the same time but it's a
> bit wrong to blame Matrix for that. I do wonder why BNC is not affected by
> this policy, but I suppose it's because there are way less users using IRC.

A bit offtopic, but since the question was in the room:

Due to Element in the past (and still, plus other issues) was very very bad at 
cleaning up dead / zombie connections, duplication issues partially due to 
reasons already mentioned, a very shaky bridge which produces lots of noise 
during (multiple) restarts ... this was a requirement that we (Libera we) set 
on Element.

Also wrt i-lines: these are indeed still needed, and given loads of inactive 
connections, the i-line for Element had to be _huge_  (and we don't talk twice 
or four or six time the size of others, it was magnitudes of multitudes more) 
which is quite a risk and thus was also not sustainable long time.

None of this applies to BNCs, plus with most if not all of the BNC providers 
being a lot more cooperative when it comes to issues, especially wrt abuse, 
noise and spam, they need fewer restrictions.

But yes, for this restriction Matrix the protocol is not to blame.

> Cheers,
> Carl

Kind regards, 

Christian

Re: Retirement of IRC Services and KDETalk.net (Jabber)

[Ben Cooksley]

On Thu, May 25, 2023 at 1:06 AM Carl Schwan  wrote:

> On Monday, 22 May 2023 00:26:09 CEST argonel wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > I would argue that the low usage is in part due to lack of awareness.
> > It has a one-line mention on the "Internet Relay Chat" community wiki
> > page (which wasn't added until 2019) that doesn't even explain the
> > benefits of using it.
> >
> > IRC in combination with the BNC is much more suited to intermittent
> > usage than Matrix is, which currently obligates the user to "be
> > active" every 30 days, or risk (permanently!) losing access to the
> > entirety of the history of all of their joined channels (even the
> > parts for which they were present). The BNC happily buffers the text
> > until your client is able to reconnect. As an example, this allowed me
> > to read discussions that happened while I endured an extended power
> > outage, even when Matrix had decided that I was idle for "too long".
>
> The requirement of not being inactive for 30 days is not due to Matrix.
> Matrix
> doesn't care about your inactivity, but his is actually a Libera.chat
> policy,
> which was a requirement for libera.chat authorizing the bridging. This is
> the
> same issue with the fact that when you join a room, you can't see the chat
> history from before you joined the room.
>
> I understand that this requirement is due to some technical issues, as IRC
> doesn't support having so many connections open at the same time but it's
> a
> bit wrong to blame Matrix for that. I do wonder why BNC is not affected by
> this
> policy, but I suppose it's because there are way less users using IRC.
>

Historically we were impacted by connection limit issues, and required (at
the time) Freenode staff to grant us an iline to allow us to exceed the
normal connection limits.
We still had to throttle reconnections though - which made maintenance on
the server that hosted the BNC very painful as it would take a good 2 hours
or so for everyone to be reconnected.

I just had a look and the number of active users remains the same - 6.


>
> Cheers,
> Carl
>

Cheers,
Ben

Re: Retirement of IRC Services and KDETalk.net (Jabber)

[Carl Schwan]

On Monday, 22 May 2023 00:26:09 CEST argonel wrote:
Hi,

> I would argue that the low usage is in part due to lack of awareness.
> It has a one-line mention on the "Internet Relay Chat" community wiki
> page (which wasn't added until 2019) that doesn't even explain the
> benefits of using it.
> 
> IRC in combination with the BNC is much more suited to intermittent
> usage than Matrix is, which currently obligates the user to "be
> active" every 30 days, or risk (permanently!) losing access to the
> entirety of the history of all of their joined channels (even the
> parts for which they were present). The BNC happily buffers the text
> until your client is able to reconnect. As an example, this allowed me
> to read discussions that happened while I endured an extended power
> outage, even when Matrix had decided that I was idle for "too long".

The requirement of not being inactive for 30 days is not due to Matrix. Matrix  
doesn't care about your inactivity, but his is actually a Libera.chat policy, 
which was a requirement for libera.chat authorizing the bridging. This is the 
same issue with the fact that when you join a room, you can't see the chat 
history from before you joined the room.

I understand that this requirement is due to some technical issues, as IRC 
doesn't support having so many connections open at the same time but it's a 
bit wrong to blame Matrix for that. I do wonder why BNC is not affected by this 
policy, but I suppose it's because there are way less users using IRC.

Cheers,
Carl

Re: (low-frequency) mailing lists | suggestions & summary of prior thread

[Shantanu Tushar Jha]

Hi Joseph,

Thanks a LOT for summarizing the discussions, it really helps.

@Bhushan Shah  Since there is a KDE India already on
Discourse[1], I propose we remove/archive the kde-india mailing list.

Cheers,
Shantanu

https://discuss.kde.org/c/local-communities/kde-india/19

On Tue, 23 May 2023 at 14:10, Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss 
wrote:

> Follow-up discussion to the post "Inactive mailing lists".
>
> tl;dr There are three topics discussed here:
>
>1. For mailing list admins: *Suggestions For Information To Add To
> Mailing List Descriptions*
>2. For mailing list communities: *Moving Certain Groups To Discourse?*
>3. For everyone: *Summary Of Prior Discussion About Inactive /
> Infrequently Used Lists*
>
> As always, the discussion is open for your feedback and ideas!
>
> _1. Information To Add To Mailing List Descriptions_
>
> If you are a list admin, consider adding the following to the mailing
> list description. This way subscribers are well-informed about the
> communication channels used for your project/community:
>
>* Other communication channels for this project and their intended
> use (e.g., for announcements, user support, live chat, etc.)
>* Relevant links for the project (e.g., website, wiki, etc.)
>* Intended scope for the list (i.e., what it is for / not for)
>* Policies regarding moderation, code of conduct, etc.
>
> For examples, see:
>
>* Energy-efficiency:
> https://mail.kde.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/energy-efficiency
>* Kde-soc: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-soc
>* Visual-design: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/visual-design
>
> _2. Moving Certain Groups To Discourse?_
>
> Beyond typical forum functionality, Discourse integrates well with email
> and RSS. Something to consider for low-frequency mailing list groups:
> there may be projects and communities that benefit by officially moving
> communication to Discourse. Although I have no data to back up the
> claim, I suspect having users interact on a more active platform could
> generally increase engagement within KDE.
>
> A nice feature of Discourse is: for mailing list subscribers who wish to
> continue receiving posts in their mail clients, it is possible to follow
> discussions via RSS or by enable mailing list mode in Discourse. It
> takes some setting up; see below for more.
>
> A few language and country-specific communities already have made a move
> to Discourse. See:
>
> https://discuss.kde.org/c/local-com.munities/
> 
>
> Some of these groups also have low traffic mailing lists. Unless current
> list subscribers also move to Discourse, there is the risk of fracturing
> the community as list subscribers are seperated from the people at the
> forum. In this case, archiving and closing the infrequently-used mailing
> list might be beneficial. Of course, that is for the list admin and
> relevant community to decide.
>
> Info about using Discourse with email and RSS:
>
>* Users can enable "Mailing list mode", which allows one to receive
> and respond to posts via email (i.e., just like a mailing list). By
> default, users receive posts to /all/ categories -- limiting posts to
> specific categories requires manually "muting" the other categories. See
> the community wiki for more detail, including how to mute categories:
>
>  https://community.kde.org/KDE.org/KDE_Forums#Mailing_List_Mode
>
>* Alternatively, one can follow specific categories, tags, etc. as an
> RSS feed. Again, see the community wiki for details:
>
>  https://community.kde.org/KDE.org/KDE_Forums#Following_RSS_Feeds
>
> _3. Summary: Prior Discussion About Inactive Mailing Lists_
>
> Here are some bullet points from the discussion about inactive /
> infrequently used mailing lists. For the full thread, go to:
>
> https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2023q2/007577.html
>
>* Some lists deliberately have archiving disabled, so an empty
> archive is not necessarily an indicator of no activity.
>* Some lists are primarily used for following bug reports (e.g.,
> *-bugs) or commits.
>* Subscribing to a low traffic email list is rarely something people
> notice, and the UI of mail clients rarely gets in the way. By contrast,
> the UI of e.g. Matrix very much gets in the way of staying in 200 low
> traffic channels.
>* Low email traffic does not mean subscribers will not answer
> appropriate posts sent to it.
>* Unless current subscribers also make the move to a new channel,
> moving discussion to a new platform risks separating the people who have
> answers (the current subscribed people) with the people who have the
> questions (the people redirected elsewhere).
>* For lists that are unquestionably no longer in use, please file a
> sysadmin ticket and they will get removed.
>* See this ticket for mailing lists that have been or will be removed
> as a result of the discussion: 

Re: (low-frequency) mailing lists | suggestions & summary of prior thread

[joseph]

Hi Stefan,

On 5/23/23 14:33, Stefan Derkits wrote:

Hi,

On 23/05/2023 14:10, Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss wrote:
   * See this ticket for mailing lists that have been or will be 
removed as a result of the discussion: https://phabricator.kde.org/T16387


it seems that the visibility of this Phabricator Task is very limited, 
e.g. I can't view it, it says: "You Shall Not Pass: Restricted Maniphest 
Task"


Can you open up the visibility of the task a bit more?


Thanks for the head's up. The task should now be publicly visible.

Cheers,
Joseph

Re: (low-frequency) mailing lists | suggestions & summary of prior thread

[Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss]

On 5/24/23 00:03, Albert Astals Cid wrote:

El dimarts, 23 de maig de 2023, a les 14:10:37 (CEST), Joseph P. De Veaugh-

Beyond typical forum functionality, Discourse integrates well with email
and RSS. Something to consider for low-frequency mailing list groups:
there may be projects and communities that benefit by officially moving
communication to Discourse. Although I have no data to back up the
claim, I suspect having users interact on a more active platform could
generally increase engagement within KDE.

A nice feature of Discourse is: for mailing list subscribers who wish to
continue receiving posts in their mail clients,


Is it really? I remember once that i visited, commented on a post and never
ever got emails when people answered me on that post. I am not a crazy person
that plans visiting discuss.kde.org every 5 minutes just in case someone has
answered me, the site must send me an email and in my 1 time experience it
failed to do so.


Is this with "mailing list mode" enabled?

I think what you are describing is related to general email settings for 
notifications. This can be found under Profile > Preferences > Emails. 
This looks like the relevant place: "Email me when I am quoted, replied 
to, my @username is mentioned, or when there is new activity in my 
watched categories, tags or topics." Perhaps check your settings there?


Note there may also be relevant settings under Profile > Preferences > 
Tracking for "tracking" and "watching", word choices which do not make 
the distinction clear, in my opinion. Right now I am not well-informed 
about the options here.


However, I am testing "mailing list mode" and I receive dozens of emails 
a day for the categories I did not mute (see info below). I have not 
tested the reply by email function yet, though.


Cheers,
Joseph


it is possible to follow
discussions via RSS or by enable mailing list mode in Discourse. It
takes some setting up; see below for more.



Info about using Discourse with email and RSS:

* Users can enable "Mailing list mode", which allows one to receive
and respond to posts via email (i.e., just like a mailing list). By
default, users receive posts to /all/ categories -- limiting posts to
specific categories requires manually "muting" the other categories. See
the community wiki for more detail, including how to mute categories:

  https://community.kde.org/KDE.org/KDE_Forums#Mailing_List_Mode

* Alternatively, one can follow specific categories, tags, etc. as an
RSS feed. Again, see the community wiki for details:

  https://community.kde.org/KDE.org/KDE_Forums#Following_RSS_Feeds


--
Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss
KDE Internal Communications & KDE Eco Community Manager
OpenPGP: 8FC5 4178 DC44 AD55 08E7 DF57 453E 5746 59A6 C06F
Matrix: @joseph:kde.org

Generally available Monday-Thursday from 10-16h CET/CEST. Outside of 
these times it may take a little longer for me to respond.


KDE Eco: Building Energy-Efficient Free Software!
Website: https://eco.kde.org
Mastodon: @be4foss@floss.social