What happened with the Chef mailing list migration

1. It wasn't announced in advance.

2. It wasn't adequately tested in advance.

3. The replacement system wasn't compatible with the pre-existing one. Its dynamics are significantly different, most notably in that it simply is not a mailing list.

4. Chef and Discourse both come off smelling exceptionally poorly, and with highly tarnished reputations.

My own first awareness of the transfer came as, while in the midst of travel and away from my typical email and computing systems, a Gmail inbox of mine exploded with what appeared to be miscategorised Chef mailing list items. Gmail fouls up filtering sufficiently often that I'm aware of this, but the problem persisted, largely overwhelming my mailbox.

I was relying principally on an Android tablet and either the Gmail app or Mobile web interface. For a tool which claims to make using and organising your emails far more viable, neither of these offers access to Gmail filters. I"ve still not been able to access or update those due to other concerns.

It took a considerable time to figure out what the hell had changed. Clearing my spam folder for the first time in a few weeks, I took a look at the new Chef emails, and found that they weren't email list messages but forum notifications, and that there wasn't a simple unsubscribe.

Clicking the unsubscribe link, I was presented with a log-in screen for a service I'd never used.

I've emailed Nathan at Chef directly requesting my removal. I suspect he's busy. I also indicated that I'd be configuring Gmail filters to nuke all future Chef and Discourse content.

As for Discourse itself, it took a few articles for me to recognise it, but this is Jeff Atwood's new gig -- he's of Coding Horror and Stack Exchange fame. I've followed Jeff's work for some time and am generally impressed by it. I'm aware of challenges SE has faced with its frequently too-aggressive moderators (there's a balance between information content and quality, and simply maintaining the social lubrication of conversation). I'd read some of his earlier discussions on Discourse and its aims, and been impressed.

The implementation, particularly with this specific system transition, is an utter fuck-up.

If Chef had simply cut the cord, sent a "so long and thanks for all the fish, see you on the flipside" message, informing mailing list members where the new discussion could be found, things would have been far better.

Or, if Discourse had completed a mailing-list gateway system, and provided import tools for existing lists.

The Gmail interaction is an unfortunate one and out of both Chef and Discourse's immediate hands, but something a discussion for, about, and largely used by sysadmins with both massive email loads and highly-tuned filter systems should have been utterly fucking obvious. I'm not particularly keen on calling folks idiots on HN, but Nathan and whomever were responsible for the transition at Discourse have earned their idiot stripes.

There's a strongly cautionary tale about committing to proprietary systems in the first place, which appears to be what Chef's initial email solution was. The Coderanger post-mortem fills in details here I wasn't aware of. The most obvious continuing fault is that Chef are jumping from frying pan to fire.

But if other projects want an excellent example of what not to do, here it is.