Why is it necessary to get approval to join this list?

For at least a year, new members are required to request approval to join this list. I want to explain why this step is necessary so people understand why I have enabled it.

I want to start by saying that I'm sorry this approval process is inconvenient. Nabble has a spam problem it refuses to deal with, and this is the only tool we have to combat it. Without this approval process, everyone on the list gets hit with a batch of spam several times a week, which turns subscribers away. It also requires effort on my part to go back and scrub those messages from the archive. It's easier for me to field new member requests than it is to clean up the spam posts. And since I've enabled this process, there has been no spam. So as long as we use Nabble, this is the process we must have.

I invite you to join our new community chat / forum at https://asciidoctor.zulipchat.com. It's showing promise that it could one day replace this mailing list and consolidate the discussions under one virtual roof.

Thanks for understanding!

Best Regards,

-Dan

OK, thanks for the explanation.

Best Regards,
Mario

That is totally fine to ask people to join and communicate personally for permission, that is making community better.

I would not personally like and don't like participating in chat systems that are not self-hosted, if you need help, I can help you install some of popular free software forums. Making Asciidoctor website dependent on Zulip promotes  the relation to network provider and proprietary system and puts your website into vendor lock-in. As if you have your own server, it is not hard to install your own forum software or any communication system. Just ask if you need some help. Keep Internet decentralized.

Don't take it wrong, but I feel I must step in because I see this comments from time to time and I find them quite naive. Also, this are my personal opinions based on my job experience and do not represent the organization.

In reality, installation is the least of concerns. Mantaining a real full production platform requires extra maintenance tasks like secure backup, HA replication, upgrades, proper security (not only patches, but networking, spam mgmt, and long etc.), not to mention that we mantain account information there's a whole lot of legal requirements and possible liabilities. That without stepping into random errors.
Add to it economical costs like product licenses and real infrastructure...because no one wants to rely on a machine running under someone else desks on a home internet line.

Truth is ethics aside, that's something that no volunteer project can mantain without diverting a lot of time, depending on some corporate sponsor or spending real money. And even if someone decides to take on that, the whole project would be at the mercy of that person losing interest or just not being available when something happens. In fact, the chances of that are much higher than Zulip of all the sudden deciding to close their code (https://github.com/zulip). In case we have some issue with current services, we can always change to something else because there's no real verdor lock-in, worst case is conversations get lost. Only thing that scares me would be a massive github/gitlab shutdown.

* abelsromero [via Asciidoctor :: Discussion] <ml+s49171n8614h90@n6.nabble.com> [2021-05-04 00:57]:
> Don't take it wrong, but I feel I must step in because I see this comments
> from time to time and I find them quite naive. Also, this are my personal
> opinions based on my job experience and do not represent the
> organization.

Installing a forum or a mailing list may be breezy. Many forum
software have the legal requirements built-in.

VPS is like US $5 per month and it can handle 100 times more load than
this discussion is handling right now.

There is much Awesome Self-hosted Software:
https://hyperscope.link/3/6/8/8/4/Awesome-Self-hosted-Software-36884.html#Social-Networks-and-Forums-a-name-social-networks-and-forums-a

As I said, when there is need, I can help installing it, even I can
open up instance and help you check it out, test it, decide.

Also recommended is to open up Fediverse accounts as that will
federate comments to everybody. That could be also one good way to
promote Asciidoctor.

Even better, providing a patch for software like Pleroma for
Fediverse, to include Asciidoctor markup would be good. Right now they
support BBCode, Markdown, HTML.

Fediverse allows commenting and working together over federated
multiple instances.

I would always prefer having the data on one's own server under my own
control.

In fact, I wonder, why I need to use nabble.com if I am on
asciidoctor, information remains in nabble.com I guess. And I don't
think they really apply legal measures, as US jurisdiction is not the
only one. Good that it is software related, so there will be almost no
complaints.