Moving your mailing list to OSGeo Discourse

Committees SAC docs
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Requesting the move

If you want to move your mailing list please create a trac ticket for the system admin committee (SAC) with your request.

  • Mailing lists hosted at OSGeo, or mailing list where you can provide a mbox download, can be imported into discourse.
  • Mailing lists from Source Forge, or other locations, can also be imported with some processing applied.
    • If you don’t care about your old archives, you can just start fresh in discourse and let your users know the new location.
  • You may wish to provide a logo, a short topic sentence, and a description for your new category

TERMINOLOGY

  • In discourse land the closest thing to mailing list is category.

    When we move your mailing list to discourse, it becomes a category in discourse. Unlike mailing lists, categories in discourse can be nested e.g. we have SAC which has tickets, docs, mailing list as separate categories and SAC itself is a subcategory of Committees. We currently allow up to 3 levels of nesting, but 2 levels is considered the best for human sanity by discourse creators.

  • A mailing list post is equivalent to a category topic in discourse.

    Topics, just like posts can have threads. But unlike mailing list, where you are always replying to the mailing list address, if a category can be mailed to, then each thread in that topic has an email address as well. So when replying to a topic, you are replying to an email thread address instead of the category mailing address.

  • Mailing list subscribers is equivalent to a discourse group or discourse category watchers.

    • Discourse Group - often used to control who can post / reply / or view a discourse category.

      Groups can be by invitation only or can be set up to allow any registered OSGeo discourse user to join. By default to simulate the complete behavior of mailing lists, we setup a discourse group to match with the discourse category, and old subscribers of the mailing list can be invited to this group and newer can join at their discretion. We also mark discourse group members as watching a category when they first join.

    • In order to be notified of new items in a category, a Discourse user, must mark a category as watching.

      Watching does not mean they can reply or create topics. It just means they get notified. See below for more details of who can create and reply. They can also just watch individual topics in a category they are interested in, or even tags. So for example, if I wanted to watch any discussion about PostGIS in any category, I just watch the tag postgis.

  • Discourse Tags this is a term that has no equivalent in mailing lists.

    We have a set of tags defined for common projects and terms used in OSGeo. Whenever a topic contains any of these terms is posted, they are tagged with said tag. This allows for more fluid monitoring of topics even if some new user posts in the wrong category. Unlike mailing lists, topics can be moved from one category to another too by administrators, if they notice someone posted something in the wrong category.

OPTION 1: READ ONLY MIRROR

Option 1: Have discourse be a READ ONLY mirror. No one will be
able to use discourse except for searching in this mode (and getting
notified of new items). All interaction still happens on your original list.

There are good reasons why to opt for this (although this option is least popular):

  • You want an easier searchable archive of your mailing list and allow people to subscribe to notifications without subscribing to the mailing list.

    This is for example the state sac-mailing-list is in -
    SAC mailing list - OSGeo Discourse

  • You don’t have a mailing list at all, but a ticket tracker you want all posts to go to for easier searchability / watchability.

    This is the case with tickets - OSGeo Discourse which stores posts to our ticket tracker.

  • Initial step for your community to see what discourse looks like before fully migrating.

    You are not quite ready to move, but when you move, you want no downtime or lost mailings. So this allows your community to an easy transition to Option 2.

Steps

  1. We take a snapshot of the archives, import it into discourse.
  2. Have discourse subscribe to the mailman list, so it can continue to receive postings.
  3. Caution: In this mode it admins can reply via the forum, but such replies go to discourse only and not your mailing list. Admins should avoid replying in discourse, as it may confuse some people subscribed to the discourse mirror.

OPTION 2: FULL MIGRATION TO DISCOURSE

Option 2: Migrate to discourse completely.

  • All interaction occurs within a discourse category, with participants able to create and reply to topics using the forum or via email.
  • The original mailing list is archived.

Steps

If you are going straight from mailing list to Option 2:

  1. Open the ticket in trac
    Some conversation will happen on the ticket about settings and migration daty planning.

  2. The list owner must send a final message, mentioning that the migration is about to happen. See this example.

  3. A final snapshot of the mailing list history is required. (If not done before using OPTION 1)

    • For OSGeo mailman list: SAC will collect the mbox history.
    • If not an OSGeo mailman list: the backup of your mbox mailing list history must be sent privately to a SAC member.
      • An upload to discourse test will be done before doing on production.

  4. The mailing list will then be turned off.

    • It will be set mirror like.
    • It will still show on the mailing lists list
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    • It will still receive mails but will be held: Owners and moderators should approve/reject messages accordingly. Because of mirroring they will show on discourse.
    • The list page will not allow new subscriptions and will mention the migration.
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  5. Send invitation.

    • For OSGeo mailman list: The list of subscribers will extracted by SAC and will be used to send an invitation to subscribe to discourse.
    • If not an OSGeo mailman list: The invitations will depend on availability to get the subscribers by the list owners.

  6. Delete the mailing list.

  • After a reasonable amount of time to allow catch up of last mails sent to the mailing list the list will be deleted.
    • All subscribers are unsubscribed from the list on deletion, and their information is lost.
  • For OSGeo mailman list: the archives are kept unless you state otherwise.
  • There is no forwarding from the list email to discourse email.
  • The migrated list will be shown on top the mailing lists list
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Managing your new Category

  1. The new category will have a email address your old list name@discourse.osgeo.org which is how people that prefer to email will send
    mail moving forward.

    Note that this email address is our convention, if you would prefer something else*@discourse.osgeo.org, we can usually accommodate as long as that address is not already taken by another category.

  2. If you are unsure exactly what you want to do, it’s fairly easy to
    transition from Option 1 Read Only to Option 2: Migrate.

    However it’s very difficult to go from Option 2 Migrate back to Option 1 Read Only mostly because of the annoyance of telling people “We’re moving back”, they need to subscribe again etc.

Differences from a mailing list

There are a couple of nuances when posting topics you should be aware of (that didn’t exist in a standard mailing list).

Who can see the category (mailing list)?

If only a particular discourse or set of discourse groups can see it, it behaves much like a private mailing list. Keep in mind Admins can see everything regardless if private or not.

  • Who can post:

    • Do you want only people in specific discourse groups to be able to post new topics and reply (this is the general practice we’ve been going with to simulate the old behavior of mailman mailing lists) or do you want to allow anyone registered on OSGeo discourse to post.

    • Do you want only people in specific discourse groups to be able to reply to posts (the default general practice to simulate old mailing list behavior), or do you want anyone registered on OSGeo discourse to reply.

    • If you want only a designated group of discourse users, a group may need to be setup for your category, or you may want to tell us an existing group.

  • Who can email a category:

    • If a category has an email address, then anyone who can create a new topic and has a high enough trust level can email a category. The trust levels are unfortunately controlled via the master admin preferences and not category by category so apply across the board. (we have the trust level set fairly low, but this may change if we start to get spam)

    • If a category has no email address, then all new posts and new replies must be done via the web interface. No one can email because discourse wouldn’t know how to route that email.

What’s this trust level thing you speak of?

Discourse assigns what it calls a trust level to each user.

  • The point of managing “trust” is to prevent a user being created just for the purpose of spamming others.

  • When a user first registers the user has 0 trust and in this state you usually can’t post anything.

  • It’s frustrating at times for new users just registering who can’t figure out why they can’t post.

  • Discourse raises your trust level, either by an admin explicitly raising your level, or by gamification milestones you achieve.

    E.g. Have you browsed around a bit, have you liked some posts, did you join a group (this we can designate per group to raise trust level of a person as they are admitted into groups).

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