
Open-Source Release Practices (2013) - generichuman
http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-Release-Practice-HOWTO/
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CM30
Some good points here, though a couple are outdated too. For instance, I'm not
sure I'd recommend mailing lists in 2018, since they're simply less convenient
for the average user than a good forum might be.

That said, one extra piece of advice that should be added for a future version
of a list like this is as follows:

Do not use a chat system as your only support channel.

Seriously. Things like Slack, Discord (and open alternatives like Riot) are
not good systems for support forums, or any sort of community that should be
visible by the public. They make it impossible to find answers with search
engines like Google, impossible for archiving services to back them up in case
things go down and force users to register to simply find any help given to
others.

They're terrible systems for this purpose, and should not be used as a primary
support channel for a project.

That's another piece of advice for such lists right there.

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dwheeler
> I'm not sure I'd recommend mailing lists in 2018, since they're simply less
> convenient for the average user than a good forum might be.

I would definitely recommend mailing lists in 2018, because they're much more
convenient for the average user than a forum.

If a user is extremely interested in a single project, then specialized
software makes sense. But most people have lives beyond the single project - a
mailing list makes it easy to funnel all that stuff into one place.

Google groups and similar make it quite easy to set one up.

~~~
lmm
> If a user is extremely interested in a single project, then specialized
> software makes sense. But most people have lives beyond the single project -
> a mailing list makes it easy to funnel all that stuff into one place.

This is backwards. Unless someone is deeply involved in a single project, they
don't want to sign up to a mailing list and have it flood their inbox (yes,
I'm sure you have a sophisticated filtering system that separates out mailing
list messages, but typical users don't). Yes you don't want to require users
to install a custom executable, but a web forum that uses one of the handful
of familiar packages for such will work great.

~~~
berti
It really depends on the types of people you wish to attract. Obviously this
is very subjective but I've always found mailing list discussions to be of
noticeably higher quality than forum discussions. If your topic is a technical
one then a mailing list makes sense, whereas a support area for average Joe
really wants to be a forum (actually, Facebook groups seem to have taken over
a lot of the area previously carved out by forums, and the standard of
discourse is lower again).

~~~
u801e
A lot of web forums lack proper threading implementation (other than a flat
thread descended from the original post). Hacker News and reddit do implement
threads, but make it difficult to see new posts when you refresh (though
reddit does mark them if you have "reddit gold").

