[Equest-users] Should onebuilding.org mailing lists transition to Discourse?

[Anthony Hardman]

I love the idea of transitioning to a more modern platform.  I like the job board idea Nick mentioned.  Search & attachment functionality is a big deal and I would also hope that the archives could get transferred, but even if they can’t, I wouldn’t consider it a reason to stick with status quo.  I’ve found the existing search functionality to be clunky at best as I often can’t find threads that I know to exist, which has forced me to save the ones I deem important directly to my own outlook (not ideal).

I recall an energy simulation “wiki” idea gaining some traction years ago which I think is less preferable than a modern forum.  If we’re comparing resources, I think unmethours has the best platform and functionality from a user perspective, followed by energy-models.com.

Having said all that, I also love the community here and am tremendously grateful for all the work and effort behind the onebuilding lists.

Anthony Hardman, PE, BEAP, LEED AP BD+C
Senior Building Performance Analyst, Owner
The Green Engineer
Sustainable Design Consulting
23 Bradford Street, 1st Floor, Concord, MA 01742
Direct: 978.341.5459  |  Office: 978.369.8978
E: anthony at greenengineer.com<mailto:anthony at greenengineer.com>

From: Jason Glazer [mailto:jglazer at gard.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 3, 2020 11:45 AM
To: bldg-sim at onebuilding.org; equest-users at onebuilding.org
Subject: [Equest-users] Should onebuilding.org mailing lists transition to Discourse?


BLDG-SIM and eQUEST-users

Sorry for the cross posting but this is a "meta" issue that I would like feedback on.

As you may know, I've been running the BLDG-SIM for over 20 years and eQUEST-users for 12 years as well as other mailing lists on onebuilding.org<http://onebuilding.org>. While the number of modelers has greatly increased over the years, the community that participates in these mailing lists has not. I believe part of that reason is that mailing lists are not very attractive to younger modelers. I would like to revitalize the sense of community that I have always seen in modelers by changing BLDG-SIM and eQUEST-users as well as some of the other onebuilding.org mailing lists to a web and phone enabled forum called Discourse:

https://www.discourse.org/

One nice thing about this type of forum is that for those used to a mailing list, they can continue interacting just like a mailing list but those more comfortable using a web-based or phone-based forum can participate also.
Example of the web/phone interface can be seen at:

   https://meta.discourse.org/

   https://forum.golangbridge.org/

   https://discourse.julialang.org/

   https://discuss.atom.io/

I'm thinking it would be a single Discourse forum but with categories that correspond to the existing mailing lists and perhaps some other categories. It would probably live at:

    forum.onebuilding.org

or something like that.

The reason I'm bringing this up today is that I also help manage the energyplus_support list hosted on Yahoo and on December 15, Yahoo is going to shut down all of its mailing lists and one of the transition options would be the same Discourse forum.

I know that unmethours.com has become a valuable resource to the community for questions and answers but I believe that a forum for discussion and announcements will continue to be important. Announcements for jobs, training, events, etc.. as well as discussion that does not fit in the question and answer format continue to occur.

Please let me know what you think and if you think that BLDG-SIM and eQUEST-users as well as the other public mailing lists on onebuilding.org should transition to a Discourse forum.

Thanks

Jason



--

Jason Glazer, P.E., BEMP, GARD Analytics, 90.1 ECB chair

Admin for onebuilding.org building performance mailing lists
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