[aclug-L] ACLUG mailing list future

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

The mailing list manager I use to host these lists, Ecartis, has been
abandoned upstream for a few years and was removed from Debian back in
May.  This has prompted me to do some evaluation of alternatives.

The two main options that I'm considering are Google Groups and Mailman.
 Mailman would run on my server; Google Groups is obviously a Google
service.

Some pluses and minuses of each:

Google Groups:

* Plus: Has an integrated web forum for those that prefer that

* Plus: Nice, searchable, integrated archives

* Plus: Can easily designate whomever we'd like to be full admins

* Minus: At Google's mercy regarding UI changes

* Minus: At Google's mercy to keep the service up

* Minus: Has the basic features, but not many advanced ones.  Probably
enough for us though.

* Minus: No programmatic interface to the archives; would maintain the
gmane.org mirror to keep mbox archives available.

Mailman:

* Plus: Exceptionally configurable.

* Minus: Built in archives are essentially what's on lists.complete.org
now.  In other words, crappy.  Would move archives to gmane.org (and
possibly also to an archive-only Google Group)

* Minus: No posting from the web

* Minus: Rely on me to keep the service up.

* Plus: Archives available (to me) in mbox format for transitions.

My initial inclination is to suggest Google Groups, but the point of
this message is to gather feedback.  In either case, subscriber lists
could be migrated, and the @aclug.org addresses could forward to the new
place for a time.

The second question relates to which ACLUG lists to keep.  There are 7
ACLUG lists visible at lists.complete.org right now.  Of those, there
are only two that have seen posts this year: this one and announce, and
announce hasn't see a post since January.  My suggestion would be to
move only this list over, unless people intend to start using announce
again.

Thoughts?

-- John

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