How Can We Manage Announcements?

[krowvin]

How should we go about announcing the following, and should these things be announced outside of the GitHub repo itself?

1. New releases of the CDA source (releases tab)
2. When new versions are installed on public production servers (https://cwms-data.usace.army.mil/cwms-data/)
   a. Should the release version (item 1) be in this announcement?
   b. A link to the release notes provided
3. When new discussions or issues are posted
4. Major breaking changes to the API (i.e. parameters/endpoints). This is important because we use the accept header for versions and so item 2 could cause entire production applications to stop returning valid source. Especially if the developers are not keeping up with changes on the GitHub. We do list some endpoints as being BETA and subject to change. But a notice puts us in a better place with the community in my opinion.

Some thoughts:

• People have the option to subscribe to many of these things via their GitHub account already (might rule out item 3)
• What mediums would such announcements go on?
  • Some sort of newsletter email/mailing list?
  • Should we also email the internal email
  • X/Subreddit/etc or some 3rd party social media. (Companies do this. People have these apps on their phones)
  • MSTeams groups
  • Discourse
• Can these be automated?
  • Teams / Discourse / Reddit / and even some email can be automated. In which the discussion becomes what triggers an automated email. For item 2 it is possible to setup cron jobs on the servers to check the version and email when it changes. (just a thought)
  • Is it better to not automate and expect someone to keep up with announcements?