Is mailing list become too small for RIPE?
Hi Guys: With overwhelming mail traffic for past few days, I just realise one thing that I'd like to share with fellow colleagues. Now we have 13,000 members, and keep growing at 2000 member a year, with all those amount of active discussion, maybe maillng is not such a good idea for such big group, maybe Forum(like this one for example http://community.mybb.com/) will do much better in:1. put QnA for new comers, 2. organise discussion better and more readable way.3. let everyone dealing with it while they have time, as i believe Email mostly are more time critical things(at least for me personally, I know I can unscripbe but I do want to follow the discussion but don't want to receive 1000 mail traffic a day from a single list.) Let me know what everybody thinks. -- -- Kind regards. Lu
Agree :-) Lars Poulsen Direkte +45 43 66 44 85 Mobil +45 21 29 90 44 lars.poulsen@plandent.dk Plandent Jydekrogen 16 DK-2625 Vallensbæk Telefon +45 43 66 44 44 www.plandent.dk -----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: members-discuss [mailto:members-discuss-bounces@ripe.net] På vegne af Lu Heng Sendt: 19. februar 2016 12:45 Til: members-discuss@ripe.net Emne: [members-discuss] Is mailing list become too small for RIPE? Hi Guys: With overwhelming mail traffic for past few days, I just realise one thing that I'd like to share with fellow colleagues. Now we have 13,000 members, and keep growing at 2000 member a year, with all those amount of active discussion, maybe maillng is not such a good idea for such big group, maybe Forum(like this one for example http://community.mybb.com/) will do much better in:1. put QnA for new comers, 2. organise discussion better and more readable way.3. let everyone dealing with it while they have time, as i believe Email mostly are more time critical things(at least for me personally, I know I can unscripbe but I do want to follow the discussion but don't want to receive 1000 mail traffic a day from a single list.) Let me know what everybody thinks. -- -- Kind regards. Lu ---- If you don't want to receive emails from the RIPE NCC members-discuss mailing list, please log in to your LIR Portal account and go to the general page: https://lirportal.ripe.net/general/ Click on "Edit my LIR details", under "Subscribed Mailing Lists". From here, you can add or remove addresses.
Hello,
On 19.02.2016, at 12:45, Lu Heng <h.lu@anytimechinese.com> wrote:
With overwhelming mail traffic for past few days, I just realise one thing that I'd like to share with fellow colleagues.
Now we have 13,000 members, and keep growing at 2000 member a year, with all those amount of active discussion, maybe maillng is not such a good idea for such big group, maybe Forum … ... Let me know what everybody thinks.
I don’t do Forums. They are only neat, if there is a good community manager. (moving off-topic posts, deleting spam, etc. etc.) e-Mail needs discipline, or a client like gmail, that does the clean up for you (minus the privacy). The problem is not the size, I would guess lists like the LKML have more members. It is the automatic subscription. On the other hand, the members won’t find this list. So maybe each members contact needs to be on here, but needs a good welcome package, including the do’s and don’ts on mailing lists. Seems to be forgotten knowledge these days. QAs could move to a stackoverflow-like site, where the bad info is weeded out by the community votes, but discussion needs the raw character of e-Mail: you can’t simply delete a post made to the list. I can’t take back what is said in public as well. So we might need a guide what is on, and what is off-topic on this list, and self regulate accordingly. While I’m writing this, there is another e-Mail coming in with only one additional line posted on top. This is exactly the bad practice, that makes it unreadable. Weed out, no TOFU (TOp Post, FUll quote below) is helping to skim through hundreds of e-Mails. It is more work for the writer, but less for the reader. (Un)fortunately there are a lot of readers. The same in a Forum. There are Posts with “What?” / “can you help me plz” as the only content. just my two cents Matthias
Hi 1. not everyone has gmail client and not everyone want to change their mail solution just for the sake of single list. 2. educate everyone behave(and in this case more like educate 13,000 companies) are near impossible job. 3. Forums are more passive engagement then mailling list(in mailling list you ware almost forced to engage every message there at the time it posted unless you do quite a bit trick to your mail solution), while in the Fourm you may choice when you want to read it. 4. Ripe now has more member than the other 4 RIR together combined, so it make sense to discuss issue in more organized way. Just my 2 cents. On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 1:02 PM, Matthias Šubik <matthias.subik@ucnd.at> wrote:
Hello,
On 19.02.2016, at 12:45, Lu Heng <h.lu@anytimechinese.com> wrote:
With overwhelming mail traffic for past few days, I just realise one thing that I'd like to share with fellow colleagues.
Now we have 13,000 members, and keep growing at 2000 member a year, with all those amount of active discussion, maybe maillng is not such a good idea for such big group, maybe Forum … ... Let me know what everybody thinks.
I don’t do Forums. They are only neat, if there is a good community manager. (moving off-topic posts, deleting spam, etc. etc.) e-Mail needs discipline, or a client like gmail, that does the clean up for you (minus the privacy).
The problem is not the size, I would guess lists like the LKML have more members. It is the automatic subscription. On the other hand, the members won’t find this list.
So maybe each members contact needs to be on here, but needs a good welcome package, including the do’s and don’ts on mailing lists. Seems to be forgotten knowledge these days.
QAs could move to a stackoverflow-like site, where the bad info is weeded out by the community votes, but discussion needs the raw character of e-Mail: you can’t simply delete a post made to the list. I can’t take back what is said in public as well.
So we might need a guide what is on, and what is off-topic on this list, and self regulate accordingly.
While I’m writing this, there is another e-Mail coming in with only one additional line posted on top. This is exactly the bad practice, that makes it unreadable. Weed out, no TOFU (TOp Post, FUll quote below) is helping to skim through hundreds of e-Mails. It is more work for the writer, but less for the reader. (Un)fortunately there are a lot of readers.
The same in a Forum. There are Posts with “What?” / “can you help me plz” as the only content.
just my two cents Matthias
-- -- Kind regards. Lu
for brevity, I tried to resort this reply.
On 19.02.2016, at 13:08, Lu Heng <h.lu@anytimechinese.com> wrote:
...
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 1:02 PM, Matthias Šubik <matthias.subik@ucnd.at> wrote:
Hello,
On 19.02.2016, at 12:45, Lu Heng <h.lu@anytimechinese.com> wrote:
With overwhelming mail traffic for past few days, I just realise one thing that I'd like to share with fellow colleagues.
Now we have 13,000 members, and keep growing at 2000 member a year, with all those amount of active discussion, maybe maillng is not such a good idea for such big group, maybe Forum … ... Let me know what everybody thinks.
...
e-Mail needs discipline, or a client like gmail, that does the clean up for you (minus the privacy).
The problem is not the size, I would guess lists like the LKML have more members. It is the automatic subscription. On the other hand, the members won’t find this list.
1. not everyone has gmail client and not everyone want to change their mail solution just for the sake of single list.
This is correct, if you auto-subscribe the members main e-Mail to this list, you even mess up the mass e-Mail setup of those who happen to have a dedicated e-Mail solution for ML-discussions.
So maybe each members contact needs to be on here, but needs a good welcome package, including the do’s and don’ts on mailing lists. Seems to be forgotten knowledge these days.
...
2. educate everyone behave(and in this case more like educate 13,000 companies) are near impossible job.
This is a question of moderation, not of the technology. I guess the original idea was, to have a way to address all members, from RIPE, and from within the community of members.
3. Forums are more passive engagement then mailling list(in mailling list you ware almost forced to engage every message there at the time it posted unless you do quite a bit trick to your mail solution), while in the Fourm you may choice when you want to read it.
Or if you want to read at all. The Problem with the forum is: I would wonder if more than a few hundred readers would use it. As you said: “when you want to read it”. e-Mail is push, and it is therefor the medium of choice for bad news, or information the sender wants to get through, not the receiver wants to have “right now”.
4. Ripe now has more member than the other 4 RIR together combined, so it make sense to discuss issue in more organized way.
I second that. But it isn’t a technology / medium question. It is a social one. How do I reach out to 13000 members, with probably more languages combined compared to most other online communities? This is the real question which needs to be asked here. I need to ask all members to vote on a topic, for their opinion, etc. You can’t do that in a forum, unless the forum is backed by *hearthedrums* e-Mail notification. So how to deal with a list of autosubscribed members? moderation-only? I don’t know. What I do know for certain is, members need to interact with RIPE NCC, with the community, on abuse, IPv6 transition and probably other topics. As a LIR you can’t unsubscribe from being a member, and pretend change doesn’t happen. Matthias ps: I tried to pick up all the different topics covered in this thread. If I missed one, let me know.
Hi Matthias: A forum supports Email notification and replies(in which most open software nowadays do that), if you dislike forum, you can still follow the threads interests you the maillisng list way. And for member like me like more passive experience of engagement, probably forum the way it is, will do better. On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 1:31 PM, Matthias Šubik <matthias.subik@ucnd.at> wrote:
for brevity, I tried to resort this reply.
On 19.02.2016, at 13:08, Lu Heng <h.lu@anytimechinese.com> wrote:
...
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 1:02 PM, Matthias Šubik <matthias.subik@ucnd.at> wrote:
Hello,
On 19.02.2016, at 12:45, Lu Heng <h.lu@anytimechinese.com> wrote:
With overwhelming mail traffic for past few days, I just realise one thing that I'd like to share with fellow colleagues.
Now we have 13,000 members, and keep growing at 2000 member a year, with all those amount of active discussion, maybe maillng is not such a good idea for such big group, maybe Forum … ... Let me know what everybody thinks.
...
e-Mail needs discipline, or a client like gmail, that does the clean up for you (minus the privacy).
The problem is not the size, I would guess lists like the LKML have more members. It is the automatic subscription. On the other hand, the members won’t find this list.
1. not everyone has gmail client and not everyone want to change their mail solution just for the sake of single list.
This is correct, if you auto-subscribe the members main e-Mail to this list, you even mess up the mass e-Mail setup of those who happen to have a dedicated e-Mail solution for ML-discussions.
So maybe each members contact needs to be on here, but needs a good welcome package, including the do’s and don’ts on mailing lists. Seems to be forgotten knowledge these days.
...
2. educate everyone behave(and in this case more like educate 13,000 companies) are near impossible job.
This is a question of moderation, not of the technology. I guess the original idea was, to have a way to address all members, from RIPE, and from within the community of members.
3. Forums are more passive engagement then mailling list(in mailling list you ware almost forced to engage every message there at the time it posted unless you do quite a bit trick to your mail solution), while in the Fourm you may choice when you want to read it.
Or if you want to read at all. The Problem with the forum is: I would wonder if more than a few hundred readers would use it. As you said: “when you want to read it”. e-Mail is push, and it is therefor the medium of choice for bad news, or information the sender wants to get through, not the receiver wants to have “right now”.
4. Ripe now has more member than the other 4 RIR together combined, so it make sense to discuss issue in more organized way.
I second that. But it isn’t a technology / medium question. It is a social one. How do I reach out to 13000 members, with probably more languages combined compared to most other online communities?
This is the real question which needs to be asked here. I need to ask all members to vote on a topic, for their opinion, etc. You can’t do that in a forum, unless the forum is backed by *hearthedrums* e-Mail notification.
So how to deal with a list of autosubscribed members? moderation-only? I don’t know. What I do know for certain is, members need to interact with RIPE NCC, with the community, on abuse, IPv6 transition and probably other topics. As a LIR you can’t unsubscribe from being a member, and pretend change doesn’t happen.
Matthias ps: I tried to pick up all the different topics covered in this thread. If I missed one, let me know.
-- -- Kind regards. Lu
Le 19/02/2016 13:08, Lu Heng a écrit :
2. educate everyone behave(and in this case more like educate 13,000 companies) are near impossible job.
We're not a LUser base, we're educated internet members. If someone here is unable to handle proper (RFC 2822 text only) mail, with usual ML rules, maybe he shouldn't even be a LIR. There's nothing wrong with keeping the good old ways of doing things : usenet and mailing-listes have proven to be the only required tools to build the Internet until now. Perhabps HTML mail clients, bots and top-posters should be banned and radiated form RIPE membership… Best regards to everyone else. -- Jérôme Nicolle +33 6 19 31 27 14
Hi On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 4:40 PM, Jérôme Nicolle <jerome@ceriz.fr> wrote:
Le 19/02/2016 13:08, Lu Heng a écrit :
2. educate everyone behave(and in this case more like educate 13,000 companies) are near impossible job.
We're not a LUser base, we're educated internet members. If someone here is unable to handle proper (RFC 2822 text only) mail, with usual ML rules, maybe he shouldn't even be a LIR.
You are clearly a looser by using those words. I barely making a suggestion so keep your temple.
There's nothing wrong with keeping the good old ways of doing things : usenet and mailing-listes have proven to be the only required tools to build the Internet until now.
Perhabps HTML mail clients, bots and top-posters should be banned and radiated form RIPE membership…
Best regards to everyone else.
-- Jérôme Nicolle +33 6 19 31 27 14
---- If you don't want to receive emails from the RIPE NCC members-discuss mailing list, please log in to your LIR Portal account and go to the general page: https://lirportal.ripe.net/general/
Click on "Edit my LIR details", under "Subscribed Mailing Lists". From here, you can add or remove addresses.
-- -- Kind regards. Lu
Hi Lu, Le 19/02/2016 16:56, Lu Heng a écrit :
You are clearly a looser by using those words.
I barely making a suggestion so keep your temple.
You're right, I'm getting hot-tempered due to the current lameness level, and apologize for that. Let me be clear : we, as the Internet community, used to have rules, proven to be efficient. Year after year, less and less people respected them. It's now a real mess to keep a readable and productive thread going on a public ML. It's difficult to see how a less formal tool such as a web forum would help us structure our community. We'd have to rely on moderators, which could be prone to taking sides in some debates. By the way, text-only mails are responsive, readable by anyone (even disabled), and lightweighted, efficient way of conveing sense to the community. Why would we want anything else ? Best regards, -- Jérôme Nicolle +33 6 19 31 27 14
Hi On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 5:50 PM, Jérôme Nicolle <jerome@ceriz.fr> wrote:
Hi Lu,
Le 19/02/2016 16:56, Lu Heng a écrit :
You are clearly a looser by using those words.
I barely making a suggestion so keep your temple.
You're right, I'm getting hot-tempered due to the current lameness level, and apologize for that.
Accepted. Sorry about the looser part, but "LUser net" was really upsetting me.
Let me be clear : we, as the Internet community, used to have rules, proven to be efficient. Year after year, less and less people respected them. It's now a real mess to keep a readable and productive thread going on a public ML.
It's difficult to see how a less formal tool such as a web forum would help us structure our community. We'd have to rely on moderators, which could be prone to taking sides in some debates.
By the way, text-only mails are responsive, readable by anyone (even disabled), and lightweighted, efficient way of conveing sense to the community. Why would we want anything else ?
To start with, I am not around as long as most people here, I start to use internet when it was 1994, but many people here probably started way easier than me,. I agree with you to certain extend that text only Email communication was effective, and moreover, clean and easy to read, lightweight to transmit. I still remember the IRC communications I used to but almost not that useful nowadays unless you want to talk to very specific group of people. However, please remember internet as it is today are far different from what it was before, just like RIPE NCC today are not in the same size as before, we have grown from barely 10 people speaking in the list to over 10K, and keep growing at 2000 member a year base, we need to find a solution for such huge discussion, just image a room with 10,000 people, it can be very hard to make things clear while everybody is talking. As I have been informed privately by a community member that RIPE NCC are looking into solutions to the problem, I have faith in them that such solution will come out rather quickly to meet the current demand for clear communication between members.
Best regards,
-- Jérôme Nicolle +33 6 19 31 27 14
-- -- Kind regards. Lu
Hi, On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 04:40:34PM +0100, Jérôme Nicolle wrote:
We're not a LUser base, we're educated internet members. If someone here is unable to handle proper (RFC 2822 text only) mail, with usual ML rules, maybe he shouldn't even be a LIR.
There's nothing wrong with keeping the good old ways of doing things : usenet and mailing-listes have proven to be the only required tools to build the Internet until now.
Perhabps HTML mail clients, bots and top-posters should be banned and radiated form RIPE membership???
This would free quite a bit of IPv4 resources at the same time, so all for it! Seriously: while your suggestion brought a slightly weary smile to my face, and I certainly miss the old days where people knew what RIPE or BGP is, we'll have to deal with an amazing amount of lack of education. So indeed, maybe more frequent push infos from the RIPE NCC on what this list is about, why people are on it (and how to get off it) might be the right way forward. I don't think forums are the way to go... Gert Doering -- NetMaster -- have you enabled IPv6 on something today...? SpaceNet AG Vorstand: Sebastian v. Bomhard Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14 Aufsichtsratsvors.: A. Grundner-Culemann D-80807 Muenchen HRB: 136055 (AG Muenchen) Tel: +49 (0)89/32356-444 USt-IdNr.: DE813185279
Hi I believe we all agree that there is a communication problem to be solved, with forum or not(in which was just one idea I propose, if you have a better one, please do share), we need to solve the problem here. Yes, some people here might able to deal with 1000 mail per day traffic from single list, but I believe there are quite amount of us, especially for the new comers(the outbreak of getting off the list request), it really wasn't the case. Moreover, I guess we all realise RIPE NCC member base have been quite bit evolved not only the numbers of members, but the diversities too. In my personal view, it's a good thing, end of the day, internet belong to everyone, and in order to make it belong to everyone, the lower the barrier, the better the game. How to make things comfortable for those recent joined 10,000 member, and increasingly joining 2000 of them each year, are serious topic need to be discussed. But hey, again, I am just proposing a solution to the problem here, for the good of the community, and if you think you have a better idea, please share it as well so we can discuss, and I am pretty sure I am no way to be the smartest here(I will feel pretty lucky if I am not the most stupid here consider how many smart people work in our industry). On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 7:16 PM, Gert Doering <gert@space.net> wrote:
Hi,
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 04:40:34PM +0100, Jérôme Nicolle wrote:
We're not a LUser base, we're educated internet members. If someone here is unable to handle proper (RFC 2822 text only) mail, with usual ML rules, maybe he shouldn't even be a LIR.
There's nothing wrong with keeping the good old ways of doing things : usenet and mailing-listes have proven to be the only required tools to build the Internet until now.
Perhabps HTML mail clients, bots and top-posters should be banned and radiated form RIPE membership???
This would free quite a bit of IPv4 resources at the same time, so all for it!
Seriously: while your suggestion brought a slightly weary smile to my face, and I certainly miss the old days where people knew what RIPE or BGP is, we'll have to deal with an amazing amount of lack of education.
So indeed, maybe more frequent push infos from the RIPE NCC on what this list is about, why people are on it (and how to get off it) might be the right way forward.
I don't think forums are the way to go...
Gert Doering -- NetMaster -- have you enabled IPv6 on something today...?
SpaceNet AG Vorstand: Sebastian v. Bomhard Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14 Aufsichtsratsvors.: A. Grundner-Culemann D-80807 Muenchen HRB: 136055 (AG Muenchen) Tel: +49 (0)89/32356-444 USt-IdNr.: DE813185279
---- If you don't want to receive emails from the RIPE NCC members-discuss mailing list, please log in to your LIR Portal account and go to the general page: https://lirportal.ripe.net/general/
Click on "Edit my LIR details", under "Subscribed Mailing Lists". From here, you can add or remove addresses.
-- -- Kind regards. Lu
On Fri, Feb 19, 2016, at 13:02, Matthias Šubik wrote:
So maybe each members contact needs to be on here, but needs a good welcome package, including the do’s and don’ts on mailing lists. Seems to be forgotten knowledge these days.
Probably a periodic (monthly ? quarterly ? yearly ?) reminder that the address (which exactly) is subscribed to a mailing list. A way of un-subscribing without a need to go through the LIRPortal would help too.
Weed out, no TOFU (TOp Post, FUll quote below) is helping to skim through hundreds of e-Mails. It is more work for the writer, but less for the reader. (Un)fortunately there are a lot of readers.
No matter how much we hate it, it starts being the norm. I even had pople complaining that without TOFU they have difficulties following. Keeping to a "no romobts/tickets/...." would already be a good start. -- Radu-Adrian FEURDEAN fr.ccs
Now we have 13,000 members, and keep growing at 2000 member a year, with all those amount of active discussion, maybe maillng is not such a good idea for such big group, maybe Forum(like this one for example http://community.mybb.com/) will do much better in:1. put QnA for new comers, 2. organise discussion better and more readable way.3. let everyone dealing with it while they have time, as i believe Email mostly are more time critical things(at least for me personally, I know I can unscripbe but I do want to follow the discussion but don't want to receive 1000 mail traffic a day from a single list.)
The mailing list is the best way I can imagine. I can filter e-mail all the way I want. In fact messages from RIPE ML are redirected to a RIPE folder right now, inbox stays clean with only productivity messages. I can't see how the discussion would be better organized or more readable than how I choose to read and organize it. The unsubscribe topic was a simple select/delete in my MUA, those hijacking the thread to unsubscribe was a hit of a key to remove the message and skip to the next useful email. Really I don't want to go to a web page, login, load 300kB of useless JS+HTML crap (over my 3G connection when on the road), scroll down a bunch of messages, click to display the next page, scroll more, find where I stopped reading yesterday to resume. And if my connection goes down while I am posting on your forum, I probably will have to retype my message because a cookie or some other Web-junk decided I was not allowed to resume. And when the forum goes on maintenance, I cannot re-read the messages. There are so many ways this can come to a failure... Denis
Hi Lu, Like your idea, I prefer forum over a mailing list when it comes to discussions. it would be much easier to organize topics. mailing lists are only good for announcements when you have 10k+ members. Regards, Arash Naderpour On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 10:45 PM, Lu Heng <h.lu@anytimechinese.com> wrote:
Hi Guys:
With overwhelming mail traffic for past few days, I just realise one thing that I'd like to share with fellow colleagues.
Now we have 13,000 members, and keep growing at 2000 member a year, with all those amount of active discussion, maybe maillng is not such a good idea for such big group, maybe Forum(like this one for example http://community.mybb.com/) will do much better in:1. put QnA for new comers, 2. organise discussion better and more readable way.3. let everyone dealing with it while they have time, as i believe Email mostly are more time critical things(at least for me personally, I know I can unscripbe but I do want to follow the discussion but don't want to receive 1000 mail traffic a day from a single list.)
Let me know what everybody thinks.
-- -- Kind regards. Lu
---- If you don't want to receive emails from the RIPE NCC members-discuss mailing list, please log in to your LIR Portal account and go to the general page: https://lirportal.ripe.net/general/
Click on "Edit my LIR details", under "Subscribed Mailing Lists". From here, you can add or remove addresses.
participants (8)
-
Arash Naderpour -
Denis Fondras -
Gert Doering -
Jérôme Nicolle -
Lars Poulsen -
Lu Heng -
Matthias Šubik -
Radu-Adrian Feurdean