Sign Up for the New DASCH Email List (Maybe)

2024 September 4

I've created a new email list for DASCH announcements and discussion. All scientific users of DASCH data are encouraged to subscribe.

My hope is that this list can start nucleating a community of DASCH users who can discover common interests and help each other solve problems as they arise. While I expect to remain the primary DASCH “tech support” contact for a while yet, handling inquiries through a mailing list will make things a little more public and transparent as compared to one-on-one email. I’d like to think that will yield some long-term dividends.

Using email for community discussions is very un-2024, but I think it’s the right fit for DASCH. I expect the list traffic to be quite low, honestly, and in that regime I tend to think that email works better than dedicated apps/forums like Slack, Discord, Discourse, or Zulip. Also, many DASCH users are, shall we say, not always on top of the latest technology trends, and I think an email-based solution will work well for people who might be put off by some of the trendier options.

I chose Gaggle Email as the email list service provider because it seems focused on doing exactly what I want, and it’s not Google Groups. The general state of the internet has gotten to the point that I’m avoiding services offered by the 800-pound gorillas of the tech world whenever it seems feasible, and one of the nice things about using an old-fashioned email list is that it ought to be the kind of thing that can be uncoupled from the Google (et al.) octopus pretty easily. I’ll have wait to find out whether that bears out in practice, though.

The other provider option that came up in my searching was groups.io. It largely seems fine as well, but I was a bit put off by the grab-bag of features that their service seems to have accrued over the years. I didn’t find anyone that had anything bad to say about it, or anything, and odds are it would be a totally fine choice as well. I do like their Why Email Groups? page, which overlaps a lot with why I think that an email list is the right choice for the DASCH user community.

I’ve also updated the DASCH website to advertise the email list in as many places as seemed reasonable. I’ll also reach out directly to DASCH users that I’ve communicated with in the past. It’ll be interesting to see how many subscribers show up that aren’t already known to me.