<div dir="ltr"><div>Sean,</div><div><br></div><div><div>We did indeed have some people unhappy due to similar complaints when we migrated the Slicer lists to Discourse, but we went through several rounds of customization and I think (hope...) we were able to solve about 75% of the issues. The person who was most vocal still participates, mostly via email, and I think at about the same level as they did on the old mailing list. In my view, the move to Discourse for Slicer was absolutely a success because it has improved the quality of answers and the overall experience and efficiency for both users and question-answerers.</div><div><br></div><div>Raising these issues on the ITK discourse itself could prompt some improvements! Discourse is reasonably customizable from the admin interface alone, and the code is very high quality if even more specific customization is needed (although I'm not sure if ITK runs their own instance or uses hosting).</div><div><br></div><div>A few specific comments:</div></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-size:12.8px">all email is now html</span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Discourse notification emails have a `text/plain` payload (I just double-checked several notifications from the ITK Discourse). Most email clients should be configurable to display this instead of `text/html`...</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span style="font-size:12.8px">quoted text doesn't appear as usual</span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I think we had to tweak templates a little bit for <a href="http://discourse.slicer.org">discourse.slicer.org</a> to make people happy, and it is indeed still a little different from a mailing list (e.g. only 1 replay context and indents instead of angle brackets).</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-size:12.8px">the 'from' address is not something that can be replied to, making off-list replies impossible.</span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>This is by both design and necessity: many users only interact via the web interface. Private messages are available via the web interface, and I think Discourse will relay notifications and responses via email once a discussion has been started. (<soapbox>Off-list replies were a big waste of time on the Slicer list and others I've participated in, because: people unknowingly respond when the question had already been answered off-list, users asked follow-ups off-list, answers weren't preserved for future reference, etc. I'm very happy to be rid of that -- and I would have changed the mailman mode to be reply-to-list a long time ago if I was the list admin</soapbox>)</div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div>Isaiah</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 2:59 PM, Andras Lasso <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lasso@queensu.ca" target="_blank">lasso@queensu.ca</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span class="gmail-">> not to re-start this tiresome list vs forum stuff<br>
<br>
</span>Well, that's the point. Not everybody is interested in every topics. It's good to have the tools to deal with this nicely.<br>
<br>
By the way, most differences you listed are useful features, but of course individual user preferences may differ. You can configure these features at system or user level. See details below.<br>
<br>
Andras<br>
<span class="gmail-"><br>
<br>
> all email is now html<br>
<br>
</span>It is a feature. With HTML formatting, you can make your post easier to read. It's really hard to find email clients that cannot cope with HTML.<br>
<span class="gmail-"><br>
> quoted text doesn't appear as usual<br>
<br>
</span>It is a feature. Text can be quoted properly now. Finally, there is standard way of referring to particular portion of previous posts.<br>
<span class="gmail-"><br>
> the 'from' address is not something that can be replied to, making off-list replies impossible.<br>
</span><span class="gmail-">> 'reply all' is broken because the 'from' address is 'noreply@discourse'<br>
<br>
</span>Reply by email works just fine, unless it is disabled intentionally or by mistake.<br>
<span class="gmail-"><br>
> there is no 'List-Post' header, making it hard to start a new thread via email<br>
<br>
</span>You can start new threads via email. You can customize the email template with any headers and footers.<br>
<span class="gmail-"><br>
> it strips off email signatures<br>
<br>
</span>That's a great feature. Signatures make long email threads painful to read.<br>
<span class="gmail-"><br>
> Since they switched, I find myself only using it when I have something to ask; it's not conducive to following along and helping out. Your mileage may vary. Such things tend to get religious.<br>
<br>
</span>You can set up default notification settings any way you want. You can notify all users by all posts by default (mailing-list-style), or first post of each new topic, etc.<br>
<span class="gmail-"><br>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Sean McBride [mailto:<a href="mailto:sean@rogue-research.com">sean@rogue-research.<wbr>com</a>]<br>
Sent: Friday, December 8, 2017 1:04 PM<br>
To: Andras Lasso <<a href="mailto:lasso@queensu.ca">lasso@queensu.ca</a>>; Bill Lorensen <<a href="mailto:bill.lorensen@gmail.com">bill.lorensen@gmail.com</a>><br>
Cc: Amine Aboufirass <<a href="mailto:amine.aboufirass@gmail.com">amine.aboufirass@gmail.com</a>>; rakesh patil <<a href="mailto:prakeshofficial@gmail.com">prakeshofficial@gmail.com</a>>; VTK Users <<a href="mailto:vtkusers@vtk.org">vtkusers@vtk.org</a>><br>
Subject: Re: [vtkusers] vtkGL2PSExporter crashes<br>
<br>
</span><span class="gmail-">On Fri, 8 Dec 2017 17:48:11 +0000, Andras Lasso said:<br>
<br>
>You can interact with a forum as a mailing list (read, post, reply<br>
>through emails only).<br>
<br>
Based on my experience with the ITK switch, the discource experience is *much* worse.<br>
<br>
- all email is now html<br>
- quoted text doesn't appear as usual<br>
- the 'from' address is not something that can be replied to, making off-list replies impossible.<br>
- 'reply all' is broken because the 'from' address is 'noreply@discourse'<br>
- there is no 'List-Post' header, making it hard to start a new thread via email<br>
- it strips off email signatures<br>
<br>
Since they switched, I find myself only using it when I have something to ask; it's not conducive to following along and helping out. Your mileage may vary. Such things tend to get religious.<br>
<br>
My advice to Amine was strictly practical, not to re-start this tiresome list vs forum stuff.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
--<br>
______________________________<wbr>______________________________<br>
Sean McBride, B. Eng <a href="mailto:sean@rogue-research.com">sean@rogue-research.com</a><br>
</span>Rogue Research <a href="https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=www.rogue-research.com&data=02%7C01%7Classo%40queensu.ca%7Ce8b9c74ea84a4f29995508d53e66233f%7Cd61ecb3b38b142d582c4efb2838b925c%7C1%7C0%7C636483530765077683&sdata=Hw3Ft2LHTg0I253Oc3rjjDYBbxPY%2FkJiXFaBFM2EaEE%3D&reserved=0" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://na01.safelinks.<wbr>protection.outlook.com/?url=<wbr>www.rogue-research.com&data=<wbr>02%7C01%7Classo%40queensu.ca%<wbr>7Ce8b9c74ea84a4f29995508d53e66<wbr>233f%<wbr>7Cd61ecb3b38b142d582c4efb2838b<wbr>925c%7C1%7C0%<wbr>7C636483530765077683&sdata=<wbr>Hw3Ft2LHTg0I253Oc3rjjDYBbxPY%<wbr>2FkJiXFaBFM2EaEE%3D&reserved=0</a><br>
<div class="gmail-HOEnZb"><div class="gmail-h5">Mac Software Developer Montréal, Québec, Canada<br>
<br>
<br>
______________________________<wbr>_________________<br>
Powered by <a href="http://www.kitware.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">www.kitware.com</a><br>
<br>
Visit other Kitware open-source projects at <a href="http://www.kitware.com/opensource/opensource.html" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.kitware.com/<wbr>opensource/opensource.html</a><br>
<br>
Please keep messages on-topic and check the VTK FAQ at: <a href="http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/VTK_FAQ" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/VTK_<wbr>FAQ</a><br>
<br>
Search the list archives at: <a href="http://markmail.org/search/?q=vtkusers" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://markmail.org/search/?q=<wbr>vtkusers</a><br>
<br>
Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe:<br>
<a href="http://public.kitware.com/mailman/listinfo/vtkusers" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://public.kitware.com/<wbr>mailman/listinfo/vtkusers</a><br>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br></div></div>