Rename "xbiblio" mailing list?

CSL Development
1

Would it be a good idea to rename the “xbiblio” SourceForge project to
“citation-style-language”? The “xbiblio” term isn’t in use anymore,
and we abandoned SourceForge except for the xbiblio-dev mailing list.

See



Opinions?

Rintze

2

agree.On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 9:57 AM, Rintze Zelle <@Rintze_Zelle>wrote:

3

Good idea.

While we’re on it, any interest in moving to another ML option; like Google
Groups?

4

I would highly support that decision (to move to a different ML). One
reason being that I could not for the life of me find a way to reply to a
thread without having one of the emails from that thread (which I had
deleted). Perhaps there’s a way though…

Aurimas

5

I would highly support that decision (to move to a different ML). One reason
being that I could not for the life of me find a way to reply to a thread
without having one of the emails from that thread (which I had deleted).
Perhaps there’s a way though…

The current xbiblio mailing list is mirrored at
http://xbiblio-devel.2463403.n2.nabble.com/, which allows you to reply
to existing messages.

While we’re on it, any interest in moving to another ML option; like
Google Groups?

Renaming the SourceForge project will be less work than moving to
another mailing list provider (somebody described the move from
SourceForge to Google Groups at
MigrationToGoogleGroups · wojdyr/fityk Wiki · GitHub ).

Are there any mailing list providers we should look at other than
Google Groups? My main worry is be that Google might shuts down Google
Groups at some point. SourceForge might have a clunky interface (and
include ad links in the messages), but it has been reliable for CSL
for close to a decade now.

Rintze

6

My main worry is be that Google might shuts down Google Groups at some
point

This is always some risk but Google does actively use Google Groups itself
for development mailing lists for Blink, Chrome and Go so
the situation isn’t the same as it was with Reader for example.

7

Also, is this still relevant? I don’t administer a Google Group, so I
don’t know if things have improved since 2009.

http://ejohn.org/blog/google-groups-is-dead/
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/jquery-en/_GgR8UkoqpE

Rintze

8

My solution to the spam problem (on the bibo list) was to moderate
membership (something I guess we can’t do now). This requires people to
write a short description of why they’re joining, and for an admin to
approve it. I can also force moderation on new member posts, although
that’s not generally necessary.

BruceOn Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 12:08 PM, Rintze Zelle <@Rintze_Zelle>wrote:

9

(for all non-Bruce people here, we currently get about 1 spam email a
week on the xbiblio mailing list, so Bruce and I started moderating
new members and messages from non-members)

10

We use Google Groups for zotero-dev. I’m not a huge fan, but I don’t
know if there’s a better alternative.

My biggest complaints:

  • Spam isn’t an issue for us, since we moderate messages from new users.
    (Anyone can join without moderation.) But there’s a pretty big flaw. It
    normally sends us a notification when there’s a message from a new user,
    so we can approve messages fairly quickly. But If Google thinks a
    message is spam, even from a whitelisted member with a Gmail address
    who’s posted before (and who happens to be, say, the developer of a
    major third-party Zotero add-on), it will send the message to the
    moderation queue without notification, where it can sit unnoticed for
    days. Checking the interface just now, I found a message from yesterday
    that I didn’t receive a notification for. There’s a setting to have it
    always send a notification, but that has never worked for me.

  • The default hash URLs are disconcerting, since who knows if they’ll
    remain functional after future site changes. You can get non-hash URLs,
    but you have to get them manually from a menu.

  • The admin interface isn’t accessible via mobile, so you have to switch
    to the full site, which is hard to navigate on a phone.

They rolled out a new interface recently, though, so there may actually
be people there who work on it, and some of these things might be fixed
at some point.

11

It also doesn’t seem like Google Groups has any decent way to export
messages (SourceForge allows you to download a .mbox file of the
entire archive).

I asked SourceForge about renaming the mailing list, but apparently
they don’t forward messages send to the old mailing list address. I
think this would be very frustrating if people resurrect an old
thread: they would either have to change the reply-to address or their
reply would bounce. See
https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/site-support/5212/

Rintze