Back in December we started the discussion of where best to foster Mender’s online community. We love that we have an active mailing list for the project, but we know that mailing lists aren’t the easiest to use for everyone. We felt that moving these discussions to a forum format could make it easier for everyone - especially new users - to find the information they need and ultimately to contribute back to the Mender project.
We asked the community, and the feedback was very clearly in favor of migrating to a forum. Therefore, as of March 4th we will move the mailing list to the General Discussions category on Mender Hub!
For the next 2 weeks we will moderate all posts coming into the mailing list. Existing threads will be allowed to continue on the mailing list during that period so that we don’t break up conversations unnecessarily. For new topics, we will encourage you to post to Mender Hub only starting from today. After the changeover date, we will flip the switch on the mailing list to read-only mode.
Why Mender Hub
Why a forum? We use Discourse which provides a structured layout, powerful search, control over notifications and a user-friendly UI. In addition, you can configure your own email preferences to replicate the behaviour of a mailing list - we know that some people love mailing lists and have used them for a long time, so this approach offers the best of both worlds.
You don’t have to sign up to read the forum, but you must sign up in order to post here. It’s easy to sign up - you can do it through your GitHub or Twitter account, or your email address.
There is also a ‘Meta’ category for questions or suggestions about the forum and community, and of course the Board Integrations category - our repository for integrating Mender to different boards and operating systems.
Other good features include:
- Categorization
- Tagging posts
- Upvoting replies - the best contributions are recognized
- The ability to mark questions as “solved” when someone posts a correct solution
- Automatic suggestions when creating new topics - so you don’t ask a question that already has been answered!
If you have any further questions, why not ask us in meta?
We hope you continue to join the discussions here on Mender Hub!