[ripe-list] The Future of Discussion Lists

Hi Leo, all,

> On 26 May 2023, at 09:41, Leo Vegoda <leo at vegoda.org> wrote:
> 
> There was more discussion than I expected. I’m sending this message to
> ask the questions:
> 
> - 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?

I think that mailing lists are still needed for high volume lists, and I think they are better suited for formal processes, especially regarding consensus assessment. They are also archived, which helps this.

That said, as a community we already have various other official-to-less-official means of communication. We have in person RIPE meetings, WG sessions, hallway chats, direct email or calls between people, and various IRC and discord channels where people hang out.

Zooming in on discord.. Based on my experience in an RPKI discord server.. I think it's a valuable addition to mailing lists. It has a low barrier to entry (mac/windows/linux/web). It's especially suited for interactive discussions. It's easy to set up topic-specific side channels. It's really easy to set up ad-hoc one-on-one or group discussions. Also with people you did not know before. This can help to get to the bottom of things quickly, and it can help clear misunderstandings. Being interactive it also tends to be friendlier than mailing lists can sometimes be - it's easy to read the wrong emotion in an email and escalate - this can happen in chat, but as far as I have seen the opposite holds true most of the time.

In short.. I think chat (at least discord) adds something else that we cannot get from email. Email has features that chat can't give. I re-watched the presentation and discussion and I heard several people make similar statements: chat does not need to be a *replacement* for the mailing lists. It's not necessarily "either-or".

Echoing a bit of what Randy said earlier - yes there could be a scaling issue. A high volume and/or moderated-by-necessity list may not be best suited for this. But.. I think that for some working groups this may work very well - e.g. if routing or open-source offered an official discord server, then I would join in a heartbeat. I would say.. just start small!

It would be great if working group chairs would be in the chat as well, but again based on my RPKI server experience it's also fine if enough people are on both the chat and the (official) mailing list. They can act as bridges between these worlds.

Tim