# Suggested mailing list -\> Discourse schedule

**URL:** <https://discourse.slicer.org/t/suggested-mailing-list-discourse-schedule/21>\
**Category:** Forum and website feedback\
**Created:** [April 8, 2017, 3:45am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/suggested-mailing-list-discourse-schedule/21 "2017-04-08T03:45:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ihnorton](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/ihnorton/32/9_2.png) [@ihnorton](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/ihnorton)\
**Post date:** [April 8, 2017, 3:45am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/suggested-mailing-list-discourse-schedule/21/1 "2017-04-08T03:45:03Z")

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A group of Slicer community members have extensively discussed the advantages of updated forum software, and developed a consensus at the 1/2017 Project week that we test Discourse as a new home for questions and discussion by users and developers of Slicer and any extension/topical communities who are interested.

[https://www.na-mic.org/Wiki/index.php/2017\_Winter\_Project\_Week/UpdatingCommunityForums](https://www.na-mic.org/Wiki/index.php/2017_Winter_Project_Week/UpdatingCommunityForums)

Here is a proposed schedule to transition from mailing lists:

- 3 days testing by small internal group.
- Announce testing period on mailing lists.
  - **Suggested strategy to seed content: copy interesting new posts onto Discourse manually, reply on Discourse, and post link to the reply on mailing list.**

- Send training email with link to instructions for how to use Discourse exclusively by email (the initial setup is slightly clunky, but reply-by-email works _great_).
- After [1 week?] testing, announce that mailing lists will be put in read-only mode after [1 additional week].
- Disable new posts to mailing list.
- Send daily, no-reply forum activity summaries to the mailing list for 1 month, then weekly summaries for [1 month?].

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**Author:** ![ihnorton](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/ihnorton/32/9_2.png) [@ihnorton](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/ihnorton)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2017, 3:06pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/suggested-mailing-list-discourse-schedule/21/2 "2017-04-10T15:06:21Z")

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Per the discussions from Project Week, the following wish-list was identified. Checkmarks and comments indicate how Discourse meets each item:

[https://www.na-mic.org/Wiki/index.php/2017\_Winter\_Project\_Week/UpdatingCommunityForums](https://www.na-mic.org/Wiki/index.php/2017_Winter_Project_Week/UpdatingCommunityForums)

- [high] Get email notification about specific themes (releases, announcements, sub-community, such as shape analysis, RT, …)
  - ✔

- [high] Import existing users
  - ✔ Discourse supports [bulk invite](https://meta.discourse.org/t/sending-bulk-user-invites/16468). However, I would suggest we wait until after the testing period at least.

- [high] Code highlight
  - ✔

- [high] indexing by Google
  - ✔

- [medium] Authentication with github
  - ✔ plus Google, Facebook, etc.

- [medium] Option for yearly billing
  - N/A since we were able to get free hosting.

- [medium] Polls (vote on features to be developed, collect community feedback for decisions, etc)
  - ✔

- [medium] Permalinks of thread for easy sharing by email
  - ✔

- [low] Answer posts through email
  - ✔ By default any @-pings, threads where the user interacted, or Watched categories/threads will receive email notifications. Right now Announcements is configured as a default Watching category for all users. Users can also set “mailing list mode” in the preferences and will receive emails for all threads.

- [low] Vote for good answers, mark accepted answer
  - ✔

- [low] Support cross referencing of Github issues
  - ✔

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**Author:** ![jcfr](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/jcfr/32/17825_2.png) [@jcfr](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/jcfr)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2017, 9:20pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/suggested-mailing-list-discourse-schedule/21/3 "2017-04-11T21:20:23Z")

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> [@ihnorton](#):
>
> Support cross referencing of Github issues

How does that work ? I tried to type `Slicer/Slicer#` hoping it would propose the list of recent issues …

~~Where you thinking of these:~~

 
~~ - [Introducing GitHub Issues to Discourse - extras - Discourse Meta](https://meta.discourse.org/t/introducing-github-issues-to-discourse/46671)
 ~~-~~ [https://github.com/discourse/github-issues-to-discourse](https://github.com/discourse/github-issues-to-discourse)~~

Comment and example of @ihnorton posted below addresses the question.

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**Author:** ![ihnorton](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/ihnorton/32/9_2.png) [@ihnorton](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/ihnorton)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2017, 9:41pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/suggested-mailing-list-discourse-schedule/21/4 "2017-04-11T21:41:15Z")

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> [@jcfr](#):
>
> How does that work ? I tried to type Slicer/Slicer# hoping it would propose the list of recent issues …

Maybe I misunderstood the intention of that bullet point. But what I was referring to by the checkmark was that Discourse will show a short summary when it sees a Github issue URL on its own line. e.g.:

> <https://github.com/Slicer/Slicer/issues/701>
>
> \_This issue was created automatically from an original \[Mantis Issue\](https://ma…ntisarchive.slicer.org/view.php?id=701). Further discussion may take place here.\_

I’m not aware of any auto-complete or back-referencing feature (i.e. showing a cross-link to Discourse in the GitHub thread). I suppose the second one could be done with a robot, but I’m not sure how useful it would be.

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**Author:** ![jcfr](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/jcfr/32/17825_2.png) [@jcfr](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/jcfr)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2017, 10:01pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/suggested-mailing-list-discourse-schedule/21/5 "2017-04-11T22:01:46Z")

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Thanks for the example. That works great. 👍

I was initially thinking of having autocomplete of any string that looks like `org/project#` … to get a result similar to what was rendered by simply copying the URL. Simpler is better. We are all set.