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From: Vinnie Falco (vinnie.falco_at_[hidden])
Date: 2020-06-27 19:56:50


On Sat, Jun 27, 2020 at 12:40 PM Andrey Semashev via Boost
<boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> I don't mind having a forum as an additional communication platform, if
> there is demand, but it should not replace the ML.

Mailing list sucks. People that are not subscribed can't search
through messages, and even people who are subscribed do not have
access to messages from before they subscribed. Google doesn't index
the mailing list, unless there is a mirror. In the case of Boost, the
mirror is controlled by third parties and cannot be leveraged to
generate traffic for boost.org and raise interest.

The barrier for joining a mailing list just to ask one question is
high. Right from the beginning you have to wait to get approved, and
then you need to wait for approval to post. In a forum, you can post a
message, get the URL of the message you just posted, and then share
that with your friends out-of-band (for example, on Slack or in a
reddit post) and get attention with possible replies right away. You
can't do that with a mailing list.

With a forum, information can be grouped in a top down fashion for
everyone. For example, we could create a subforum for each library
being reviews, have the review take place entirely in the forum, and
the forum is then locked and archived, available permanently through
boost.org (and associated with the library as part of its social media
history). At any point in the future someone could look through the
original review for the library including everyone's questions and
comments. They can share a link to the review subforum with their
friends. Someone can write a blog post years later about the review
and describe their experience, or lessons learned, or tout the great
value of the Boost Review Process, and so on. These things are not
possible with a mailing list.

We absolutely should move to a forum on boost.org for all things,
import as much as we can from the mailing list (as far back as
possible) into the forum, and then cease the use of the mailing list
forever. Anyone who emails the list should get an automated reply that
says "Please register for the wonderful forums at boost.org" etc

Thanks


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