just because too many people don't check their email for sudoroom stuff, or it goes in their spam filter, and there are no options with email for opt-in topics or "rooms" so people have to choose between all or nothing, and so many people choose nothing. I see very little engagement with the email list, even on important topics, so I hope that by having a discord too, there will be more engagement and chatting. Email seems like a 19th century medium, where people are writing letters to each other, and a lot of people seem to simply choose not to engage. the discord is up! you should join it -jake On Thu, 7 Aug 2025, michaelz--- via sudo-discuss wrote:

Good points in this discussion. Some things to consider: there are side discussions, threads, conversation, happening about sudo biz on other platforms. Platforms like Discord bring the threading and topic functionality under the umbrella of one platform. For instance, how many people know that there's a clean up group discussion? And how do you join? And there are probably other threads and convos going on that I don't even know about. Whatever the solution we go for, I think it should offer this very basic feature, threads and topic channels. Ivan Silva Visit the Makerspace<https://www.beltiblibrary.org/plan-your-visit/makerspace> Learn. Create. Connect. ________________________________ From: Justin Morrison via sudo-discuss &lt;sudo-discuss(a)sudoroom.org&gt; Sent: Thursday, August 7, 2025 12:02 To: Jake &lt;jake(a)spaz.org&gt; Cc: sudo-discuss(a)sudoroom.org &lt;sudo-discuss(a)sudoroom.org&gt; Subject: [sudo-discuss] Re: sudoroom discord? 2c: As a regular contributor to the Noisebridge Discord I can say this: The time sink/overhead in participating with the very unwieldy and distracting platform that Discord is, is completely at odds with the relative and sometimes near total neglect by most members, and all but the most committed and engaged folks. Even when communicating with board members and interest group stakeholders, for example, I often can't get a response from them, on pertinent issues. I have not seen, as many assume, that because it's hip to have a Discord server, you'll attract folks otherwise not attending to their email inbox. Noisebridge has some 5,000+ members, of which I'd estimate there are 25 or fewer individuals who post regularly and with useful content. I think it's an awful platform, where everything is grotesquely gamified, and one can't avoid nudges to purchase "Nitro" and other digital doohickies. You do not own your data. And the data is not at all portable. Certainly, there must be other usable options. Anything marginally more functional that IRC with some threading and topic capabilities would be sufficient. In terms of participation in these platforms -vs- email, socials, etc: I think there's a shift in culture away from paying attention consistently to pretty much anything that's not being force fed into one's doom-scroll feed. Asking people to thoughtfully participate in a forum, email list, or chat discussion platform will attract those who already would put the time in, no matter what platform is used, so the platform selected should cater to those who make the most effort (and probably don't need entertaining features). Anything more would require a shift in the culture around our commitment to communication and collaboration. -- Justin Morrison w: justin.dance<http://justin.dance> i: @justindances<https://instagram.com/justindances> p: 213.700.6385

Discourse is a full featured and Open-Source free option that's well designed and easy to maintain with limited server resources: https://github.com/discourse/discourse For a low cost hosted option, there's the paid version (%85 discount to Non-Profits) https://discourse.org/get-started *--Justin Morrison* *w: justin.dance <http://justin.dance>i: @justindances <https://instagram.com/justindances>* p: 213.700.6385 On Thu, Aug 7, 2025 at 4:21 PM Ethan Hu &lt;ethanhu(a)berkeley.edu&gt; wrote:

I would also recommend looking into Lemmy. [https://join-lemmy.org/] Self-hosted federated reddit-like forum. Powered by Activity Pub protocol [https://activitypub.rocks/] which is also used by other federated platform such as Mastodon and Peertube.