[Dune] Replacement for mailing lists

[Jö Fahlke]

Am Wed, 26. Oct 2016, 13:41:30 +0200 schrieb Steffen Müthing:
> sorry to keep nagging, but there wasn’t a whole lot of feedback on this (thanks to everyone who took some time to look
> at it, see https://discourse.dune-project.org/t/thoughts-on-the-new-discourse-server/ for some reactions).
> 
> If I don’t hear anything, I’ll take the quiet as general consent ;-)

Hi!

When I try to login, I am redirected to some gitlab page with the message:

  Authorize Dune Discourse Server to use your account?

  This application will be able to:

  - Access your API

What exactly does this mean?  Do I give discourse full access to my gitlab
account, including e.g. adding SSH keys?  That would probably double the
attack surface on my gitlab account and impacts how much I trust that server.

Googling does not yield much information, and a quick glance at the gitlab
docs at
<https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/integration/oauth_provider.html#authorized-applications>
suggests that discourse would indeed have full access.  (There is only one
scope "api", so if something can be done via the API at all an application in
that scope will be able to do it.)

Regards,
Jö.

> > Am 12.10.2016 um 13:17 schrieb Steffen Müthing <steffen.muething at iwr.uni-heidelberg.de>:
> > 
> > Hi everyone,
> > 
> > the old infrastructure server here in Heidelberg will be decommissioned very soon. Right now, it
> > is still responsible for our mailing lists, so we need to find a replacement for that. After looking
> > around quite a bit, we settled on Discourse (https://discourse.org), which is a slightly quirky
> > combination of a mailing list and a forum.
> > 
> > There is now a test server running at https://discourse.dune-project.org. Here are some pointers about
> > how it works:
> > 
> > - Topics (threads) are organized into categories that can be nested two levels deep. I’ve used that to
> >  group dune-devel and some other stuff under the "Core Modules" category.
> > 
> > - You subscribe to a category by opening the category page and clicking on the circle icon on the right
> >  side of the page.
> > 
> > - You can use the server either through your mail program or through the web interface. TBH, the mailing
> >  list support isn’t as nice as what you get from a dedicated mailing list server like mailman, but it works.
> > 
> > - In mailing list mode, it works without having to create an account (just send a mail to e.g.
> >  core at dune-project.org, and you get all replies to that thread / topic mailed to you).
> > 
> > - User accounts are tied to our GitLab, so you need to have a GitLab account to create a Discourse account.
> >  We really wanted to cut down on the number of different accounts and passwords required. When you try to
> >  log in, Discourse authorizes you with GitLab and you’re done. There is an explanation with screenshots  in
> >  the pinned topic (appears on the right) called "How to use the Dune Discourse server".
> > 
> > - The software does have some nice features like intuitive attachments, MathJax support (just type TeX and
> >  have it rendered), simple polls and a solution system (kind of like Stackoverflow light).
> > 
> > - You can actually search the archive, and there is no arbitrary split on month boundaries (hello mailman ;-) ).
> > 
> > - Discourse has a weird badge system (like achievements) for stuff like "replied to 10 topics" etc., but that is
> >  turned off.
> > 
> > So, please try it out and let us know what you think (or if you have any super-nice alternative). The plan
> > going forward will be to shut down the mailing lists in the near future, dump their archives somewhere where
> > they can be easily accessed and switch to Discourse (or another solution if one of you has something on offer).
> > 
> > And maybe we can carry out that discussion on the new infrastructure to give it a whirl… ;-)
> > Here is a topic that I created for the purpose: https://discourse.dune-project.org/t/thoughts-on-the-new-discourse-server/33
> > 
> > Cheers
> > Steffen
> > _______________________________________________
> > Dune mailing list
> > Dune at dune-project.org
> > http://lists.dune-project.org/mailman/listinfo/dune
> 



> _______________________________________________
> Dune mailing list
> Dune at dune-project.org
> http://lists.dune-project.org/mailman/listinfo/dune


-- 
Jorrit (Jö) Fahlke, Institute for Computational und Applied Mathematics,
University of Münster, Orleans-Ring 10, D-48149 Münster
Tel: +49 251 83 35146 Fax: +49 251 83 32729

Kiss a non-smoker; taste the difference.
-- fortune
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