OBF mail list issues

[cjfields]

(To the Bioruby developers : this is per the OBF Board Meeting, feel free to edit/add to the ticket or text as needed)

As @peterjc has noted on the main OBF blog, the OBF hosted mail lists (including the various Bioruby lists) have had serious issues over the last several months due to heavy spam traffic on the OBF mailman server. We are soliciting community feedback from both Bioruby developers and users for the next steps forward on resolving this issue (see below). Please post suggestions or concerns here.

We (OBF) are migrating to a hosted solution that should provide more stability, with the downside that many lists will be shut down and archived due to hosting costs. The blog post details some suggestions.

Again, please note your concerns as soon as possible. We would like feedback by Dec. 28 so that we can decide on the next steps.

Thanks all!

@cjfields

[peterjc]

The bioruby-ja list was for discussion in Japanese, but has not been used since 2015.
http://mailman.open-bio.org/pipermail/bioruby-ja/

Can we officially close the bioruby-ja list?

Is there another venue used for BioRuby discussion in Japanese we should mention?

Would this be an acceptable English description for the list? Translating this into suitable Japanese is too hard for me:

This mailing list was for discussing BioRuby in Japanese, but is no longer used. The main BioRuby list is mainly in English.

Does it make sense to copy all the bioruby-ja subscribers to the (English language) bioruby mailing list?

[peterjc]

The bioruby-cvs list was for automated notices of CVS related code changes and checkins, and has not been used since 2008 when BioRuby moved to GitHub. I have updated the description. This list is effectively unused:

http://mailman.open-bio.org/pipermail/bioruby-cvs/

[ngoto]

Can we officially close the bioruby-ja list?

I think so. Both bioruby-ja and bioruby-cvs can be closed.

If possible, I'd like to post final message to close the bioruby-ja list. (bioruby-cvs can be closed silently).
I'd like to download the archives before removal.

Does it make sense to copy all the bioruby-ja subscribers to the (English language) bioruby mailing list?

I suppose most subscribers already subscribe to the bioruby@open-bio mailing list.

[ktym]

+1

[peterjc]

Current subscriber numbers, using mailman-subscribers.py (dated 2015-12-04) as per https://wiki.list.org/DOC/How%20do%20I%20extract%20%28export%29%20a%20list%20of%20my%20list%27s%20members%20%28subscribers%29%3F

$ python mailman-subscribers.py -o bioruby-cvs.txt mailman.open-bio.org bioruby-cvs XXX
$ python mailman-subscribers.py -o bioruby-ja.txt mailman.open-bio.org bioruby XXX
$ python mailman-subscribers.py -o bioruby.txt mailman.open-bio.org bioruby XXX
$ wc -l bioruby.txt 
     105 bioruby.txt
$ wc -l bioruby-cvs.txt 
      18 bioruby-cvs.txt
$ wc -l bioruby-ja.txt 
     172 bioruby-ja.txt
$ python -c "en = set(open('bioruby.txt')); jp = set(open('bioruby-ja.txt')); print(len(en.intersection(jp)))"
15

Given 165 of the 172 Japanese language subscribers did not subscribe to the English list, it seems wrong to automatically subscribe them.

@ngoto @ktym Could you update the bioruby-ja mailman description and messages sent to the user to say the list is not longer being used (or tell me what text to use)? You can also stop further messages being sent by setting everyone to require moderation to post:

Or as it appears on bioruby-ja:

I have updated the description for bioruby-cvs to say it is no longer used, and marked everyone as requiring moderation to post. There are only 18 subscribers - should I unsubscribe them all too?

[peterjc]

Cross reference: OBF/obf-docs#42