[RP TownTalk] TownTalk (and TownAnnounce), moving forward

[Alan Thompson]

Thanks to everyone who responded on and off-list. I've been monitoring the conversations and want to answer some of the questions that have come up.

I always organize my thoughts about an issue by asking a series of more and more focused questions, and the answer to the first question, "Do we want TownTalk to continue, in some form?" seems to be a strong yes.  While it's not a surprise, given that we are discussing it on the list itself, a large number of people have supported continuing it.

The next question would be "How do we want to continue it?"  This is a big question, and can be broken down into a few questions.  One of them is the provider/host, and many people have made suggestions, with (from my perspective) a consensus building around groups.io<http://groups.io/>  That brings up the next question, however, which is "Who should run TownTalk?"

Groups.io only charges for enhanced features (including importing a list from other hosts), so after an initial setup fee control of the list could, in principle, be handed over from the Town.  There are a lot of restrictions on the Town, as a government, in operating a list that another organization would not be subject to.  There may even be some legal hoops to jump through before handing it off, but the question of who should run it is a question that people need to think about.  I don't know how seamlessly we can transfer the list - I suspect that we can get everyone resubscribed quickly, but we might lose easy access to the archives (more than 20000 messages, which I downloaded to my computer last weekend).

Which provider to use is actually tied to the question of who runs the list.  While groups.io<http://groups.io/> may have great features from the perspective of a subscriber, the Town would have to verify that their terms of service were consistent with our legal obligations.  Other choices, such as re-hosting the existing mailman software on another server (such as a cloud provider like Google Cloud or Amazon Web Services) are simpler, as the Town would control the software and data more closely.  (If we do that, there are still many choices about whether to stick with MailMan 2, which we are using now, upgrade to MailMan 3, or switch to other list management software such as Sympa or Dada Mail.)

Because the deadline is very close (tomorrow!), it is my inclination to move the existing list to a new server (I should be able to get it up and running sometime this weekend), and after that continue the discussion about moving to a new, presumably better service.  Even if TownTalk will be moving to another provider, I believe I will need to move TownAnnounce in this way (Town Manager Lestitian is interested in moving that to an e-mail broadcasting service, but again the time is too short to have that happen before the end of the week).

Please continue the discussion, and let me know what you think!

Alan

--

Alan K. Thompson, Mayor
Town of Riverdale Park
5008 Queensbury Road, Riverdale Park, MD 20737
http://www.riverdaleparkmd.info
akthompson at riverdaleparkmd.gov<mailto:akthompson at riverdaleparkmd.gov>
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