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Replacing email with GitHub discussions

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Mark C. Miller edited this page May 27, 2021 · 3 revisions

Upcoming changes and dates

The VisIt project will soon be replacing our email support services with GitHub Discussions.

Upcoming important changes and dates for ALL users (any email list of the form [email protected]):

  • Now: Begin using GitHub Discussions (categories listed below). If you don’t already have a GitHub account, please get one. They are free.
  • June 1, 2021: New posts will still be handled by the VisIt team but will begin auto-responding with this notice.
  • July 31, 2021: Posts after this date will be ignored by the VisIt team and will only auto-respond with this notice.
  • December 31, 2021: various email lists will be completely removed from service.

Setting up notifications

You have some choices about how to set up notifications depending on whether you would prefer default behavior to opt-in to all discussions or to opt-out.

To setup default opt-in

  1. Go to the Discussions tab
  2. Go to the Watch (it might say Unwatch) button upper, right
  3. Select the pull-down menu there and pull-down to Custom
  4. Check the Discussions box (pictured below)

To then selectively UNwatch a given discussion thread

  1. Go to Unsubscribe button on right panel, mid-way down (shown below at bottom of image) and toggle it. This will unsubsribe you from notifications only for that discussion thread.

To setup default opt-out

  1. Go to the Watch (it might say Unwatch) button upper, right
  2. Select the pull-down menu there and pull-down to Participating and mentions

You will get notifications only for discussions you start or are mentioned in. Because anyone can mention you in a discussion, if it happens in a discussion you wish not to continue being notified about, hit the Unsubscribe button as in step 5, above.

More about discussions and our categories

GitHub’s Discussions offers many improvements over our email lists including...

  • Users can selectively watch and UNwatch threads of discussion.
  • Attachments (images, data files, etc.) can be much bigger.
  • Attachments won’t be inadvertently cyber filtered away.
  • Nice markdown formatting of messages is supported.
  • Messages can easily link to related messages, issues, code and/or data.
  • Posted messages can be edited after the fact to correct errors.
  • Search and sort features for finding/browsing discussions are far more powerful.
  • GitHub discussions are discoverable from search engines like Google.

Other considerations

While a few LLNL, SciDAC or ASC users may require a method of contact other than GitHub Discussions, our historical experience indicates such situations will be extremely rare and when and if they arise will be handled on a case by case basis.

For developers, in case you hadn’t noticed [email protected] has already effectively been replaced by our GitHub issues.

We are grateful to Oak Ridge National Labs for supporting our email lists these past 15 years.

We will continue to use and reply to email until July 31, 2021. After that date, the list will be closed to any new messages and will simply auto-respond to anyone who attempts to post there. We expect the email list will be entirely closed down by the end of the 2021 calendar year.

We expect to migrate the email archive (going back to November, 2007) to our discussions in the coming months so that past email history can be browsed and searched there. But, that will likely not be available until sometime after we’ve ended email support service.

For those of you who have become accustomed to our live-customer-support issues repo, we will be doing away with that as well and migrating all issues already logged there to our discussions.

Users can search and browse GitHub discussions without a GitHub account. However, posting messages and managing notifications will require a GitHub account. Standard GitHub accounts are free and we highly encourage our users to get one.

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