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terrikoI was really thrilled to see both Máirín Duffy and Luis Villa talking about mailing lists this week.
Before I talk about their posts, though, I want to tell you two awesome things related to Mailman:
1. The Mailman logo contest is now closed and the steering committee (including me!) is deciding how to narrow down the field before we put it to a vote. Check out all the awesome entries here!
2. Systers has been accepted as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code. And I'm going to be part of their totally awesome team of mentors! They're hoping to get a whole lot of improvements for their mailing list, and a lot of these are the same sort of improvements we generally want for Mailman, so I'm really hoping we'll be able to use some of that code in Mailman 3. Check out our proposed list of projects: I'm most excited about the archives one, but there's lots of awesome in that list. (Student looking for a summer project? Apply!)
Okay, now that I've talked about my announcements, let's talk about those posts I mentioned, and how they're connected to my upcoming work with Mailman.
Máirín posits an awesome new web interface for a list that shows discussions in a flatter way, almost akin to a bulletin board style interface, but with a much richer set of meta information. And pretty, but I wouldn't expect anything less from her mock-up. :)
Luis suggests that we should make it easier to walk away from boring conversations -- that is, it should be possible and easy to unsubscribe from conversations that aren't of interest to you.
Now, those of you familiar with Mailman might be thinking, "but, uh, can't you already do that unsubscribing thing with topics?" and the answer is yes, sort of. We use the built-in Mailman topics on the Linuxchix Courses list so that each course has its own topic, and people can subscribe to or unsubscribe from each course. But that doesn't really translate well to individual conversational threads, since an admin needs to make a regex for each topic. You could no doubt make a nice little hack to do this, but ... why would you, when Systers already has the answer? [dramatic music]
Systers runs a very neat system they call "dynamic sub-lists" that pretty much does exactly what Luis describes. It's easier to use than it is to explain, but the short explanation is that posts go to listname+threadname@example.com and you get each new thread, but can unsubscribe if the topic isn't interesting to you. You can take a look at the code on launchpad. And after the talk of checking out of conversations, I'm hoping that a few people will manage to run this on other lists. AND we're looking for SoC students to port that to Mailman 3 so maybe we could add it as a feature to Mailman in the future. Wouldn't that be nifty? I know I'd find it handy for larger volume lists.
So, if you had the information about the thread subscribers from dynamic sub-lists, then it'd be waaay easier to make a really snazzy web archive interface like Máirín described. Right now, Mailman has a built-in archiver called pipermail which is... rudimentary. It's meant to be. The idea was that if you wanted fancier archives, you could try out another archiver. The one I hear most about is MHonArc.
But... that was a perfectly good answer back when people didn't use web archives for mailing lists much. But nowadays, most people think the Internet is the web (Okay, most of them think Facebook is the Internet, but that's another story...) and people are used to using bulletin boards and and web interfaces for stuff. In fact, some people prefer this over email. And not a minor preference, but a "meh, I won't use it if I can't use it on the web" sort of preference. I know, this is mind-boggling to many techies of my age or older, but it's true. Web archives are a Big Deal.
Mailman had a totally awesome web interface when I first started using it in 1999 and... it still has the same web interface now. It's due for a facelift. There's no search. It's ugly by modern standards, and hard to integrate to your site design. The data's presented in a way that usually results in you clicking a dozen links to find what you want. So I asked some questions on the Mailman lists some years back, and since then I've spent a lot of time thinking about archives and doing informal usability studies (i.e. asking and watching users use mailmand and similar software). I still don't have the One True Interface, but I'm absolutely sure it's worthwhile to put a whole lot more work into those Mailman web archives. And it's going to be really fantastic, interesting work that will make a huge difference to a lot of open source projects. I'm hoping to take a few months after I'm done my PhD to do a few things before I enter the Real World, and archives are pretty close to the top of that list. But then the clever Systers team dangled this huge carrot in front of me where I'd get other people to work on archives in exchange for mentoring... so now I get to see this happen sooner! Totally awesome.
I'm really excited to see other people thinking about the problems of mailing lists... and I'm even more excited to say that thanks to Systers, Google and a team of SoC students, we may be seeing the mailing lists of The Future sooner rather than later!
Expect me to be talking about this stuff a lot over the coming months, and if you've got suggestions regarding Mailman, now's an even better time than usual to tell me about it. Don't be shy!
Before I talk about their posts, though, I want to tell you two awesome things related to Mailman:
1. The Mailman logo contest is now closed and the steering committee (including me!) is deciding how to narrow down the field before we put it to a vote. Check out all the awesome entries here!
2. Systers has been accepted as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code. And I'm going to be part of their totally awesome team of mentors! They're hoping to get a whole lot of improvements for their mailing list, and a lot of these are the same sort of improvements we generally want for Mailman, so I'm really hoping we'll be able to use some of that code in Mailman 3. Check out our proposed list of projects: I'm most excited about the archives one, but there's lots of awesome in that list. (Student looking for a summer project? Apply!)
Okay, now that I've talked about my announcements, let's talk about those posts I mentioned, and how they're connected to my upcoming work with Mailman.
Máirín posits an awesome new web interface for a list that shows discussions in a flatter way, almost akin to a bulletin board style interface, but with a much richer set of meta information. And pretty, but I wouldn't expect anything less from her mock-up. :)
Luis suggests that we should make it easier to walk away from boring conversations -- that is, it should be possible and easy to unsubscribe from conversations that aren't of interest to you.
Now, those of you familiar with Mailman might be thinking, "but, uh, can't you already do that unsubscribing thing with topics?" and the answer is yes, sort of. We use the built-in Mailman topics on the Linuxchix Courses list so that each course has its own topic, and people can subscribe to or unsubscribe from each course. But that doesn't really translate well to individual conversational threads, since an admin needs to make a regex for each topic. You could no doubt make a nice little hack to do this, but ... why would you, when Systers already has the answer? [dramatic music]
Systers runs a very neat system they call "dynamic sub-lists" that pretty much does exactly what Luis describes. It's easier to use than it is to explain, but the short explanation is that posts go to listname+threadname@example.com and you get each new thread, but can unsubscribe if the topic isn't interesting to you. You can take a look at the code on launchpad. And after the talk of checking out of conversations, I'm hoping that a few people will manage to run this on other lists. AND we're looking for SoC students to port that to Mailman 3 so maybe we could add it as a feature to Mailman in the future. Wouldn't that be nifty? I know I'd find it handy for larger volume lists.
So, if you had the information about the thread subscribers from dynamic sub-lists, then it'd be waaay easier to make a really snazzy web archive interface like Máirín described. Right now, Mailman has a built-in archiver called pipermail which is... rudimentary. It's meant to be. The idea was that if you wanted fancier archives, you could try out another archiver. The one I hear most about is MHonArc.
But... that was a perfectly good answer back when people didn't use web archives for mailing lists much. But nowadays, most people think the Internet is the web (Okay, most of them think Facebook is the Internet, but that's another story...) and people are used to using bulletin boards and and web interfaces for stuff. In fact, some people prefer this over email. And not a minor preference, but a "meh, I won't use it if I can't use it on the web" sort of preference. I know, this is mind-boggling to many techies of my age or older, but it's true. Web archives are a Big Deal.
Mailman had a totally awesome web interface when I first started using it in 1999 and... it still has the same web interface now. It's due for a facelift. There's no search. It's ugly by modern standards, and hard to integrate to your site design. The data's presented in a way that usually results in you clicking a dozen links to find what you want. So I asked some questions on the Mailman lists some years back, and since then I've spent a lot of time thinking about archives and doing informal usability studies (i.e. asking and watching users use mailmand and similar software). I still don't have the One True Interface, but I'm absolutely sure it's worthwhile to put a whole lot more work into those Mailman web archives. And it's going to be really fantastic, interesting work that will make a huge difference to a lot of open source projects. I'm hoping to take a few months after I'm done my PhD to do a few things before I enter the Real World, and archives are pretty close to the top of that list. But then the clever Systers team dangled this huge carrot in front of me where I'd get other people to work on archives in exchange for mentoring... so now I get to see this happen sooner! Totally awesome.
I'm really excited to see other people thinking about the problems of mailing lists... and I'm even more excited to say that thanks to Systers, Google and a team of SoC students, we may be seeing the mailing lists of The Future sooner rather than later!
Expect me to be talking about this stuff a lot over the coming months, and if you've got suggestions regarding Mailman, now's an even better time than usual to tell me about it. Don't be shy!
no subject
Date: March 19th, 2010 08:34 am (UTC)The UI is one of those things that, if it doesn't ever change, a user gets the feeling that it isn't actually changing underneath the hood. Changing the face is important to make people feel like things are actually happening, even if they aren't happening all that fast.
(And this is just a meta comment... me musing on something that just occurred to me by reading your post. Hmm.)
Good luck with the project, though, and congrats on getting accepted to GSoC! That's a nice boon to an organization's visibility, IMO.
no subject
Date: March 19th, 2010 06:55 pm (UTC)But the wait is getting close to over: 3 is in alpha now, without much interface. We're supposed to be seeing some interface mock-up as soon as the pycon sprinters get it put up so people can poke at it... probably in a couple of days. So things are most definitely happening!
And even more awesome (to me, anyhow) is that I've got funding lined up for us to get a nice usability study done on the interface once it's ready, while it's still malleable. I've seen some really amazing work done by the folk in this lab, so I'm expecting some really useful results to come out of that too. :)
Sub-lists
Date: March 20th, 2010 12:10 am (UTC)The alternative is to create a fourth list with everyone on it. We'd need a fourth volunteer, then, since no one is willing to be responsible for more than one of them.
So the sublist thing would be most appreciated!
Re: Sub-lists
Date: March 20th, 2010 04:18 am (UTC)Method A: An umbrella list:
1. Make lists for each group: PI, postdoc, student
2. Make an announcements umbrella list and subscribe each other list to it.
Result: No duplication in bounce processing, but approved senders may need to be duplicated. Or you could fake that using some filtery code, so everything from the announce list automatically goes through.
Method B: Topics:
1. Make one GiantList with everyone on it
2. Create topics for PI, postdoc, students groups, and one for announcements
3. Subscribe people to the appropriate group topic and announcement topic.
4. Tell them to send a message to the PIs, they send to GiantList@example.com with subject: [PI] $actualsubject
That handles consistency across lists for approved senders and bounce processing, but relies on people to remember the subject tag. In my experience, people were actually pretty good at this, but I used it in a very different context.
Re: Sub-lists
Date: March 20th, 2010 04:27 am (UTC)I can't create or destroy lists, only the dept admins can. We peons are denied any administrative powers for anything, presumably so that we don't compulsively run torrent trackers and offend the MPAA and get all funding denied to the university and everyone kicked off the internet and sent to piracy reeducation camps and sent back out again and sent back in again and brainwashed until we recite the DMCA backwards and install DRM (PlaysForSure) on our visual cortices.
But if it works in 2.1.9 maybe eventually we can change it. Upgrades are set to particular global warming temperature thresholds. My work desktop still has RHEL3. But I'm not bitter.
Re: Sub-lists
Date: March 20th, 2010 04:31 am (UTC)*I'm assuming so. I mean, what could be more interesting?
Re: Sub-lists
Date: March 20th, 2010 04:32 pm (UTC)Warning about topics: the matching is done with a regular expression, so be careful if you want your subject tag to include [ and ].
Mailman logo opinion from a graphic designer
Date: March 20th, 2010 07:45 pm (UTC)#13 is pretty cool too.
and that's my designer 2 cents.
SarahM