[Biopython] suggestion: moving to the discussion list to Google groups

[Giles Weaver]

I urge extreme caution with regards to using Google Groups.
My experiences with Google Groups have been less than satisfactory. I've 
administered several small groups and they have been plagued with 
delivery issues for a small subset of users. I've also known members to 
be unable to access a group that they are a member of, and find that 
Google Groups has "disappeared" their profile - despite having an 
otherwise fully functioning Google account (Gmail etc).

I'm not a fan of mailman, but at least the open-bio administrators have 
full control over the lists. I've known Chris to solve issues with the 
bioperl mailman list within minutes. You won't get that kind of service 
(if any) from Google.

Having looked at alternatives to Google Groups myself, the two things 
that have caught my attention are bbPress (a wordpress derived bulletin 
board) and Google Wave. Both are still under development.
bbPress <http://bbpress.org/> boards can be subscribed to via RSS (and 
possibly email), so users can have messages drop into their mail/news 
reader.
Wave looks promising, but I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole until 
mature Google free implementations take off, and that could be some time 
away.

Mirroring the open-bio mailman lists onto Google Groups seems to me the 
right way to go, but I think there should be a health warning on the 
list home pages!

Giles

On 16/12/2009 19:07, Chris Fields wrote:
> On Dec 16, 2009, at 12:40 PM, Istvan Albert wrote:
>
>    
>> On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 1:28 PM, Chris Fields<cjfields at illinois.edu>  wrote:
>>      
>>> Agreed.  With bioperl we generally indicate it's best to search the archives prior to asking a question, just in case the answer is already known or has been worked out.
>>>        
>> My fault for being insufficiently clear. I am not saying that having
>> archives is useless.
>>
>> It all needs to be framed in the mindset of an unexpected event
>> causing an archive to be  lost. Is that irreparable harm? For example
>> would having a hundred more active participants be worth the small
>> risk of losing the archives?
>>      
> Not that I think Google is in any danger of going under, or that Google Groups will cease to exist, but they have discontinued services in the past (notebook was one, and I recall others going away).
>
>    
>> I am just putting the 100 as a number out there, just to get you to
>> think. I think you all agree that at some level of extra participation
>> the risks would be well worth it.
>>      
> I understand your point, but I'm not really convinced this is something that can't be accomplished by simply mirroring the group and redirecting new users to sign up on the obf forums.
>
>    
>> Now I am convinced that a Google group would get more participation.
>> But is that 10 more people, one hundred, one thousand? That I do not
>> dare to guesstimate.
>>
>> (definitely more than 10, ;-) )
>>
>> Istvan
>>      
> I think mirroring the list is the best compromise.  I can't envision moving everything wholesale over to Google Groups for the reasons Hilmar has outlined.
>
> Just curious, but does anyone know whether Google groups are more or less susceptible to spamming?  The current mailman setup does keep out a vast majority of spam (I can't recall the last instance, actually).
>
> chris
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