Is it time to kill the mailing list?

[zmoazeni]

I’m a new user to rust and I have to admit. I am very confused on where I should direct some questions/discussions. Currently I have know of 5 communication avenues:

• StackOverflow
• The Mailing list
• This Discourse forum
• IRC
• Github Issues (if it’s bug-related)

As a new user, I honestly dislike IRC unless it’s an in-depth or nuanced discussion and it needs a higher bandwidth than email or a forum.

I came across this on the mailing list

The mailing list is mostly dead BTW. Consider bringing this up on discuss.rust-lang.org instead.

And now I’m thoroughly confused.

As a concrete example, I just posted http://discuss.rust-lang.org/t/is-the-proper-way-to-specify-statically-compiled-ffi-libraries/1190 and I had to do some reading before posting to see if I was violating the community rules. Discourse told me to read http://discuss.rust-lang.org/t/about-this-forum-please-read/6 before posting and that seems pretty strict, yet there are other active discussions going on. I’ve followed the mailing list for a while, and that has been pretty helpful.

Is there any guidance on what sorts of discussions should be on what mediums? Is there also a way that can be clarified for other new users?

[brson]

@zmoazeni Currently I see it as

• Reddit - news, blogs and announcements
• SO - questions and help
• discuss - discussion about the development of the language itself

In practice, when people want something to be seen they often cross-post to Reddit, but I’d like get to a point where that’s not necessary (with more eyes on SO and more actual dev activity here).

As of now the mailing list is no longer even advertised anywhere. We’ve considered adding another discourse instance specifically for arbitrary user-level discussion, and I have basically resolved to do so, but it’s on the backburner ATM. There’s some concern that adding another forum to replace the mailing list could fragment the community further, but it does feel like there’s a function missing still (user discussion) that isn’t quite covered by reddit.

The docs page tries to make it clear where to go for what kind of discussion. What would have helped you @zmoazeni?

[zmoazeni]

Thanks @brson that does help. I missed the docs page. You’re right that is pretty clear.

I’ll go back to lurking on this forum for now.

[nodakai]

Why do we have to split this forum into “user” and “developer” ones when we already have the category system?

• http://discuss.rust-lang.org/categories

Perhaps we can modify the “new topic” screen to prompt newcomers to tag their questions with sth like helpme.

[brson]

@nodakai In http://discuss.rust-lang.org/t/distinction-between-user-and-developer-audiences-for-this-forum/925 we decided that it was more appropriate to have two. The tagging system seems to be in ill fit for the kind of segregation we desire.

Today I requested the mailing list be shutdown, preserving the archive for future Rust archeologists.

[system]

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