What I don’t like about Discourse - it’s not quite a mailing list. Yes,
it has a mailing list mode, but how can I create topics without visiting
the site? either it’s not obvious and I’ve missed it or it’s not
possible.
You can, just send a mail to the discourse, it’ll get into the Inbox
section and be moved to the appropriate category by a moderator. cf. [1]
[1] Discourse via Email - #11 by roni
Discourse seems more like a web forum - well, it is one. And while it
tries to emulate a mailing list, I don’t think it does it properly.
Still I see the differences.
Yes, there are differences. Are they repaid by the bonus in
user-friendliness? I’d guess so.
I’m quite sad actually I haven’t seen the mailing list before it
transformed into Discourse. Having yet another password I need to
remember to create new topics and change settings is annoying, even if
my password manager handles it all for me.
Well… before it was hosted by the university also hosting hydra, at
nix-dev@cs.uu.nl. Then, it moved to google groups when the university
stopped providing it. And finally it moved to discourse.
I’d rather have a standard ML too, but it looks like more people come on
Discourse. Counting from my archives, in 1 random month (2017-09) the
google groups had 51 topics, in 1 random month (2018-09) the discourse
has had 89 topics.
Despite my rather having a ML, I think it’s worth it, because this
discourse is useful for beginners, and if I want nix to take over the
world (and I want it to), I need beginners, not people who already know
all its quirks 