Thanks also to the other folks who have contributed to the wiki and worked on smaller tech-related projects.  And all the historical techies.

What this update means in plain language:  You can now search the archives for the Think Tank emails again.  Thank you Jonathan!  It's a treasure trove of many years of email exchanges.  Bonus: now with modernized interface! 

If you read and understood Jonathan's entire email, please consider coming to tech meetings.  Email bikebikeeverywhere@gmail.com for details.

On Mon, Mar 20, 2023 at 4:45 PM Darin Wick via Thethinktank <thethinktank@lists.bikecollectives.org> wrote:
Thank you, Jonathan, for doing a huge amount of work to restore the archives and transfer everything to MailMan3!

Thanks to some other folks as well, who were less directly involved:
- Godwin, who has been making time in his busy schedule to bring both insight and historical perspective to meetings of the current tech team, and who covered most of the operating expenses for bikebike.org & bikecollectives.org for many years
- Angel, who coordinated with the Utah Bike Collective to rescue the bikecollectives.org domain after they (accidentally) broke it.
- The Utah Bike Collective, for their patience and cooperation when they got an email out of the blue saying "you accidentally broke an important community website!"
- Everyone who has pointed out when something on the ThinkTank isn't working or needs improvement - that feedback is what drives changes like this.
- All of you who post & reply to the ThinkTank - because the conversations here are what makes this community so valuable, and the tech is just a way to facilitate those conversations.
- Everyone who has contributed to the tech budget via OpenCollective so we could have the resources for Jonathan to implement this (https://opencollective.com/bikebike-everywhere/projects/tecnologia-tech)

We're looking for more people to join the tech team - folks with sysadmin and software development experience, and also someone who is moderately tech-savvy and can liaise with the B!B!E! planners. If that sounds like you or someone you know... this is a great opportunity to work with a couple of experienced software developers and system administrators on projects that benefit Community Bike Organizations. We usually meet every two weeks to discuss maintenance & improvements for bikebike.org and bikecollectives.org. 




---- On Mon, 20 Mar 2023 12:56:02 -0700 Gabrielle Anctil via Thethinktank <thethinktank@lists.bikecollectives.org> wrote ---

Congratulations on this work! As bike activists know, good infrastructure is key to ensure that we can move ideas or bodies seamlessly. <3

Le lun. 20 mars 2023, à 13 h 43, Jonathan Rosenbaum <bike@bikelover.org> a écrit :



--
Gabrielle Anctil
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The migration of MailMan is complete! 

Ainsley, thank-you, for your kind and thoughtful words.  I strongly feel this is a giant leap forward to strengthen our efforts at disbursing knowledge and inspiration to new and existing bike projects around the world.

Main page for TheThinkTank: https://lists.bikecollectives.org/postorius/lists/thethinktank.lists.bikecollectives.org/

Archives for all discussion lists: https://lists.bikecollectives.org/hyperkitty/

List of discussion lists: https://lists.bikecollectives.org/postorius/lists/

If you are signing up for the first time for an account ( https://lists.bikecollectives.org/accounts/login/?next=/postorius/lists/thethinktank.lists.bikecollectives.org/ ), a confirmation email should be sent out to you.  If you don't receive one, please check your spam/junk box, otherwise, contact me.

-Jonathan

On 2023-03-17 09:02, Ainsley Naylor via Thethinktank wrote:

Wow! Thanks so much for all of your efforts to save and restore the archives, and to maintain this list-serve in general.
 
I hope this leads to a lot more usability, especially for new groups and new members who may have a lot of questions we have already put a lot of discussion into over the years :)
 
All the best as we move into the Thinktank's future,
 
Ainsley (Toronto)

On Fri, Mar 17, 2023 at 3:16 AM Jonathan Rosenbaum via Thethinktank <thethinktank@lists.bikecollectives.org> wrote:

Dear Thinkers & Researchers @ the Tank,

In the next few days we will be migrating our discussion lists away from DreamHost to a modern MailMan software platform (mailman 3) hosted at our own server.  This is an awesome milestone for us, and a long time in the making.

As far back as 2015 (almost 8 years ago), I observed that the archives for TheThinkTank became unavailable when DreamHost updated their hardware.  At that time, in a conversation with the subject line "Update on the Archives", I suggested that we should consider moving away from dependence on a third party hosting service.  Ironically, that conversation does not exist in the current archives at DreamHost because all the data between January 17, 2015 to May 13, 2015 was lost by their system.  However, I recovered those conversations from my personal email stash, and they are now included in the new archiving system called HyperKitty.

Better Search Capability:

Another issue we have frequently experienced over the years has been the unavailability of the search engine known as htdig (ht://Dig errors). We now have a new search engine called Xapian.  Even when htdig was available, as I pointed out at our recent Tech meeting, the level of detail when performing searches with Xapian is like comparing the difference between the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Web Space Telescope. 

HyperKitty (Achiver):

HyperKitty provides a modern frontend to MailMan.

You can now create an account where you may associate your email addresses subscribed to bikecollectives.org discussion lists.  When you are logged in to your account, one powerful feature, similar to google groups web interface or traditional online bulletin boards, is that you now have the ability to directly interact with email threads or create new ones without having to utilize your own email client.

You can favorite and/or like discussions, and if you have a Gravatar ( https://wordpress.com/me ), it will be visible.  Markdown capability is available, but it only works in HyperKitty, so if you want to experiment with this capability, keep in mind that people will see your markdown in normal emails.  Directions can be found at https://docs.mailman3.org/projects/hyperkitty/en/latest/rendering.html under Rendering Rules.

Recommendation for digest subscribers: Because we now have this awesome capability, rather than replying directly to digest emails, please utilize the login capability of HyperKitty to easily jump into the parts of the threads you want to interact with.  This avoids breaking up the thread, which makes the discussion easier for all to understand.

Migration and New Home Considerations:

After the migration, the web interface will be available at https://lists.bikecollectives.org/ and will no longer say "The list overview page has been disabled temporarily" as found at the current non-secure web interface at http://lists.bikecollectives.org/ .  This should all happen, no later, than by Monday, March 20, 2023.

The migration consists of changing the DNS addresses to our new email server and mailman 3 discussion list software.  Usually in most parts of the world this is a fast process, but there are some DNS servers that are slow to update their cache.  This means that some of you may experience the phenomenon where your emails will still end up at the DreamHost instance, and you continue to see the old website.  If that is the case, you may want to consider using a different nameserver, like 1.1.1.1, and to ask your service provider to update their DNS servers.

Because our email server is brand new, it doesn't have an established reputation for its IP address.  However, fortunately our lists address, lists.bikecollectives.org, has a good reputation.  Most likely, hopefully, we won't experience issues from larger services that scrutinize bulk email.  However, we will be monitoring our logs carefully.  Google (gmail), which represents a large percentage of TheThinkTank subscribers, rate limits the number of emails received by their service to 60 per/minute.  Erring on the safe-side, we will rate limit emails we are sending out to 30 per/minute, which means emails sent to TheThinkTank should reach everyone in about 30 minutes.

If you are experiencing issues after the change, please contact me: Jonathan Rosenbaum <bike@bikelover.org> . 

Other:

It should be pointed out, that gmail users who are normal subscribers generally do not receive back a copy of the email they send out to MailMan, see https://wiki.list.org/x/4030680 for an explanation.  However, gmail users who are normal subscribers should receive replies, as well as new threads.

Other than that .. Yay!!

-Jonathan

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