Proposal: retiring django-users and django-developers mailing lists

What do people think of officially retiring the django-users and django-developers mailing lists / Google Groups?

My main two reasons are:

  1. We have better alternatives. The Django forum in particular, is more active and offers users and moderators better options to manage conversations. “Like” reactions, suggestions of similar topics when starting a post, ability to subscribe to categories – etc.
  2. The mailing lists have way too much visibility for their comparative usefulness. For example on the djangoproject.com homepage.

When I say “officially retiring” – this is a reflection on it being effectively already retired:

  • Independent contributors constantly redirecting discussions towards the forum as a better place to have active discussions.
  • Fellows also redirecting discussions elsewhere.
  • The DSF board no longer doing any comms on either django-users or django-developers. We have much better tools on the forum, social media, Reddit, etc.

The DSF has gone through the same process for the dsf-members private mailing list, which still exists but is very much legacy. That’s working pretty well.


Going ahead with this would make it possible for us to make the other options that much more visible, thereby improving the experience for folks who are new to Django as users or as contributors.

10 Likes

I think it’s a great idea. It’s time.

People have complained a really long time about the bad moderation UI on Google groups and they are totally right.

Disclaimer: I have always preferred mailing lists to forums, but have slowly been changing my mind in the last months. Discourse is a great piece of software.

1 Like

+1 I was going to make this proposal myself at some point!

Yes, +1. It’s time.

(We’re just doing folks a disservice pointing them to the Google Groups now)

+1

If it’s possible to stop new posts but allow responses to existing posts (so someone could post a link to the migrated discussion/ticket/PR), that would be ideal.

I can confirm that I point folks to the forum currently

2 Likes

I do have a question about this as a moderator here.

There are a couple types of conversations that occur in the groups that have previously been squelched here. (Job-related posts being the most common.)

The previous position here has been that there are a sufficient number of places elsewhere to post available jobs or to look for positions - that this forum didn’t need to be home for those posts.

Is there any intent for this to change?

As a moderator on the Discord, we do allow job posts in the relevant channel and require a URL to the job posting itself. We also don’t allow posts for those looking for a job as these tend to me spam from outsiders and not those engaged in the community.

At a higher level, I have an early draft on my computer for a ‘Community’ Working Group to help coordinate processes across the platforms the community uses.

3 Likes

+1, let’s do it.

If we do this, can we add a time limit of, say, 6 months? There’s always someone who wants to revive a years-old discussion…

2 Likes

Great! Let’s see what other people who land on this thread think, and then I’ll proceed with creating tickets for the website and Django? Maybe draft a phased plan from current state to “not promoted”, “restricted posting”, “archive”.

Re stopping new posts and allowing responses, I don’t think Google Groups supports this but we can check. It does support only allowing specific people to post, so I suppose we could do something where Django technical teams / DSF members / a select few retain their posting permissions. Depending on the capabilities of the tool.

I agree - the forum is a far easier place to manage a lot of feedback and discussion, especially in terms of moderation and categorisation, and I think easier to read and search through as well (a bunch of our inbound traffic already comes from people searching for Django problems).

Yup, strong agree, it’s time.

Good call. +1 for me.

+1

I’m also in favor, I made this proposal soon after I started as a Fellow so I really would like to see this pursued.