Assistance to close Community/Event-related mailing lists in favour of Discourse

[ovitters (Olav Vitters)]

I’m trying to assist in the effort of moving mailing lists over to Discourse. This is being tracked at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/Initiatives/-/issues/18. In this issue I’ve also updated the steps to take in closing a mailing list. I think it is best to first contact an owner before talking to the subscribers. For that I need a bit of help.

Basically: who is the right person/team/group to contact for the initial discussion?

The mailing lists I’m investigating are:

• gnome-women-list: Last few years it only contains announcement emails for Outreachy. I don’t think it needs a specific tag.
• intern-alumni-list: No archives. Can be closed without discussion in my opinion (IMO).
• interns-list: No archives. Seems related to https://wiki.gnome.org/Internships#Eligibility (not repeated after 2018). Can be closed without discussion IMO.
• internships-admin. Used heavily in 2018. After that the emails are ignored. IMO it needs to be closed to avoid giving a wrong impression.
• outreach-list: No emails since 2017. Can be closed without discussion IMO. There’s a Outreachy category here.
• outreachy-opportunities-list. Never used. Can be closed without discussion IMO. There’s a Outreachy category here.

Aside from the Community ones I’m also checking a few Events related ones:

• asia-summit-list: Mailing list is in use. I think it requires a new tag, e.g. ‘asia-summit’. This mailing list will take a while I think. Further, they’re currently planning GNOME Asia, maybe not good to change anything for now.
• guadec-attendees-list. Seems dead, nothing in archives. Can be closed without discussion IMO.
• guadec-list: Not too many emails. Maybe add a new tag, e.g. ‘guadec’. Where are the discussions usually? Should we request an ‘events’ category?
• guadec-local. Nothing since 2015. Can be closed without discussion IMO. Also noticed a ‘GUADEC organizers’ group on Discourse.

As said: for various I’d like to know who is owning the lists and can sign off with the sysadmins on closing these.

Please correct any wrong assumptions!

Btw: I wasn’t sure if to open a topic here or file an issue at https://gitlab.gnome.org/groups/Teams/Engagement/-/issues. Here felt better as the covered mailing lists are pretty broad.

Thanks

[ovitters (Olav Vitters)]

I noticed an additional unused Community mailing list:

• gugmasters-list “for collaboration and co-operation between GNOME User Groups worldwide”. Unused since 2017.

[sthursfield (Sam Thursfield)]

The guadec-local list is already on discourse as a (possibly private) group,and there’s also a GUADEC organisers group. And there’s a GUADEC tag! So I think you can consider all the GUADEC lists as migrated to discourse.

[ovitters (Olav Vitters)]

Thanks for the information! I’ve sent a closure announcement to the lists. The one to the attendees list is stuck in moderation. I cannot be bothered to ask for the moderation password as it never got an email anyway.

Up next: the internship/women/outreachy bits.