[Bioc-devel] Keep the bioc-help email list running?

Thu Oct 9 01:21:28 CEST 2014

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Luo Weijun" <luo_weijun at yahoo.com>
> To: bioc-devel at r-project.org, "Martin Morgan" <mtmorgan at fhcrc.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 8, 2014 3:51:22 PM
> Subject: Re: [Bioc-devel] Keep the bioc-help email list running?
> 
> Martin,
> Thanks for all the details/info. I see what you say.
> For the support forum, it is nice to have the email notification.  It
> would be great if we can reply to these messages via email. It is
> quicker to reply this way, and we have both email access and web
> access (like the classic email archive). This could make the
> transition smoother for many users..

You can reply to those messages via email. Some things to bear in mind, the reply will always be marked as an Answer to the post (I think).
Also, I don't think that HTML in the email will make it into the post. 
The entire contents of the email will go into the post, so you should trim the original message before you reply. 
Finally, you can't post a top-level post via email. These limitations are listed in the FAQ entitled "How is this site different from a mailing list?" at https://support.bioconductor.org/info/faq/ .

Dan

> Weijun
> 
> --------------------------------------------
> On Wed, 10/8/14, Martin Morgan <mtmorgan at fhcrc.org> wrote:
> 
>  Subject: Re: [Bioc-devel] Keep the bioc-help email list running?
> 
>  Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2014, 3:54 PM
> 
>  Hi Weijun --
> 
>  Thanks for the comments...
> 
>  On 10/08/2014 12:15 PM, Luo Weijun wrote:
>  > Dear all, I noticed that the classical bioc-help email
>  was shut down
>  > completely, instead we have to use the new bioc support
>  forum. I feel that we
>  > can be a little more cautious on this.
> 
>  > First, there should be tens of hundreds of subscribed
>  users to the email
>  > list. This is a extremely valuable resource, not many
>  projects like bioc have
>  > that. We could be giving up such a big community base
>  accumated these years
>  > over night. Whether and how long we can have that many
>  users back to the
>  > support forum is a question mark.
> 
>  You can see recent size and activity in the annual report,
>  about 3470
>  subscribers, 500 posts per month (about 16 per day) and 180
>  unique authors.
> 
>     http://bioconductor.org/about/annual-reports/AnnRep2014.pdf
> 
>  The entire mailing list history is available on the support
>  site, including this
> [[elided Yahoo spam]]
>  Information is much easier to
>  discover on the support site compared to the mailing list.
> 
>  In terms of 'community' in a more qualitative sense, I've
>  enjoyed perusing user
>  profiles, seeing what people (or their pets) look like, and
>  where they're
>  located geographically.
> 
>  > Second, I find it very conenvenient to ask/answer
>  questions or share info
>  > through emails. For users like me, the email list is
>  stickier than a support
>  > forum. You may conduct a survey or compare the recent
>  usage statistics if
>  > needed.
> 
>  Especially for tracking the support site, see the
>  'Notifications' field on your
>  profile page; mine is configured for the (somewhat
>  misleading) 'email for every
>  new thread', and actually I receive mail for each new
>  thread, comment, or answer
>  (though not changes to existing posts, something that is not
>  possible with
>  email). One can track individual tags, too, if one
>  interested in being informed
>  about particular types of questions. In principle one can
>  reply to these
>  messages via email, but in practice for me this serves as a
>  'pull' to the site,
>  clicking on the link embedded in the email.
> 
>  It's still very early days for the support site. We are
>  accumulating statistics,
>  and it does not look too bad. For instance in the last 24
>  hours there have been
>  11 new threads and I have received 25 messages (more active
>  than the mailing
>  list!) about posts. Biostars is hugely popular, more than an
>  order of magnitude
>  more traffic than our web site currently.
> 
>  > Third, many users will chose to ask questions on
>  Biostar or Seqanswers rather
>  > than on the support forum. There would be no
>  competitive advantage in terms
>  > of user interface or forum activity.
> 
>  The mailing list faced similar 'competition', but with the
>  additional obstacle
>  of accessing the list in the first place. The quality of
>  information and
>  expertise is what will bring people to the site.
> 
>  > Fourth, we can have both the support forum and the
>  email list running if some
>  > people prefer the forum. There shouldn’t be much
>  maintenance needed to keep
>  > email list as all the infrastructure is there and
>  automated already.
> 
>  Yes we thought about this but in the end realized that this
>  would divide our
>  community and double our work as responsible maintainers --
>  keeping up with both
>  the mailing list and the support site.
> 
>  > Just my thoughts here. Anyway, I think this is a issue
>  closely related to the
>  > growth of bioc project and the whole community. We have
>  good reasons to think
> [[elided Yahoo spam]]
> 
>  Thanks again for your feedback, and of course if the support
>  site were a
>  disaster we would re-activate the mailing list (it's in
>  suspended animation, not
>  actually destroyed). So far, reactivating the mailing list
>  does not seem like a
>  probable outcome.
> 
>  Martin
> 
>  > Weijun
>  >
>  > _______________________________________________
>  > Bioc-devel at r-project.org
>  > mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel
>  >
> 
> 
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