Re: Discourse

[Omid Mo'menzadeh]

Hi all,

Speaking up as one of the silent majority on this topic, now that it's mentioned, as I think I have two cents to add.

I personally wouldn't be against Discourse, as I find its email interface good enough, however, there's something that does worry me about such a migration. As I have pointed out on the list before, lilypond.org is hosted on a platform that denies access from a few countries (including Iran, where I live), in addition to a lot of IP ranges we use to circumvent censorship (we get a 403 error.).

If the Discourse forum uses the same servers, that would be a huge problem for us. These days I build the LilyPond documentation myself, and download it from Gitlab, which at least doesn't block my server's IP, but being denied of this mailing list would prove to be hard to compensate.

Thanks,

Omid

On Sat, Feb 25, 2023 at 2:26 PM Stephan Schöll <music@gmx.ch> wrote:

Hi Andrew, Jean
Hi all (on and off thread)

I have followed this thread (and its predecessor re mailing list
configuration and easening admins' work) for days now.

First of all: Thanks sooo much to all of you who invest hours and hours
for Lilypond, the community, and all the infrastructure. It's amazing! I
appreciate that a lot, really!.
(You even took your time patiently to explain others how to print out a
web page, which a) should be obvious to internet users today anyway, and
b) really: who prints out the internet ;-) ? ...a thing we did in the
last century maybe.)

Andrew, I understand your disappointment re pushback. I haven't set up
any statistics. But pushback came only from few while I guess there is a
silent majority that has at least no fundamental objection...

Someone has mentioned that decision taking in communities might be slow
and tedious. That's right, as long as we (unconsciously) refer to the
most common decision making patterns: unanimity (consensus) or a
majority vote. Since moving to a different "community platform" (mailman
to Discourse e.g.) is something quite fundamental, since it connects the
community, it's worth building a considerable committment. Sure.

On the other hand side, all of you who work on and around Lilypond take
one decision after the other do this in a good way. That's probaly why
Lilypond is so consistent and stable!? (Thanks for the quality :-) )

I liked the thread about the support for including additional image
formats (svg or pdf?) a few month ago. The author had an idea, asked for
input and considerations, but finally took a decision on his own
considering the feedback he had gotten. It was a perfect example of a
a) individual consultative decision or
b) decision by consent (vs. consensus! -> no fundamental objections came
up during consultation process)
Those decision making approaches are way faster. But a community has to
agree in which cases they are appropriate or not of course.

Summary and encouragement from my side: Those who invest time and money,
proudly feel free to decide. It's impacting your work and life most!
Others can follow if they like. If the don't, it's up to them.

...just my 2 cents, ending by coming back to my introduction: Thanks to
all the contributors! Go on! Don't let yourselves be pulled down :-)
You're doing a tremendously valuable and great job!

cheers
Stephan

On 25.02.2023 11:26, Andrew Bernard wrote:
> Of course it's my opinion, shared by 30,000 other communities that have
> selected it, which is not too bad.
>
> Anyway, we are not doing this, so further discussion is pointless. I am
> surprised by all the pushback.
>
> Andrew
>
>
> On 25/02/2023 8:51 pm, Paul Hodges wrote:
>>
>> I guess that's your opinion - however, my opinion is that the forums
>> which I follow that have switched to Discourse are less convenient to
>> use as a result, so I visit them less now.
>