Hi, I think maintaining two parallel communication channels is unnecessary. Since the forum supports mailing-list mode (with caveats, see [1]), and most of the discussion is already happening there (13 threads in the past year on the forum versus 2 on the mailing list, counting generic announcements like the survey invite and the current topic) [2][3], it makes sense to consolidate. I personally don’t use mailing list mode, but I do receive email copies whenever a new post appears in the Estonian subforum, plus a weekly digest of the most popular global topics (typically tagging disputes).
As for maintenance costs, exact euros-per-email number is not known, but over years maintaining mailing lists has become more gruesome due to evolving security requirements, spam-filtering behaviour from recipient providers and current large obstacle of migrating from Mailman 2 to Mailman 3 [4]. Based on [4], [5], [6] and [7], a reasonable estimate cost of maintaining average mailing list is in range of 350-700 GBP/yr, depending largely on how much time Firefishy dedicates to Mailman. BR, Fghj753 [1] - https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/discourse-and-mailing-list-mode/6054 [2] - https://community.openstreetmap.org/c/communities/ee/79 [3] - https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ee/ [4] - https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/retire-unnecessary-mailing-lists/133512/9 [6] - https://osmfoundation.org/w/images/8/89/OpenStreetMap_Foundation_Draft_Budget_2025-Ver_8.pdf [7] - https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo PS. Sample message for announcing this discussion on Discourse is pasted below. Mailing lists drop formatting, so I don’t know how it’ll actually look when delivered. From: eisa01 via OpenStreetMap Community Forum <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, August 2, 2025 12:20 PM To: email Subject: [Communities/Eesti (Estonia)] Close Estonian mailing list? <https://community-cdn.openstreetmap.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b77776/45.png> <https://community.openstreetmap.org/u/eisa01> eisa01 August 2 The <https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ee/> talk-ee mailing list is seeing very limited usage Given there’s a cost of maintaining these, have you considered closing it? There’s been no posts to it in 2025 See <https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/retire-unnecessary-mailing-lists/133512> Retire unnecessary mailing lists for context _____ <https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/close-estonian-mailing-list/133539/1> Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond. To unsubscribe from these emails, click here.
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