Hi, I have just published a proposal to start testing mailing list mirroring and emulation at the Discourse instance we have at Wikimedia Space.
If you are interested in discussing and exploring potential post-Mailman scenarios, join in.
Check the proposal at https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/testing-the-path-from-mailing-lists-to-w.... Feedback is welcome there or here. :)
If you want to propose a mailing list to mirror or you are personally interested in testing mailing list emulation, let's talk.
Hi Quim -
Perhaps it would be helpful if you were to identify what types of lists are suitable for mirroring, and what happens when they are mirrored, because that is not clear from your post. (And no, I don't want to have to have *another* software experience just to ask these questions.)
For example:
- Are all mirrored lists publicly accessible and viewable? Is there a way to control even read-only access? - Are private mailing lists suitable for Discourse? - Is everything archived? If so, how, and who controls them? - Can archives be modified, and if so, by whom? - How does editing/responding to mailing list posts on the Discourse mirror get reflected in the main mailing list? - Can lists have individual guidelines that are different from the "common" ones?
I will note that all of the lists I administer are *not* public lists, and several are non-archiving. They each have different guidelines as to what should and should not be included and/or discussed on them.
Risker/Anne
On Tue, 29 Oct 2019 at 13:02, Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi, I have just published a proposal to start testing mailing list mirroring and emulation at the Discourse instance we have at Wikimedia Space.
If you are interested in discussing and exploring potential post-Mailman scenarios, join in.
Check the proposal at https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/testing-the-path-from-mailing-lists-to-w.... Feedback is welcome there or here. :)
If you want to propose a mailing list to mirror or you are personally interested in testing mailing list emulation, let's talk.
-- Quim Gil (he/him) Senior Manager of Community Relations @ Wikimedia Foundation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Qgil-WMF _______________________________________________ Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
By sending a message to this list, you email all admins of all lists. To request technical changes for a specific list, instead create a task in Phabricator. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
Hi,
I feel the same as Risker and think we should instead investigate how to upgrade our mailing lists to Mailman 3.
Regards, M.
El mar., 29 oct. 2019 18:27, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com escribió:
Hi Quim -
Perhaps it would be helpful if you were to identify what types of lists are suitable for mirroring, and what happens when they are mirrored, because that is not clear from your post. (And no, I don't want to have to have *another* software experience just to ask these questions.)
For example:
- Are all mirrored lists publicly accessible and viewable? Is there a
way to control even read-only access?
- Are private mailing lists suitable for Discourse?
- Is everything archived? If so, how, and who controls them?
- Can archives be modified, and if so, by whom?
- How does editing/responding to mailing list posts on the Discourse
mirror get reflected in the main mailing list?
- Can lists have individual guidelines that are different from the
"common" ones?
I will note that all of the lists I administer are *not* public lists, and several are non-archiving. They each have different guidelines as to what should and should not be included and/or discussed on them.
Risker/Anne
On Tue, 29 Oct 2019 at 13:02, Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi, I have just published a proposal to start testing mailing list mirroring and emulation at the Discourse instance we have at Wikimedia Space.
If you are interested in discussing and exploring potential post-Mailman scenarios, join in.
Check the proposal at https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/testing-the-path-from-mailing-lists-to-w.... Feedback is welcome there or here. :)
If you want to propose a mailing list to mirror or you are personally interested in testing mailing list emulation, let's talk.
-- Quim Gil (he/him) Senior Manager of Community Relations @ Wikimedia Foundation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Qgil-WMF _______________________________________________ Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
By sending a message to this list, you email all admins of all lists. To request technical changes for a specific list, instead create a task in Phabricator. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
By sending a message to this list, you email all admins of all lists. To request technical changes for a specific list, instead create a task in Phabricator. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 1:02 PM Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi, I have just published a proposal to start testing mailing list mirroring and emulation at the Discourse instance we have at Wikimedia Space.
Is this emulation still subject to the disadvantages documented at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discourse#What_we%27d_lose_(user_experience)...
Yeah, that sounds like a pretty firm no. I don't see what the problem with the current setup is; it seems to do just fine.
Todd
On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 1:26 PM Brad Jorsch (Anomie) bjorsch@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 1:02 PM Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi, I have just published a proposal to start testing mailing list mirroring and emulation at the Discourse instance we have at Wikimedia Space.
Is this emulation still subject to the disadvantages documented at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discourse#What_we%27d_lose_(user_experience) ?
-- Brad Jorsch (Anomie) Senior Software Engineer Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
By sending a message to this list, you email all admins of all lists. To request technical changes for a specific list, instead create a task in Phabricator. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
Ah, I see. It's a snazzy forum.
Yeah, not appropriate for anything that would be considered private or sensitive. In fact, most of the private lists wouldn't be able to use it because they could not comply with the Code of Conduct, since those private lists are *likely* to include discussions that include private or personal information.
Nonetheless, I don't have a baseline objection to those who are listadmins for public lists to consider supplementing (or, depending on their mailing list community) folding their mailing list into this. Perhaps it would draw more people away from Facebook and Twitter....although I suspect that people use those products for very different reasons that have little to do with Wikimedia work.
Risker/Anne
On Tue, 29 Oct 2019 at 17:34, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Yeah, that sounds like a pretty firm no. I don't see what the problem with the current setup is; it seems to do just fine.
Todd
On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 1:26 PM Brad Jorsch (Anomie) < bjorsch@wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 1:02 PM Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi, I have just published a proposal to start testing mailing list mirroring and emulation at the Discourse instance we have at Wikimedia Space.
Is this emulation still subject to the disadvantages documented at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discourse#What_we%27d_lose_(user_experience) ?
-- Brad Jorsch (Anomie) Senior Software Engineer Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
By sending a message to this list, you email all admins of all lists. To request technical changes for a specific list, instead create a task in Phabricator. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
By sending a message to this list, you email all admins of all lists. To request technical changes for a specific list, instead create a task in Phabricator. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
(Just FYI, all the questions asked in different channels are being collected at https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/testing-the-path-from-mailing-lists-to-w... )
Thank you for the initial round of feedback. I think I am addressing all the points below. Why change?
This is in fact the most interesting question. It is tempting to think that if mailing list users declare they are happy with mailing lists, then there is nothing to discuss. However, we have to think (and to Risker’s point) that mailing list users who aren’t happy just go elsewhere, or don’t even join a mailing list, usually relying on commercial social media products completely outside of the Wikimedia movement and its values.
Here we are trying to propose a Space for discussion, collaboration and support that can bring (back) together those who are still using mailing lists AND those who are having their Wikimedia conversations in Facebook, Telegram, etc. Private mailing lists
Yes, private mailing lists can be mirrored or emulated, and access permissions can be granted more or less like in Mailman. Space admins can create a group (corresponding to a mailing list) and assign the mailing list admins as owners, then the owners can invite & unsubscribe users. And then a private category can be created to host the messages, with access permissions restricted to members of that group.
Space administrators https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/about have access to all content, just like they have access to all the content in the site. And just like with Mailman (I guess) SRE and whoever has access to the servers have the technical possibility to access to the content too, which is not encrypted in the database. Replying from Discourse to mailing list mirrors
Not possible. Mailing list mirrors are read-only. If posting from Discourse is wanted, then you want mailing list emulation (which means leaving your current Mailman mailing list behind). Editable archives
The content of mailing list mirrors is not supposed to be edited. However, Space admins have edit permissions that can be exercised if something HAS to be edited. They can also delete messages archived.
In the case of mailing list emulation, regular permissions apply and authors can edit their own posts within a time frame that can be defined in the site preferences. Moderators and administrators can edit past messages too. Guidelines specific to a certain mailing list / category
Totally negotiable for private, invitation-only categories/mailing lists where people join for a specific task, in a specific role, and the content is not even visible for the Space community. Common sense prevails. If a category wants to set additional guidelines for themselves on top of the general guidelines https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/guidelines, they probably can as long as the whole is consistent.
If a group e.g. ArbCom has special needs that might conflict with a literal reading of the guidelines (e.g. investigate users that have been reported in a project) common sense keeps prevailing, trust matters, and an official and legitimate activity in one Wikimedia channel should be able to operate under the same premises in Wikimedia Space. Mailing lists without archives
An equivalent of this functionality is currently not supported in Discourse. We could commission the development of a plugin that would delete posts from the web UI and the database after they have been distributed via email. When asked, Discourse maintainers said it wouldn’t be difficult to write such plugin, it is just not a priority for them. “What we’d lose (user experience)”
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discourse#What_we%E2%80%99d_lose_(user_exper...) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discourse#What_we'd_lose_(user_experience) lists some points as potential disadvantages of Discourse over Mailman (fun fact, the archived email https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/listadmins/2019-October/000325.html containing this question has a broken link). 😏
-
Problems with email rendering? The promise is to offer no functionality loss to Mailman users. We want to test mailing list mirroring and emulations precisely to get a first impression about problems in real use if any (and file bugs accordingly). -
Email forwarding? Same thing, let’s test and see what are the problems if any. -
Problems subscribing. OK, there is room for improvement indeed, both for making easier to understand how subscribing works (the subscription itself is easy, clicking a button) and for implementing mailing list mode per category https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T236852. Again, testing just helps understanding the actual impact of this problem (which can be compared with the problems that users face the first time they learn about mailing lists, which also brings a learning curve).
Other points are listed in that section but I don’t believe they are relevant, or actual “losses”.
On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 11:06 PM Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Ah, I see. It's a snazzy forum.
Yeah, not appropriate for anything that would be considered private or sensitive. In fact, most of the private lists wouldn't be able to use it because they could not comply with the Code of Conduct, since those private lists are *likely* to include discussions that include private or personal information.
Nonetheless, I don't have a baseline objection to those who are listadmins for public lists to consider supplementing (or, depending on their mailing list community) folding their mailing list into this. Perhaps it would draw more people away from Facebook and Twitter....although I suspect that people use those products for very different reasons that have little to do with Wikimedia work.
Risker/Anne
On Tue, 29 Oct 2019 at 17:34, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Yeah, that sounds like a pretty firm no. I don't see what the problem with the current setup is; it seems to do just fine.
Todd
On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 1:26 PM Brad Jorsch (Anomie) < bjorsch@wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 1:02 PM Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi, I have just published a proposal to start testing mailing list mirroring and emulation at the Discourse instance we have at Wikimedia Space.
Is this emulation still subject to the disadvantages documented at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discourse#What_we%27d_lose_(user_experience) ?
-- Brad Jorsch (Anomie) Senior Software Engineer Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
By sending a message to this list, you email all admins of all lists. To request technical changes for a specific list, instead create a task in Phabricator. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
By sending a message to this list, you email all admins of all lists. To request technical changes for a specific list, instead create a task in Phabricator. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
By sending a message to this list, you email all admins of all lists. To request technical changes for a specific list, instead create a task in Phabricator. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
Hello Quim
Given that this is currently implemented on WMCS, I would think that their terms would prevail and certain private mailing lists NOT allowed be copied at all there (for instance a list where checkusers disccussed about vandal ranges), since it's on an "untrusted" network/servers that shall not contain such private data. Other private mailing lists may qualify, depending on what is actually discussed there (e.g. I would see no issue with a signpost editorial comments mailing list). And obviously, the content of public lists is simply... public.
Best regards
Yes Platonides, your comment (and bd808's at Space) makes me realize that I hadn’t stressed this point, which is completely assumed in this topic.
This proposal is about testing, and a private mailing list with sensitive information wouldn’t be a good candidate for these first tests even if Space would be in production and not in Cloud VPS.
We can still test private mailing list mirroring, for instance taking any public mailing list and mirroring privately to test access control without compromising anything.
We can also test private mailing list emulation by having non-confidential chit chat in a private setting to test access control, again without compromising anything.
On Thu, Oct 31, 2019 at 8:17 AM Platonides platonides@gmail.com wrote:
Hello Quim
Given that this is currently implemented on WMCS, I would think that their terms would prevail and certain private mailing lists NOT allowed be copied at all there (for instance a list where checkusers disccussed about vandal ranges), since it's on an "untrusted" network/servers that shall not contain such private data. Other private mailing lists may qualify, depending on what is actually discussed there (e.g. I would see no issue with a signpost editorial comments mailing list). And obviously, the content of public lists is simply... public.
Best regards
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
By sending a message to this list, you email all admins of all lists. To request technical changes for a specific list, instead create a task in Phabricator. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
Dear all,
I'm not against this decision, in fact I'm in favour and I think it would be the only possibility for Wikimedia Space to actually work out in the end.
Given all the problems with personal data that we have, we might need to decide if some *public* ML wants to be a beta-tester for Space. Who wants to go forward? :)
L.
Il giorno gio 31 ott 2019 alle ore 11:23 Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org ha scritto:
Yes Platonides, your comment (and bd808's at Space) makes me realize that I hadn’t stressed this point, which is completely assumed in this topic.
This proposal is about testing, and a private mailing list with sensitive information wouldn’t be a good candidate for these first tests even if Space would be in production and not in Cloud VPS.
We can still test private mailing list mirroring, for instance taking any public mailing list and mirroring privately to test access control without compromising anything.
We can also test private mailing list emulation by having non-confidential chit chat in a private setting to test access control, again without compromising anything.
On Thu, Oct 31, 2019 at 8:17 AM Platonides platonides@gmail.com wrote:
Hello Quim
Given that this is currently implemented on WMCS, I would think that their terms would prevail and certain private mailing lists NOT allowed be copied at all there (for instance a list where checkusers disccussed about vandal ranges), since it's on an "untrusted" network/servers that shall not contain such private data. Other private mailing lists may qualify, depending on what is actually discussed there (e.g. I would see no issue with a signpost editorial comments mailing list). And obviously, the content of public lists is simply... public.
Best regards
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
By sending a message to this list, you email all admins of all lists. To request technical changes for a specific list, instead create a task in Phabricator. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
-- Quim Gil (he/him) Senior Manager of Community Relations @ Wikimedia Foundation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Qgil-WMF _______________________________________________ Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
By sending a message to this list, you email all admins of all lists. To request technical changes for a specific list, instead create a task in Phabricator. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
Hi, just an update on this.
https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/c/mailing-lists
We are starting with these mailing lists:
* Education (crreated last Friday) * African Wikimedians (created today) * Wikispore (coming next) * WikimediaPT (and next)
This is a real example of an email sent to a mirrored mailing list from an email address (a user) registered in Space: https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/re-wikimedia-education-exciting-update-c...
Such mirrored posts count as contributions from the Space user, and any likes etc are reflected in their user stats.
Here you can see what happens when the email address (the user) is not registered in Space: https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/wikimedia-education-invitation-for-criti...
In such cases, Discourse creates a "staged account", like a placeholder. If a user registers with such email address, the posts authored by the staged account will be assigned automatically to the new user, together with its related stats.
On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 6:02 PM Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi, I have just published a proposal to start testing mailing list mirroring and emulation at the Discourse instance we have at Wikimedia Space.
If you are interested in discussing and exploring potential post-Mailman scenarios, join in.
Check the proposal at https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/testing-the-path-from-mailing-lists-to-w.... Feedback is welcome there or here. :)
If you want to propose a mailing list to mirror or you are personally interested in testing mailing list emulation, let's talk.
-- Quim Gil (he/him) Senior Manager of Community Relations @ Wikimedia Foundation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Qgil-WMF
listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org