[ensembl-dev] Upgrade the mail-list

[Duarte Molha]

Thanks Dan and Andreas

I know all these things you have indicated... Still, the fact that for searching this mailing list you have to make use of a feature in google search that many people probably do not even know exists, I think validates my points regarding the service.

Besides ... a integrated search showing the context of the questions query you search for is much more useful than a bunch of google links.

As for the exportability and backup feature ... I wasn't so much referring to us users but to ENSEMBL itself. The tools would have to be exportable and able to be backed up in case they were being hosted in a external server (like what happens when you use services like DISQUS).

Still... as a user, the backup and export options leave a lot of room for improvement: although you can download the archives as gzipped text files (1 per month) I am not sure what I am doing wrong but when I decompress them I just get jumbled text. I would expect at least to be able to download an valid HTML document with the mail list content tree.

As for the remaining features ... the social aspect of services like DISQUS are appealing to me. If you think about it we all are working in the same field and it is a good way of building up your connections. I know there are other places to this (LinkedIn, google plus and others) but I do find appealing to learn a bit about the people I am talking to and an integrated profile is a good way of accomplishing this.

I appreciate your answers and I know that everybody has their own views on this.

Best regards

Duarte



-----Original Message-----
From: dev-bounces at ensembl.org [mailto:dev-bounces at ensembl.org] On Behalf Of Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri
Sent: 08 May 2012 15:52
To: Ensembl developers list
Subject: Re: [ensembl-dev] Upgrade the mail-list

On Tue, May 08, 2012 at 02:17:42PM +0000, Duarte Molha wrote:
> Maybe this is not the best place to make this request... but it is now 
> 2012 and there have been great advances in technologies that have 
> superseded email mailing lists.
> Could we not transfer this wonderful mailing list to a more 21 century 
> friendly format?
> 
> I am sure you probably get a lot of duplicated questions that take 
> your time away from development just to answer some simple queries 
> that have shown up time and time again.
> 
> A new medium (with better search and collaboration features) would be 
> very welcome by us users and I am sure by you as developers.
> 

Hi Duarte,

In my not so humble opinion, email is by far the best way to direct questions to developers.  From the developer's point of view, email is better than having to go to a particular site or other web page, and it's far better than having an instant messaging or #irc window pop up while you're trying to think.

There are sites like biostar (http://www.biostars.org/) that accepts questions about Ensembl, and some Ensembl people monitor it.  That might be what you're looking for.

No matter how simple the question and how accessable the answer, it will be asked again and again.  I recently asked a question to our local helpdesk that is answered in the standard log-in message that I see every single time I log into our systems.

> I think these are the main features we would all welcome:
> 
> 
> 1)      Search and tag capabilities

The mail archive is here:

  http://lists.ensembl.org/pipermail/dev/

It is searchable by google, just search for e.g.

  'VEP predictor' site:http://lists.ensembl.org/pipermail/dev/

in the google search interface at google.com

> 
> 2)      Realtime Q&A

Why?

> 
> 3)      Some sort of social integration (not facebook PLEASE)

Why?

> 
> 4)      Exportable (it need be) and backupable (if that is even a word :) )

We back up our data, no worries.


Cheers,
Andreas


> 
> I know that probably there are some licensing issues to be overcome but the increase in productivity would probably offset most of the initial pain.
> 
> I would love to know your opinion on this.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Duarte Molha
> 

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--
Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri
Ensembl Gene Annotation Team

:wq

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