If we were having this discussion on Discourse I would give this idea a +1. :)
Well... technically a <3 but...
Hi folks,
For a little while, I've been keen to see how we can improve our
communication methods, both to make it more accessible to newcomers and to
take advantage of more featureful tooling than has been traditionally
possible with email lists.
As such, I set up an instance of Discourse[0] at
https://discourse.debian.net, and am now asking for a wider input on if
this is something the project wishes to use and if I should spend my
time pursuing.
FAQ
===
Is it Free Software?
Yes. It's GPLv2+.
Who else uses it?
Lots of people. GNOME, Mozilla, Ubuntu, Fedora to name a few
What about the mailing lists?
This may or may not be a replacement for any particular list. I suspect
there are some thet would benefit greatly from having Discourse be the
primary interaction, and other places where this would be less suitable.
Be specific!
Ok... I think debian-user, debian-vote and possibly debian-project would
be better off in Discourse. I think debian-devel-announce should stay as
an email list (for now). However, I am not suddenly proposing that we shut
those lists down. The aim of this exercise is to see if Discourse would
work well for us.
Email is still important to me!
Fine, you can interact with Discorse by email rather than the web
interface. It should be noted however, that there is not 1:1 feature
partiy with email and the web interface, as Discorse does things that
can't easily be done with email. For the majority of users though,
email interaction should be "good enough".
Why are you doing this?
I have two motivations. First, is moderation. Discourse has built in tools
to allow community moderation on a much better scale than our email lists.
Secondly, I genuinely believe that ease of access to new contributors is
of paramount importance to the project.
What about X software instead?
Feel free to explore other solutions. I've already done evaluations, and
I'm pretty much set on this as the correct way forward. If there is
insufficient interest in moving forward with Discourse, I'll leave it to
others to invest time.
What about forums.debian.net?
I have no interest in interacting with a community of users and
moderators who allow blatent Code of Conduct violations to go
unchecked.
What's next?
I'd appreciate people testing Discourse. If you have any questions, then
I'm happy to answer them.
Thanks,
Neil
[0] https://www.discourse.org/