[vtkusers] Idea: move from mailing lists to Discourse

[Utkarsh Ayachit]

Folks,

Here's the survey summary along with a summary of responses. I'm clubbing
ParaView and VTK results since they are similar and probably choose to do
the same thing. Most of the negative comments seem to have one theme -- the
mailing list mode. For those who want to use email client as the way to
receive and respond to messages seem to have not had the best experience.
However, if we simply use the activity on forum as an indicator, we notice
that both ITK and Slicer saw a decent bump. Our sysadmins have also said
that they'd rather move to Discourse as that'd open more hosting options as
it no longer requires the project websites and mailing lists to be hosted
on the same server.

*VTK Voting Results (66 responses)*

Yes: 59.1 %
No: 24.2 %
Neutral: 12.1%

*ParaView Voting Results (46 responses)*

Yes: 58.7 %
No: 15.2 %
Neutral: 21.7 %


*Summary of NAY comments:*

   - Mailing-list mode for discourse has formatting issues.
      - Replies don't respect quotations forcing responders to use HTML
      modes.
      - Changes to `from` address makes off list responses impossible
      - replying to `from` address bounces, making `reply all` not work
      - discards signatures
   - Easier to lurk and monitor mailing list messages without having to
   visit website for updates


*Summary of YAY comments:*

   - Several users on other projects have had positive experience
   - better code formatting/editing of posts etc.
   - better searching capabilities
   - ability to subscribe to topics
   - ability to organize, control, edit, attach etc
   - easier to filter spam (mailing list has been targeted by email
   spoofers in recent weeks)

*Stats from Slicer/ITK migration (monthly avg. messages):*

   -  ITK
      - mailing lists (itk-users + itk-developers): 148
      - Discourse: 297.
   - Slicer
      - mailing lists: 247
      - Discourse: 639


Given all that, my conclusion is we should move ahead with this migration.
Please yell if you think that isn't a fair conclusion. Not sure of the
timeline for the migration or how to organize it etc etc, but that can be a
separate conversation.

Thanks all for participating.

Utkarsh
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