Replace Google Groups mailing lists with Diaspora Forum mailing lists

(not sure if email reply works, it never worked for me, so re-posting)

On Thursday 02 April 2015 03:20 AM, Steffen van Bergerem (Loomio) wrote:

Everything on our mailing lists is public and no one needs a Google
account to participate. Because of that I don’t think that using Google
Groups is a privacy issue.

Its a dependency issue. When we have people in our community willing to
manage this infrastructure, why depend on an external party?

  • show quoted text -

I don’t think that is a good way to approach the situation. If we don’t
trust our own community core members how can we continue as project? How
about diasporafoundation.org domain? Yes, it should not be a single
person, but excluding people from the community is not good either. If
the concern is about domain control, we can ask Rich if he is willing to
transfer the domain to project. He has already agreed to give access to
servers.

On Thursday 02 April 2015 03:29 AM, Dennis Schubert (Loomio) wrote:

What Steffen said. However, I’d like to highlight that you do not need a
Google account to participate on Google Groups, but you do need to sign
up on diasporaforum.org.

You have to subscribe to google groups and I think signing up to diasporaforum.org is similar.

Core team can have concern about control, but it has to be addressed by adding contributors to core team, not be making the current core team as final. For me someone managing diasporaforum.org is also a core team. If this is about control, say it like that. if you can’t trust Rich, how can we trust the other core team as well?

If we do end up moving the mailing lists away from Google and on to Diaspora forum then:

we can ask Rich if he is willing to transfer the domain to project. He has already agreed to give access to servers

Yes, of course, I will happily transfer all of the Diaspora Forum domain names to the Foundation so they can control/manage them all.

@flaburgan thanks for the extension, you may need to extend it some more though :+1:

Just to add, if the foundation/core want to host the entire server that Diaspora Forum is running on I’ll happily transfer that too.

I don’t mind who hosts / owns / runs it, so long as it’s not Google :slight_smile:

@dennisschubert

without google account, you can not make full use of googlegroups, you can only access via mail but not via web, that way you can not use the full potential.

On the other hand, i,m do not know how to express this
correctly in English, but every time we use products evil corporations put some money in their bank accounts, "make them fat broth. What about you do you fancy? My no.

Sorry about may English.

@juansantiago

without google account, you can not make full use of googlegroups, you can only access via mail but not via web, that way you can not use the full potential.

That is completely untrue. I just viewed diaspora-dev list in private browsing without logging in.

but every time we use products evil corporations put some money in their bank accounts

I’m pretty sure more money is put into “evil corporation” accounts by hosting a Discourse forum than using Google lists. Probably better for the environment as well having all things centralized. Actually, Google probably gets more money from Rich paying for a server than us hosting mailing lists at Google.

“Evil Google”… really people…

Personally I agree totally with all the comments relating to keeping Google lists. But this isn’t a rational vote - it is complete politics which is why personally I’m abstaining. I will however vote strongly against any kind of migration, be it to Discourse or any other system. Subscription should always be opt-in - we’re the ones who are supposed to be privacy conscious :wink:

As for what to replace Google lists with, if we do that, I think Discourse is a very good solution. Old school mailing lists are pretty sucky, which is why I’ve fancied Google Groups before. Discourse takes it a little bit further towards a forum.

@praveenarimbrathod

If we don’t trust our own community core members how can we continue as project?

I never said that I don’t trust @rich1. I just don’t think that a single person should be responsible for something crucial like a mailing list. I also still think that if we run our own mailing list it should run under the diasporafoundation.org domain.

Apart from all the things that I see as a requirement for a self hosted mailing list:

I think we should only move our mailing lists somewhere else if we have REALLY good reasons to do that.

I’ve been persuaded that:

  1. Diaspora should only move its mailing list once;
  2. that when it is moved it should be under the diasporafoundation.org domain.

Therefore, although I appreciate Rich’s kind offer and would certainly think he’s trustworthy, I don’t think we should move the list from its current home until 2. can be fulfilled.

We need to have control on the mailing list

I agree with that. Rich also agrees. In fact, I saw nobody standing up against that. I’m also sure we can create “forum.diasporafoundation.org” and point it to Rich server, where we’ll have access. Backup can be stored on Dennis servers, so I’m sure the foundation (= core team) can have full control of the tool.

We have a lot of users there, we risk to loose them if we change our tools.

We have to be honest here: nobody uses these lists. Active contributors don’t use them to contribute. Podmins don’t use them to ask for support. The only messages we had there for years are written by persons who don’t know the project. And we had like what? 20 messages in a year?

If this tool is not used, it is because most of us don’t want to use it. We now have a nice Discourse. It would be a shame to not use it.

I can come with a compromise: we don’t have to drop google groups immediately. We can also promote both tool officially. But I’m sure using Discourse to give support is an excellent idea and it would be a great way for non-technical people to contribute: answering each other questions, being moderators…

Another option, let the foundation host the forum and mailing list on their server(s)?

That way they have full control over everything and Google have control over nothing.

And @steffenvanbergerem re this:

I just don’t think that a single person should be responsible for something crucial like a mailing list.

Mailing list? Crucial? Yeah, ok :slight_smile:

But it’s cool for one person to be responsible for an entire pod which has hundreds of thousands of users, right? :slight_smile:

(I’m only guessing how many users some large pods have, I suspect it’s way more than that)

Just to be really clear (again), I don’t think anyone cares who hosts it. We’re all pretty much agreed that it shouldn’t be Google :+1:

If we do start using diasporaforum.org I’d prefer to keep it as it is, since @rich1 is doing a good job about it. Just have backups be automated to be stored also on some other core contrib server, just in case Rich disappears :wink: Also, pointing forum.diasporafoundation.org towards diasporaforum as a redirect would be a good idea.

Otherwise no point in making a big fuss about it. Hardly no one uses the current lists. Actually more people write on the forum already :wink:

With the measures pointed out by Jason, I think its ok to ditch the lists.

As for the Google or not Google discussion, I saw the Google Street View car taking pictures of my front door and creeped me out completely, so I decided to gradually move out of Google products and advise everyone to do the same.

So, I advice you to do the same. It may be stupid but I cant help to profoundly dislike that name.

@dennisschubert Would you be willing / able to host either 1) a Discourse instance on the foundation domain name on to which you could then host the mailing list, away from Google or 2) host the entire diasporaforum.org site on to which you could then host the mailing list, away from Google?

Please point me in the direction of the right person to ask re foundation hosting if it’s not you :slight_smile:

I’m not sure bundling everything to one person is good community project infrastructure either :wink:

Maybe I’ve misunderstood :confused:

Is @dennisschubert not responsible for hosting the foundation stuff?

Dunno…

Just trying to mitigate disagreeing votes and explore other options to keep everyone happy :slight_smile:

@jasonrobinson actually Florian, Jonne and Steffen have access to that server. So not really bundling everything to one person. :wink:

I don’t see a reason to host it on the diasporafoundation.org server, though. Like with Google, I’m sure Rich will give us a notice and some time to migrate if he decides to kill it. The current domain is fine and I see no reason to change it.

I cold set it up on the diasporafoundation.org servers, if required. Also I could add a redirecting subdomain, like forum.diasporafoundation.org, if needed, but I think it’s fine to keep diasporaforum.org as the formums main address?

I think it’s fine to keep diasporaforum.org as the formums main address?

Assuming we do drop Google Groups eventually, what does everyone think about using diasporaforum.org as the domain name for the mailing list?

In other words, back to my very first post on this thread:

and I propose we drop all the existing Google Groups completely and replace each group/list with the mailing list functionality that is supported by the community-run Diaspora Forum

So for example, one of the mailing list addresses would be somecategory@diasporaforum.org

Would this be acceptable to most people (not forgetting we’re currently using a Google domain) or would we all prefer the mailing list was something@lists.diasporafoundation.org for example?

Hardly no one uses the current lists. Actually more people write on the forum already :wink:

This is very true.

Perhaps we should just drop the mailing lists completely? (and do away with Google at the same time)

Backup on the diasporafoundation.org server + access to Rich server (if this is fine with you) and we’re good imo, no need to do anything else at the moment.

I think we can migrate away from google, but I don’t think it’s necessary.
So, do whatever you feel is best :wink: