[xwiki-devs] Replace the Mailing Lists by a Forum

Hi everybody. Today I would like to speak about an issue that annoys me for years. We are working on a tool whose one of the objectives is to stop scattering information in multiple places. It's even the main argument explained in the video integrated on the home page of XWiki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QTWrZ7OfzI. But on the other hand, we, developers of XWiki, do the opposite in practice. We discuss on mailing lists that are archived on Markmail, we report issues on Jira and we do investigations on design.xwiki.org, and I don't even count Github. A newcomer have to understand the role and the functioning of each tool. It's quite complex. I don't think we should give up Jira because it is the best tool available in its domain and there is no serious competitor. However, concerning the mailing lists, it's very different. Let me list some problems: - We recently had troubles with some emails that were lost because of subtleties in the email protocols. - Someone who just want to discuss once have to register to the mailing list and then receive thousands of emails every year. - Some emails are lost in the SPAM catchers. - You cannot use serious text formatting. As far as I know, HTML is not supported on the ML nor in Markmail. - You cannot send attachments. - People looking at messages on Markmail do not always understand how to answer (I've seen some people trying to answer directly on Markmail because they believe it WAS the messaging tool). - This is "so 90s"! It still have some advantages: - Users can use their beloved email client. - Mail lists are quite standards in the Open Source world. However it does not balance the drawbacks. To fix this, I see several options: A - Evaluate and improve the Forum Application ( http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/ForumApplication) and use our own Dog Food. B - If it is too costly, use any PHP forum that the Open Source world have. phpBB for example is the common choice. However, it does not centralize everything but it replaces the couple ML/Markmail and these tools are very well-known. C - Use JIRA tickets with a certain label for development discussions because sometime the debates are spread between issues and threads, so it could be better to have everything directly on the issue. (FTR I don't think JIRA is the right tool for that but I wanted to list all options). This is not an action plan but a first step in that direction. Let me hear what you think. Thanks, Guillaume