[ripe-list] The Future of Discussion Lists

TL;DR: We need a working group. (More at the end.)

Dear RIPE Fellows,

first of all, I should state, and most of you should have also done the 
same, that I'm in a conflict of interests. I'm used to a certain style 
of work which is very compatible with mailing lists. My views on this 
topic may be skewed.

On 5/26/23 14:11, Alex Band wrote:
> Looking at the people who replied to this thread so far, this discussion appears to have all the makings of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Gert, Jim, Joe… All people I’ve known for over a decade or more in the RIPE Community, saying on a mailing list that they prefer email. :)
>
> I guess it’s no surprise that none of the younger generation, or people who do not like email (style) communications, are here to say that they prefer something else instead. They’re all on on Discord servers like DisNOG, BGPeople, or the RPKI Community server talking to like-minded people, solving problems and having a good time.

I fully agree. The mailing-list is not a statistically valid sample of 
the community. Before even opening the discussion about how to solve 
this problem, we should look for a method how to assess different 
preferences of community members. And this is not a work for us 
engineers, we seriously need a sociologist to do a valid study with a 
reasonable methodology. Now, we're telling fortunes from a crystal ball, 
quietly assuming that it's a better method than tea leaves or a magic 
wand. We need data.

> I would really hope we can at least get beyond the point of acknowledging that mailing lists are not for everyone. But even then, we can do a ton of research looking of the holy grail of platforms that is open source, decentralised, publicly archived, freely available, has favourable Terms and Conditions, and what have you. There’s a good chance there’s always going to be some solution that someone doesn’t like, ultimately leading to no action being taken.
>
> I get that this may not be what you want to hear - I am an open source, open standards advocate at heart - but if you want to attract a different crowd and get a different kind of interaction, simply start a Discord server. There are so many vibrant communities out there who can attest to this. Choose anything else and the RIPE Community will miss out on a ton of people who may have something valuable to contribute.
>
> My suggestion: keep the mailing lists as is for the people who prefer that, and add Discord to the mix.
>
> Be bold. Give it a shot.

By adding a disjoint technology to the mix, we're heading to duplicate 
discussions and even factions emerging. I'm all for adding Discord (or 
whatever else), yet there must be a dedicated group of people standing 
in both, being able to forward thoughts and decisions from one channel 
to another.

There may be also different approaches altogether. We may be missing 
e.g. some visually impaired or dyslectic people, who often rely more on 
sound than on text – yet keeping in mind that sound may be on the other 
hand a showstopper for not only hearing-impaired but also e.g. for lots 
of ADHD people. I'm not proposing anything specific here, just trying to 
shed some light on other factors we haven't yet covered.

Anyway, I'm having a proposal.

We shall spin up a new working group, named e.g. "Community and 
Diversity", to take care of these affairs, to gather relevant data, to 
discuss possible solutions, to coordinate the 
communication-bridge-volunteers mentioned above and also to present the 
results and to propose solutions based on data analysis. Yet we shall 
_not_ wait with the Discord or whatever else until the working group 
gathers data. This way, we're lowering the risk of losing diversity in 
future.

Thank you all for the opportunity to be a part of the RIPE Community.

Maria

-- 
Maria Matejka | BIRD Team Leader | CZ.NIC, z.s.p.o.
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