Rick
-----Original Message-----
From: Jehan Pagès via gimp-user-list
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2022 8:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Gimp-user] Discontinuation of mailing lists and moving to
Discourse
Hi everyone!
I received 2 off-list emails. Please do not send me off-list emails. I
am
exhausted 😩 and cannot do private support in addition to public
support,
code development, news writing, website making and everything else in
GIMP.
😛
This is even more true as I don't really see anything private/sensitive
in
the 2 emails I received. Really no need to make them private, except
for
making me work double (whereas as public emails, someone else could
have
answered). I generally advise contributors to preserve themselves
from
overworking by not answering to private messages.
Anyway, regarding unhappiness about the new platform, I will mainly
answer
that there is not much we can do. We are heavily relying on GNOME
Infrastructure (which we thank for this) and they have their own
reasons
(one of them is that mailing lists are apparently one of the elements
in
their stack which prevent them from dropping Python 2; we can relate!).
Cf.
the link in my original email.
Now we could always try to fight against the current and persuade
GNOME
infrastructure team, but we made a small opinion tour among the
current
core team and nobody really had particular love or use of our mailing
lists. Also we realize it's very low volume these days (barely a few
threads per month, counting all mailing lists together). Myself I
barely
look at mailing lists every once in a while and make a random answer
sometimes. And there were several mailing lists I was not even
subscribed
to (I did for the sake of this announcement). So that's probably why
none
from the core team is really trying to fight this change.
There is one more thing to take into consideration: more
infrastructure
means more work. I said it above, I am exhausted by this all. I was
only
managing one of the mailing lists so far (the gimp-gui one, the most
recent) and still had to regularly handle spams. I am personally
thankful
that this work goes to GNOME admins now. Moreover I would not try to
find
alternative mailing list providers either. Now, same as hundreds of
third-party forums discuss GIMP out there, people are welcome to
create
third-party mailing lists to discuss GIMP if that's really what you
are
into. I won't be such a person; and apparently it looks like nobody
else
from the core team is so far.
One last thing: I am aware that Discourse is not perfect. I also spent
some
time today to try and understand how to efficiently transform it into
a
mailing list equivalent.
For questions about only receiving emails for the "gimp" tag, I think
that
you should not try to use the "Enable mailing list mode" option.
Instead
click the bell icon on the top-right and set to "Watching" mode. This
way,
you will be notified of absolutely all messages for this tag. Then in
your
"Emails" preferences, set "Email me when I am quoted, replied to, my
@username is mentioned, or when there is new activity in my watched
categories, tags or topics" to "always". This should transform every
notification into emails, in other words you will receive an email
for
every message added in the "gimp" tag. You can even directly reply to
a
notification email from your mail client without going to Discourse.
At least, so far it worked for me (I tried today, and I only received
emails for the 2 messages which came in with the "gimp" tag, no other
emails). So it's probably the right setting.
Anyway please understand that it's really not about comparing the
Discourse
and mailing list technologies. GIMP is not a discussion platform, we
only
provide these channels on the side because it's a cool community tool,
but
we cannot spend all our time managing these. This is why we need to go
with
the flow of what GNOME is proposing (as long as it's not completely
wrong;
e.g. if they had proposed to go for some walled garden proprietary
network
for the main discussion channels, I would have questioned the choice). I
am
not into gamification, infinite scrolls or such things either. Us
accepting
this platform is not about us wanting these. It's really about having
a
limited core team and nobody highly interested into maintaining
complicated
infrastructure for a different system than what GNOME does. That's about
it.
Also for the 2 people who sent private emails, forgive me for not
answering
directly and privately to you. It's not against you, I just hope you
will
understand I am trying to preserve my mental sanity here. Someone was
even
apparently "shocked" that I used a gmail account. The reason is
actually
exactly the same (avoiding private emails): historically I wanted to
avoid
spreading my main email address too much (even though I now realize it
was
a vain wish, I was young back then! 😜) so I created this account as
a
trash email, maybe 15 years ago, and that's the address I historically
used
to subscribe to mailing lists. I am still receiving uncountable numbers
of
emails daily.
And now you'll understand why I am doing a single and hopefully last
answer
on this topic. I'm just tired and don't want to paste the same email
twice
(or more).
Actually sending private emails, you kind of made a counter-argument
against mailing lists where it is indeed quite common that people feel
they
can just continue discussions in private. But there is a reason why
it's
public: anyone can join in, help and contribute to the discussion. No
need
to involve a single person only (forbidding others to help by going
private). In GIMP, we work in full transparency, with public
infrastructure. We don't want private discussions, and unfortunately as
you
showed, this is often what some people believe they can afford to do
with
emails. So you both shot your opinion in the foot by telling me that
mailing lists are better while deciding not to use these to tell me this.
🤣
So yes, bottom line: mailing lists will be gone. It's not a private
decision from anyone in GIMP team (I got notified today myself of the
end-of-month deadline), though clearly nobody fought against it
either.
It's not really something we can or want to control so there is really
no
need to give counter-arguments here. If you really wish to do so, you
are
welcome to ask the GNOME Infrastructure team. If they back down from
their
decision, we'll happily comply and keep the mailing lists.
Jehan
GIMP team
wrote:
> Hi!
>
>
>> So if I want to ask a question about using GIMP, or respond to
a
>> question,
>> how do I do it?
>>
>
> Well basically same as you always did, except that now it will be on
one
> of the Discourse instances, such as the
pixls.us one or the GNOME
one.
> Instead of being subscribed to a mailing list, it's on Discourse
(which is
> basically a modern-time forum, as I see it), on which you'd have
a
> login/account. :-)
>
> Jehan
>
> Rick
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Jehan Pagès via gimp-user-list
>> Sent: Monday, October 17, 2022 12:38 PM
>> To: gimp-web-list ; gimp-developer ; GIMP User List ;
>> Subject: [Gimp-user] Discontinuation of mailing lists and moving
to
>> Discourse
>>
>> Hello everyone!
>>
>> The GNOME Foundation has been moving all its discussions to a
Discourse
>> forum, progressively:
>>
>>
>> We were informed today that they are on the last stage of this
migration
>> and that all the mailing lists will be fully retired by the end
of
>> October.
>> This implies also all of GIMP and GEGL mailing lists.
>>
>> Instead, people wishing to discuss about GIMP are expected to use
GNOME's
>> Discourse instance. In particular 2 tags were created for
us:
>>
>> * "gimp" tag for GIMP-related discussions:
>> * "gegl" tag for GEGL-related discussions:
>>
>> We don't have as many tags as we used to have mailing lists, just
these 2,
>> but since all our lists are quite low volume these days, I didn't
think it
>> was worth asking, at least for now. GNOME admins confirmed that it
would
>> not be a problem to add new tags in the future if we ever decided
we
>> needed
>> more (e.g. having a "gimp-dev" tag or whatnot).
>>
>> By the way, noteworthy information: GIMP has had already an
official
>> We discussed among the team if it was worth having presence on
both
>> and GNOME discourse and we came to the conclusion that the
audience is
>> different, therefore it is interesting to stay on both
communities. For
>> discussion with existing GNOME contributors, translators and
various GNOME
>> users for instance, they might be already on the GNOME Discourse.
On the
>> other hand,
pixls.us is a much more specialized forum/community
on
>> Photography in particular, and is also probably more
platform-independent
>> too.
>>
>> Last but not least, as I expect that some people might prefer
interacting
>> by email, I tried to look up what are the possibilities. This
thread
>> "Interacting with Discourse via email" is of interest:
>>
>> It didn't have the ability to create new threads easily,
especially tagged
>> with the "gimp" keyword. Discourse has a way to create a topic on
a
>> specific category but we couldn't find for tags, for instance you
can send
>> for
>> every category, e.g. it didn't work for infrastructure; I haven't
tested
>> others). With Andrea Veri, GNOME Infrastructure admin, we came up
with a
>> special email hook: any email with "[GIMP]" in the subject will be
tagged
>> "gimp".
>> Nevertheless you need to have level 1 trust level for this to
work. We
>> aren't sure exactly what it means other than having participated
enough
>> (whatever "enough" is) to the Discourse first. 🤷
>>
>> See:
>>
>>
>> So I guess, let's continue discussing there everyone! 🤗
>>
>> Jehan
>> GIMP maintainer
>>
>> --
>> ZeMarmot open animation film
>> _______________________________________________
>> gimp-user-list mailing list
>>
>>
>
> --
> ZeMarmot open animation film
>
--
ZeMarmot open animation film
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