Proposal talk:Imports Mailing List Migration

Forwarding discussions to the mailing list

Moved from Proposal:Imports Mailing List Migration#VotingMoving the discussion about mailing list integration to the talk page, where we can figure this out during and after the vote. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 23:13, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I'd be a lot happier with this proposal if we were going to automatically forward all import discussions to the mailing list. --Vorpalblade77-kaart (talk) 20:59, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Would a one-way forward help? i.e. a service account on the community site that subscribes to import discussions and forwards them to a mailing list? But it'd have to be one-way or else all responses would come from that account. I'd wonder then if the mailing list would need to be read-only to avoid splitting discussions, but could at least be a notification stream. Would that still be desirable compared with each person subscribing themself to notifications they can reply to on the community site because it avoids losing the interested user base that currently exists? --Nicksantos (talk) 22:03, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Realistically, we could probably just use the Reply-To email header. The only problem is that the email the user is replying _from_ would need an associated account. Unless I'm misunderstanding the way that discourse works. --Vorpalblade77-kaart (talk) 22:14, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

@Vorpalblade77-kaart and Nicksantos: Discourse automatically federates with OpenStreetMap, so as long as you have an OSM account, you have a forum account and can send e-mails to Discourse from the address associated with your OSM account. You'd automatically get e-mail notifications about replies, separate from the optional mailing list mode. I'm unsure if you have to visit the forum before you can send the first e-mail, but this should be a very minor inconvenience compared to the hurdles that mappers jump through to get set up with Mailman. It does preclude cold inbounds from non–OSM users, such as government agencies that want to see their data used in OSM. For these inbounds, which are unlikely to be fully formed import proposals, it may make sense to keep a mailing list around as a drop box. We can also publicize, for example, the OSMUS staff e-mail address for U.S. government agencies, and similar points of contact for other regions. That would be more likely to result in a better first impression for these prospective partners and a better experience for everyone. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 23:21, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that was something I was thinking about too - My main concern is whether if, say, a service account subscribes and forwards the email to the current imports list, and then someone who already has an account on the community site replies, would Discourse pick up an ID embedded in the email and try to associate it with the service account (more secure, less flexible), or would it pick up on the sender and associate with their account (less secure, more flexible). But, that can at least be tested by forwarding a notification between users, or maybe the behavior is even documented - I just haven't looked it up yet. --Nicksantos (talk) 03:21, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

@Vorpalblade77-kaart and Nicksantos: If the imports list's administrator sets an explicit Reply-To: header, then someone replying or replying-all to a mailing list post will by default send it to Discourse instead of the mailing list. Then Discourse would regurgitate that e-mail back to the list. The administrator can configure the list to only accept e-mails from Discourse and reject e-mails from everyone else, auto-responding to them with instructions for e-mailing Discourse. But if the list's subscribers want to keep the ability to discuss things independently of the forum, both settings will be perceived as heavy-handed.

To answer my question above, if you send an e-mail to the forum before you've logged into the forum (by granting Discourse access to your OSM user profile), then the e-mail is either rejected outright or attributed to a "staged user", depending on the forum's settings. Discourse automatically upgrades a staged user to a real user once they log in with the same e-mail address. So the only catch is that you have to make sure you're using the same e-mail address for your OSM account and Discourse account. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 08:00, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

@Minh Nguyen: Good point on the "heavy handed" note. I think finding a way to give a linkage would be good so that the community has time to transition and gives choice to those that don't want to set up a subscription manually, but my big concern is that there's no confusion around where decisions are made, even if potentially some of the discussion is split into two locations (community and list). Hopefully more people who want to keep using the list will chime in on what an ideal connection will look like to them (and thanks for doing the outreach on that). --Nicksantos (talk) 20:52, 7 July 2023 (UTC)