[open-government] The Open Government Data list is moving to a new home. Come and join.

Mor Rubinstein morchickit at gmail.com
Mon Jul 20 13:56:49 UTC 2015


HI Steven,

Interesting point you are raising.

Couple of comments:

1. I have no way to quantify how many people over age of X will not move to
discourse. We don't collect this data. We can assumptions, but I am
guessing that people who are subscribers to this group already more tech
oriented than others (it's mostly in the heart of our work). Actually, I
find that discourse is easier to use sometimes than mailmen in some cases.
So, I will keep looking at it, but I am not sure about the assumptions.
People who are not tech oriented will have difficulty with any application,
we need to make sure this will be easier for them.

2. You can still keep broadcasting on Discourse. In fact, you can actually
choose more channels that you want to keep tune in. You will still get
notification of new discussion to your mails and you can comment via email
as well. The only time you need to use the forum is to open a new
discussion, which I think is actually good, since your editing choices are
better.

3. I am aware that we are going to lose some people, but this list has been
quiet for a long time now. A lot of the messages are cross posting from
other lists. So, I can say that the participation rate in this list is
already low. I hope that that discourse can make it better. It will need
some work, we are aware of it, but we are happy to take the challenge of
doing so. This is not and fast transition, we will have to adjust, but I
don't see how keeping this list alive for eternity will help, even if it's
writing digests. We need to think on other ways to keep people informed if
they choose to (Like newsletters).

In conclusion, I think this next step is positive. When we started the
list, we didn't see it as a one channel broadcasting platform, but as a
multi channel participation tool. From other places in the world like
Hasadna in Israel and P2PU, I can say discourse has created positive
change. I hope it will happen here too, with all of the community help.

Best,
Mor

On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 2:05 PM, stef <s at ctrlc.hu> wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 07:46:53AM -0500, Steven Clift wrote:
> > I fear that swapping out the bonding and broadcast nature of a mailing
> list
> > for the destination nature of web forums, you've just cut the reach of
> this
> > community by 80%.
>
> i guess the loss of mine will be joy for some others.
>
> viva la contraselection
> s
>
> --
> otr fp: https://www.ctrlc.hu/~stef/otr.txt
>
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