DragonFlyBSD Project Update - colo upgrade, future trends

[Constantine A. Murenin]

On Mon, 22 Jul 2019 at 15:56, Matthew Dillon <dillon at backplane.com> wrote:

> The mailing lists are not seeing much if any activity any more.  This is
> more a generational issue... people kinda prefer web-based forums these
> days and younger generations do not use mailing lists at all for group
> stuff (not really).  Even the devs almost universally use IRC and not
> mailing lists for discussions now (its kinda too bad that we don't have a
> permanent irc log stored on DFly servers for posterity).  So we are looking
> into potentially shifting user interaction to a web-based forum, perhaps
> this year, and retiring the mailing lists, leaving just an archive for the
> mailing list.  Possibly sometime this year, so look for action on that
> upcoming.
>

I would think that part of this must be because messages sent to the
mailing lists are silently discarded from non-subscribers.  IME,
DragonFlyBSD.org doesn't even send out any error messages in this
instance.  I've repeatedly had this happen to me, several times over the
years, and I bet others have been affected as well.  On OpenBSD.org, in
these instances, you simply receive a confirmation email asking you to
confirm that you've sent the message (good because the feedback and the
resolution are both instant — apart from the greylisting by PF spamd).  On
FreeBSD.org, depending on list, moderators eventually approve any such
messages (often causing a delay of several days).

I think it'll be a sad day to see the mailing lists go.  They are so much
better than the forums from so many perspectives, including archival.  I
find forums problematic due to censorship and lack of accountability, not
to mention archival issues — not even posters themselves would have copies
of their own posts, unless extra care is taken, usually on the part of the
poster, requiring quite some discipline.  On nginx.org, there is some sort
of a forum-based mirror and gateway for the mailing lists, perhaps that's
what DragonFly might be interested in adopting as well, if forum
availability is a requirement?

Cheers,
Constantine.
http://cm.su/
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