Re: [sc-users] Future of the lists

[amindfv@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Thanks again for all your work, Scott! My artistic life has been very different because of this list.

On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 09:22:04AM +0000, kennethflak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Like others have pointed out before, the main thing is to ensure that we can access the archives.

I'd like to point out this is easier said than done. If something catastrophic were to happen to the server running scsynth.org, we'd most likely lose most messages and metadata, right? If the Birmingham mail servers went down, we've still got the complete archives distributed across the world in a format thousands of tools have been written to process.

Additionally: as Julian points out, this list goes back >20 years. Does anyone really think we're going to be using Discourse in 2041*? Things that look shiny today look ancient tomorrow, and I worry we'll just end up with another silo that'll be lost to time. In theory we could migrate it to a new tool, but how often has this really happened with forum software, and how mangled have the results typically been?

For those who point out there's a mailing list mode: try it for a few months before making up your mind. The messages are often inconveniently formatted, don't contain all metadata (e.g. emoji reactions - leaving me sometimes perplexed about what people are responding to), messages often never arrive (sometimes long stretches of messages, sometimes single messages within a thread), and apparently sometimes the server will silently reset your settings and you'll need to go log into the forum, missing messages in the interim before you noticed. For me it's been clear that as a mailing list mode user I'm a second-class citizen.

Last point: people have been pointing out that scsynth.org has been receiving a lot more messages lately. Remember that's not the only metric for success. For example, with good searchable archives, most people who encounter a problem will find a solution wiout needing to ask at all; without good archives, you can end up getting the same set of questions again and again.

Tom

*Assuming we come up with a solution to OSC timetags before 2038 :)


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