[ripe-list] The Future of Discussion Lists

Dear Antonio,

Thanks for asking about the RIPE NCC Forum stats. It’s been seven months 
since we launched it and it’s a good time to check in on it with stats 
and an overview on how I think it’s been going.

The numbers:
- 59 topics started
- 255 posts in total
- 18,500 views of those posts
- 294 subscribers

I like being able to see stats on topic views - it gives an indication 
of what people are interested in. With email, we have no insight into 
that sort of thing. The system tells me there are over 200,000 pageviews 
since we launched, although this is mainly people viewing the home page 
rather than going into topics.

And people can view all posts without being a subscriber, which a lot of 
people seem to do. You just need to subscribe to join a discussion and 
see stats on the home page.

The overview:

The forum started slowly but is developing pretty much in line with how 
Discourse tells us new forums should progress. It takes time but when 
there are interesting topics posted you’ll see a gradual increase in the 
number of users and people posting.

The range of topics posted is very good. They run from big existential 
questions to posts about meeting up socially at RIPE Meetings. There are 
a fair few posts from people trying to debug or solve issues in the RIPE 
Database or with RIPE Atlas. And quite a few posts use images, so we can 
post nice visualisations that can start a discussion, and people have 
provided screenshots of code they’re having trouble with.

The main thing for me is that they all sit quite comfortably together. 
The active topics float to the top, old topics can be reactivated 
easily, and you don’t really have to figure out what to post and where - 
just add anything you want to start a discussion on or ask a question 
about and that’s it.
When I look at the main page, I get a sense of a pretty vibrant 
community talking about lots of interesting things or coming together to 
solve problems. And it’s very easy to share posts to other channels.

And I’ve seen a lot of people either post or subscribe that I don’t see 
on the mailing lists. The nice thing is that I also see a lot of people 
who are regular posters on the mailing lists. I think that’s a good 
development. And you will see a lot of our staff getting involved there, 
helping out people who have problems or just joining discussions. I 
think it’s good for the community and for our staff to have those 
regular interactions, especially with the staff who are running our 
technical services. Partly, I believe the forum is well suited for staff 
to post less developed or completed pieces of work, which lowers the 
threshold for posting. We’ve put up some visualisations of work we’re 
doing that are at the development stage, but they can spark ideas or 
conversations that can help us with that work and guide what we’re 
doing. A good example is this post, where one of our staff posted some 
work at an early stage, people asked for more information, and it led to 
people taking action in their own communities to push IPv6 deployment:
https://forum.ripe.net/t/dataviz-ipv6-capability-in-greece/363/9

We also don’t use it to make announcements from the RIPE NCC, which 
keeps it focused on discussions and helping to solve people’s problems. 
Eventually, I would hope by solving problems there, we can have a nice 
searchable resource for others who encounter similar problems that need 
solving.

Given the mail is running long, here’s a few other things I like about it:
- Discourse is open source, it’s low cost, it’s easy to maintain and 
easy to use
- It’s good for synchronous and asynchronous discussions - it depends 
how you set up your preferences
- It has a lot of features (like closed groups for discrete purposes or 
groups, chat functionality, etc.) that we could think about using
- Moderation is much easier than I expected - the system holds mails for 
human checks if there are doubts, but regular posters have their posts 
put through straight away
- People wanting to chat in other languages can do so
- Categorisation and tagging let’s people find specific issues
- People can choose to get emails on all posts or specific ones they are 
interested in
- You can post to the forum using email
- Adding visualisations to posts is something I think adds a lot of value
- There is an informality about posting on the forum that I think makes 
it quite fun to get engaged with (every community needs at least a 
little fun)

In short, I like it a lot as an administrator and a user. But in the 
end, it will only be successful if other people use it too. With that in 
mind, I’d urge you to sign up, try out the features and see what you 
think. There are already a couple of posts (“What do you think of the 
new forum?” and a post linking to Leo’s original mail on this topic) 
that might be good places to start, but probably better is to start a 
topic on something you find interesting and just see what happens.

We still plan to do a proper review at the end of the year as promised 
when we launched it, but of course that review will be better if we have 
some good input from people using it.

Thanks for reading (if you made it this far :)),
Fergal


On 30/05/2023 16:02, Antonio Prado via ripe-list wrote:
> On 5/26/23 9:41 AM, Leo Vegoda wrote:
>> - Am I wrong? Are e-mail discussion lists a sustainable communication
>> channel for the foreseeable future?
>> - Are e-mail discussion lists an acceptable technology to people
>> joining the industry?
> 
> hi,
> 
> Is the use of e-mail really a barrier to entry for newcomers in the 
> Internet industry? Or is it just yet another attempt to simplify what is 
> in fact already simple?
> 
> I distinctly remember a presentation during RIPE86 about training tools 
> suitable for the younger generation. One of the arguments discussed was 
> about access to RFCs, that is, whether or not to have students read 
> them. Opinions were, and I imagine still are, divided.
> 
> In other words, is it necessary to dismantle a black-and-white, classic 
> tool that all in all does its job (albeit with some flaws) for a color 
> one that is very fashionable?
> 
> Wouldn't it be more feasible instead to solve any problems that are 
> encountered with mailing lists today?
> 
> These are obviously open questions that, as Leo suggests, require 
> long-term thinking so that we do not run the risk of saying or doing 
> something rash.
> 
> In this regard, it might be helpful to have the usage statistics of the 
> young Discourse server? (https://forum.ripe.net/)
> 
> Perhaps we can draw further discussion from them.
> -- 
> antonio
>