Is it time to kill the mailing list?

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?

@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 Iā€™d like get to a point where thatā€™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. Weā€™ve considered adding another discourse instance specifically for arbitrary user-level discussion, and I have basically resolved to do so, but itā€™s on the backburner ATM. Thereā€™s some concern that adding another forum to replace the mailing list could fragment the community further, but it does feel like thereā€™s a function missing still (user discussion) that isnā€™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?

Thanks @brson that does help. I missed the docs page. Youā€™re right that is pretty clear.

Iā€™ll go back to lurking on this forum for now. :smile:

Why do we have to split this forum into ā€œuserā€ and ā€œdeveloperā€ ones when we already have the category system?

Perhaps we can modify the ā€œnew topicā€ screen to prompt newcomers to tag their questions with sth like helpme.

@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.

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