[Biopython] How many of you are on Slack?

[Peter Cock]

Hi João,

We've typically mirrored all important announcements to the OBF blog
(and Tweeted them), so I don't personally feel dropping the
announcement mailing list would be a big loss.

Fair point on the lack of external search, would Gitter or similar
chat platforms have the same problem?

Going back a few years, I did often use links to the mailing list
archive - but I've found that need has gotten smaller and smaller with
Github discussions taking its place. We could make an effort to push
serious discussions to Github to maintain an archive?

Either way, the attraction in not hosting it ourselves comes with the
flip side of paying for a service and/or being at the mercy of a
commercial business model.

Peter

On Mon, Jun 28, 2021 at 2:53 PM João Rodrigues
<j.p.g.l.m.rodrigues at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Peter,
>
> I am on Slack and I like Slack, but I would not retire the mailing list in favor of Slack. Few reasons why: not everyone can/wants to use Slack; Slack's free tier will not log more than 10k messages; and perhaps more importantly, Slack messages are not searchable outside of Slack. I would keep the mailing list around for those of us that cannot or don't want to use Slack, as well as for announcements and other "important" communications. Other than that, very much in favor of having a dedicated Biopython Slack!
>
> Cheers,
>
> João
>
> Peter Cock <p.j.a.cock at googlemail.com> escreveu no dia segunda, 28/06/2021 à(s) 05:59:
>>
>> Dear Biopythoneers,
>>
>> I am speaking here on behalf of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF),
>> the umbrella project for Biopython etc which looks after our domain name,
>> mailing lists, etc.
>>
>> We (the OBF) have been trying to reduce the amount of systems administration
>> our all volunteer team have to look after, and mailman is one target. There has
>> been a long term decline in Biopython's mailing list usage with more and more
>> discussion happening on GitHub issues and pull requests instead.
>>
>> Have many of you are also Slack users, and would a #Biopython channel under
>> the (currently little used) OBF slack be popular? As an aside, there
>> is a separate
>> more active OBF BOSC slack which may be of interest for the upcoming BOSC
>> meeting as part of ISMB/ECCB 2021:
>>
>> https://join.slack.com/t/obf-bosc/shared_invite/zt-n5ur1gsj-z2C~69_4lYTFPg5tbWA8Ew
>>
>> i.e. Might GitHub and Slack suffice to retire the Biopython mailing list?
>>
>> Peter
>> _______________________________________________
>> Biopython mailing list  -  Biopython at biopython.org
>> https://mailman.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/biopython