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Introducing list "topics"

1. Solderpunk (solderpunk (a) posteo.net)

Greetings Geminauts!

Following on (finally!) from semi-recent discussion about the
possibility of splitting the mailing list up into multiple smaller lists
to allow people to follow only the subset(s) of discussion that re
interesting or relevant to them, I am happy to announce that we're ready
to begin testing something in this spirit.  I know some people have been
waiting for something like this for quite a while - thanks for your
patience.

The GNU Mailman software which powers this list has support for
something called "topics", and I've set some of these up just now.  For
example, any post to the list which has "[users]" in its subject or in
the first 5 lines of its body will be included in the "users" topic
(I'll say more below about the available topics and their intended
purposes below).  If you subscribe to one or more topics, then you will

On the other hand, if you do not subscribe to any topics then you will
receive any and all posts, as if nothing had changed.  This basically
means nothing will change for you unless you opt-in to the new system by
subscribing to some subset of the available topics.  You can change your
subscription settings at any time by visiting
https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/listinfo/gemini.

The catch is that all of this only works if people remember to include
topic tags in their subjects, or early in their message bodies.  This is
mostly an issue for people starting new threads - once a topic tag is
included in the subject of a post, all replies will be included too
unless the person replying edits the subject to remove the topic.  If
you start a new thread and forget to add a topic, relatively few people
will actually see it - only those brave souls who follow the entire
list, or people who have subscribed to some topics but also made the
choice to still receive topicless posts (this is the option immediately
after the topic choices at the subscription options page).  This may
take a little getting used to, but hopefully it will not prove too hard
for us to pick up the habit.

Without further ado, the four currently defined topics are below.  I've
started out with just four to keep things relatively simple, but if over
time it becomes clear that we would benefit from more fine-grained
distinctions, I'm not opposed to moving in that direction.

# Users

Any post containing "[users]" in its subject belongs to the Users topic.
This topic is supposed to be used for discussion relevant to people
consuming and publishing content in Gemini-space, and is supposed to be
fairly non-technical.  Announcements of new capsules, new search
engines, new public resources (e.g. games like Astrobotany or
aggregators like CAPCOM or Spacewalk), and of new user-oriented software
(like clients, or site generators) is welcome here.

# Tech

Any post containing "[tech]" in its subject belongs to the Tech topic.
This topic is supposed to be used for discussion relevant to people
implementing Gemini software, running Gemini servers, or who are
generally interested in the technical side of things.  For example,
questions about the best way to implement some aspect of Gemini in a
particular language or environment, announcements of new libraries or
other developer/admin-oriented software, or discussion of advanced
subjects like building applications which use client certificates to
maintain state, are all welcome here.

# Spec

Any post containing "[spec]" in its subject belongs to the Spec topic.
This topic is supposed to be used for discussion towards finalising the
spec and the process of moving toward formally standardising Gemini with
bodies like IETF and IANA.  This is not a place to propose random
additions to the spec, but to address ambiguities and inconsistencies in
the existing spec and to resolve the few outstanding issues which have
already been raised.  It is possible (although hopefully increasingly
unlikely) that there are still important outstanding issues which
haven't been discovered yet - my sincere hope is that this kind of thing
will "bubble up" to [spec] after thorough discussion on [tech].

# Announce

Finally, any post containing "[announce]" in its subject belongs to the
Announce topic.  This is intended as a tool for me to make official,
important and infrequent announcements about the entire project which I
expect to be of very broad interest.  This will be a very low-traffic
topic, suitable for people who just want to keep loose tabs on the
project without trying to keep up with a daily stream of messages.  Note
that there's no access control on any of the topics, which means in
principle anybody can post to [announce].  I ask you to please not abuse
this, and don't post to [announce] unless you're me or I've told you
that you can do so.

That's all for now.  I hope that this change will help make the mailing
list a more manageable and more relevant resource for people.  Please be
patient and helpful during the transitional period (people are sure to
forget to include topics in their posts while the change is still new).
If this change does not seem to make the situation better we can
consider a proper splitting of the list in future, but this seems like a
less disruptive first step which we can try first.

Cheers,
Solderpunk

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2. Alex // nytpu (alex (a) nytpu.com)

This is a very welcome change, thanks! I was worried that the list
wasn't big enough to justify there being multiple entirely separate
lists (gemini-users, gemini-spec, etc.), and this solves the problem
neatly without having to manage multiple lists.

I'm going to try to be a brave soul and stay subscribed to the full list
until I can no longer stand it, but there are many people on gemini that
will definitely appreciate this change.

Thanks for all your work on gemini solderpunk!

~nytpu

-- 
Alex // nytpu
alex at nytpu.com
GPG Key: https://www.nytpu.com/files/pubkey.asc
Key fingerprint: 43A5 890C EE85 EA1F 8C88 9492 ECCD C07B 337B 8F5B
https://useplaintext.email/
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3. Solderpunk (solderpunk (a) posteo.net)

On Sat Dec 19, 2020 at 8:31 PM CET, Alex // nytpu wrote:

> I'm going to try to be a brave soul and stay subscribed to the full list
> until I can no longer stand it, but there are many people on gemini that
> will definitely appreciate this change.

I plan to limit my attention, at least for the time being, just to
[spec] so I can focus on getting things finalised as soon as possible.
But I'll keep a loose eye on the other topics via the web archive, and
might expand my subscription again once my real life has settled down a
little bit and I've worked through my large existing backlog of things
to take care of.

However, I will probably have the option to receive topicless posts
turned on for, say, the rest of 2020, just because I expect the transition
period to be a little rough - e.g. there are still live threads which
obviously lack topics, and changing the subject to insert a topic now
might break thread display in some email clients.

Cheers,
Solderpunk

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4. Sean Conner (sean (a) conman.org)

It was thus said that the Great Solderpunk once stated:
> 
> Without further ado, the four currently defined topics are below.  I've
> started out with just four to keep things relatively simple, but if over
> time it becomes clear that we would benefit from more fine-grained
> distinctions, I'm not opposed to moving in that direction.
> 
> # Users
> # Tech
> # Spec> 
> # Announce

  You might want to add a topic "[ann]" to allow users to announce new
sites or projects.  That's already being done by users.

  Also, are these topic markers compared case insensitively?  Is "[USERS]"
and "[users]" the same topic?  

  It's a cool idea, and I much prefer this to separate lists.

  -spc

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5. Sean Conner (sean (a) conman.org)

It was thus said that the Great Sean Conner once stated:
> It was thus said that the Great Solderpunk once stated:
> > 
> > Without further ado, the four currently defined topics are below.  I've
> > started out with just four to keep things relatively simple, but if over
> > time it becomes clear that we would benefit from more fine-grained
> > distinctions, I'm not opposed to moving in that direction.
> > 
> > # Users
> > # Tech
> > # Spec> 
> > # Announce
> 
>   You might want to add a topic "[ann]" to allow users to announce new
> sites or projects.  That's already being done by users.
> 
>   Also, are these topic markers compared case insensitively?  Is "[USERS]"
> and "[users]" the same topic?  

  Oh, and can an email be in two or more topics?  Like "[ann] [tech]"?

  -spc

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6. Solderpunk (solderpunk (a) posteo.net)

On Sat Dec 19, 2020 at 11:39 PM CET, Sean Conner wrote:
> >   Also, are these topic markers compared case insensitively?  Is "[USERS]"
> > and "[users]" the same topic?  
>
> Oh, and can an email be in two or more topics? Like "[ann] [tech]"?

They're case insensitive.  The GNU Mailman docs don't actually seem to
answer your second question.  I would tentatively guess that an email

expressions, so if a subject matches against both expressions I don't
see why it wouldn't get sorted into both categories, but we'd have to
actually test it out...

Cheers,
Solderpunk

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7. text (a) sdfeu.org (text (a) sdfeu.org)

On Sat, 19 Dec 2020 23:51:39 +0100, Solderpunk wrote:
> On Sat Dec 19, 2020 at 11:39 PM CET, Sean Conner wrote:
>> Oh, and can an email be in two or more topics? Like "[ann] [tech]"?
> 
> They're case insensitive. The GNU Mailman docs don't actually seem to
> answer your second question. I would tentatively guess that an email
> *can* be in two topics.

Mailman code confirms, if I'm not mistaken:

https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~mailman-coders/mailman/2.1/view/head:/
Mailman/Handlers/Tagger.py

    for name, pattern, desc, emptyflag in mlist.topics:
        pattern = OR.join(pattern.splitlines())
        cre = re.compile(pattern, re.IGNORECASE)
        for line in matchlines:
            if cre.search(line):
                hits[name] = 1
                break

This list currently run by mailman 2.1.34; V3 is still working on topics:
https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman/-/blob/master/src/mailman/handlers/
member_recipients.py#L92

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8. Stephane Bortzmeyer (stephane (a) sources.org)

[Replying with Tech as it seems the most reasonable.]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 04:00:45PM +0100,
 Solderpunk <solderpunk at posteo.net> wrote 
 a message of 100 lines which said:

> # Tech
> 
> Any post containing "[tech]" in its subject belongs to the Tech topic.
> This topic is supposed to be used for discussion relevant to people
> implementing Gemini software, running Gemini servers, or who are
> generally interested in the technical side of things.

Or discussions about outages and other operational events? For
instance, gus.guru is down for some times and this may be of general
interest. (Imagine the Web with Google Search down.)

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9. Natalie Pendragon (natpen (a) natpen.net)

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 11:17:06AM +0100, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> For instance, gus.guru is down

Yikes! GUS lives again. Thank you for the heads up.

...maybe it's time I took a look at Manisha, your Nagios plugin for
Gemini :)

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10. cage (cage-dev (a) twistfold.it)

On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 04:00:45PM +0100, Solderpunk wrote:
> Greetings Geminauts!

Hi!

[...]

I wonder if could  be a good idea to send this email  (or a summary of
it) with  stable frequency on the  mailing list so that  newcomers can
understand how topics works and which ones are valid here.

Bye!
C.

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11. Solderpunk (solderpunk (a) posteo.net)

On Sun Dec 20, 2020 at 3:52 PM CET, cage wrote:

> I wonder if could be a good idea to send this email (or a summary of
> it) with stable frequency on the mailing list so that newcomers can
> understand how topics works and which ones are valid here.

Probably not a bad idea, and I should also link to this post from the
Gemini homepage right after linking to the mailing list...

Cheers,
Solderpunk

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12. cage (cage-dev (a) twistfold.it)

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 03:59:53PM +0100, Solderpunk wrote:

[...]

> I should also link to this post from the
> Gemini homepage right after linking to the mailing list...

Good idea! :)

Bye!
C.

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13. Kévin (lists (a) gph.dk)

20 d?c. 2020 ? 14:58 de natpen at natpen.net:

> On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 11:17:06AM +0100, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
>
>> For instance, gus.guru is down
>>
>
> Yikes! GUS lives again. Thank you for the heads up.
>
Have a look at?http://updown.io/?with the free welcome credit and setting 
checks hourly, you can get a good few years of monitoring + notifications 
for free without too much leg work

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14. Stephane Bortzmeyer (stephane (a) sources.org)

On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 07:06:28AM +0100,
 K?vin <lists at gph.dk> wrote 
 a message of 12 lines which said:

> Have a look at?http://updown.io/?

Besides the fact that it is a cloud-based (cloud = someone else's
computer) solution, it seems from their documentation that it works
only with HTTP. Did anyone try it with Gemini?

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15. Kévin (lists (a) gph.dk)

21 d?c. 2020 ? 09:16 de stephane at sources.org:

> On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 07:06:28AM +0100,
> K?vin <lists at gph.dk> wrote 
> a message of 12 lines which said:
>
>> Have a look at?http://updown.io/?
>>
>
> Besides the fact that it is a cloud-based (cloud = someone else's
> computer) solution, it seems from their documentation that it works
> only with HTTP. Did anyone try it with Gemini?
>
I've not yet tried it with Gemini, but I do have it checking my Gopher 
server?https://updown.io/kvci?so it's not totally limited to HTTP/S 
(granted I do have a Gemini check but I have used it via HTTPS to check 
Kineto when I used to use that in full production for Geminin <=> HTTP/S 
-?https://updown.io/sfpa)

-K?vin

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