From brett at python.org  Tue Jun 21 14:38:48 2016
From: brett at python.org (Brett Cannon)
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 18:38:48 +0000
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with potential
 solutions
Message-ID: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>

I'm willing to offer up python-ideas as an experimental group of people to
try a new approach to communicating if we want to try something out on an
existing mailing list that isn't as critical as python-dev. I also know
that Donald has expressed interest in trying Discourse on distutils-sig as
have I (I believe lack of time is what has prevented this experiment from
occurring on Donald's side, definitely the reason I haven't tried Discourse
on python-ideas).
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From guido at python.org  Tue Jun 21 14:44:10 2016
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 11:44:10 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>

Excuse my total ignorance -- what's the experience for users who don't
interact through Discourse? Do they not see anything that's happening in
Discourse, or does it have a gateway (like python-list vs.
comp.lang.python, or the various GMane things)?

On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 11:38 AM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:

> I'm willing to offer up python-ideas as an experimental group of people to
> try a new approach to communicating if we want to try something out on an
> existing mailing list that isn't as critical as python-dev. I also know
> that Donald has expressed interest in trying Discourse on distutils-sig as
> have I (I believe lack of time is what has prevented this experiment from
> occurring on Donald's side, definitely the reason I haven't tried Discourse
> on python-ideas).
>
> _______________________________________________
> Overload-sig mailing list
> Overload-sig at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig
>
>


-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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From guido at python.org  Tue Jun 21 14:46:12 2016
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 11:46:12 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAP7+vJ+=eKORX=SQpGmrdAMRT1NjqDV5dO7-BufDcV2xVAFg6g@mail.gmail.com>

(Note that I would personally happily participate in the Discourse
experiment -- I'm just asking whether this would appear like a fork to
current python-ideas subscribers or more like some kind of alternate UI
they can ignore -- the way I ignore GMane.)

On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 11:44 AM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> Excuse my total ignorance -- what's the experience for users who don't
> interact through Discourse? Do they not see anything that's happening in
> Discourse, or does it have a gateway (like python-list vs.
> comp.lang.python, or the various GMane things)?
>
> On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 11:38 AM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
>
>> I'm willing to offer up python-ideas as an experimental group of people
>> to try a new approach to communicating if we want to try something out on
>> an existing mailing list that isn't as critical as python-dev. I also know
>> that Donald has expressed interest in trying Discourse on distutils-sig as
>> have I (I believe lack of time is what has prevented this experiment from
>> occurring on Donald's side, definitely the reason I haven't tried Discourse
>> on python-ideas).
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Overload-sig mailing list
>> Overload-sig at python.org
>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
>



-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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From brett at python.org  Tue Jun 21 14:49:52 2016
From: brett at python.org (Brett Cannon)
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 18:49:52 +0000
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>

There is at least a mailing list mode for Discourse:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-mailing-list-mode/46008 . Mozilla
actually funded some mailing list interaction work:
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/12/10/mozilla-open-source-support-first-awards-made/
.

On Tue, 21 Jun 2016 at 11:44 Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> Excuse my total ignorance -- what's the experience for users who don't
> interact through Discourse? Do they not see anything that's happening in
> Discourse, or does it have a gateway (like python-list vs.
> comp.lang.python, or the various GMane things)?
>
> On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 11:38 AM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
>
>> I'm willing to offer up python-ideas as an experimental group of people
>> to try a new approach to communicating if we want to try something out on
>> an existing mailing list that isn't as critical as python-dev. I also know
>> that Donald has expressed interest in trying Discourse on distutils-sig as
>> have I (I believe lack of time is what has prevented this experiment from
>> occurring on Donald's side, definitely the reason I haven't tried Discourse
>> on python-ideas).
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Overload-sig mailing list
>> Overload-sig at python.org
>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
>
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From donald at stufft.io  Tue Jun 21 15:02:12 2016
From: donald at stufft.io (Donald Stufft)
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 15:02:12 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>

I don?t believe there is a gmane gateway for discourse, but as Brett mentioned there is a ?mailing list mode? that individual participants can select so that they never need to use the web interface. I?m told that it?s not as good as a dedicated mailing list software, but whether it?s good enough for actual day to day use I don?t know.

One thing that we should consider if we attempt to try out discourse, is to keep an eye on collapsing all of the mailing lists to a single discourse instance and having a forum per what we have now as separate mailing lists. I think one good thing about doing this if it?s workable is that we can move topics to different forums (e.g. if someone posts in python-dev but it should have been in python-list) and it allows much easier interlinking and quotes from different forums.

> On Jun 21, 2016, at 2:49 PM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
> 
> There is at least a mailing list mode for Discourse: https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-mailing-list-mode/46008 <https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-mailing-list-mode/46008> . Mozilla actually funded some mailing list interaction work: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/12/10/mozilla-open-source-support-first-awards-made/ <https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/12/10/mozilla-open-source-support-first-awards-made/> .
> 
> On Tue, 21 Jun 2016 at 11:44 Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org <mailto:guido at python.org>> wrote:
> Excuse my total ignorance -- what's the experience for users who don't interact through Discourse? Do they not see anything that's happening in Discourse, or does it have a gateway (like python-list vs. comp.lang.python, or the various GMane things)?
> 
> On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 11:38 AM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org <mailto:brett at python.org>> wrote:
> I'm willing to offer up python-ideas as an experimental group of people to try a new approach to communicating if we want to try something out on an existing mailing list that isn't as critical as python-dev. I also know that Donald has expressed interest in trying Discourse on distutils-sig as have I (I believe lack of time is what has prevented this experiment from occurring on Donald's side, definitely the reason I haven't tried Discourse on python-ideas).
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Overload-sig mailing list
> Overload-sig at python.org <mailto:Overload-sig at python.org>
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig <https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido <http://python.org/~guido>)
> _______________________________________________
> Overload-sig mailing list
> Overload-sig at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig


?
Donald Stufft



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From guido at python.org  Tue Jun 21 15:02:02 2016
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 12:02:02 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Issue tracker vs. real-time chat
Message-ID: <CAP7+vJLkhn6Xo0TWyoJKuw3fxNWoBCEFfbH69FB5Z4z7srNmLA@mail.gmail.com>

(We accidentally started this discussion on private email. I assume noone
has a problem with me reposting this to the sig.)

I'd like to put in a vote *for* systems or paradigms that behave more or
less like issue trackers (AFAIC even Reddit and StackOverflow fall in this
pattern) and *against* group chat systems (IRC, HipChat, Zulip, Slack,
Skype, Hangouts).

To be sure, I'm fine with the existence of chat systems, but I find
participating in them exhausting, and they tend to have a very high noise
level. They exacerbate the problem that only those who can keep up with the
traffic know what's been discussed already (scrollback features in Slack
etc. notwithstanding). Usually the mute control is too course. AFAIK only
Zulip supports any kind of "topic" selection (Slack is based on group
membership, and groups are relatively static, even though membership is
dynamic).

QUOTE from Kevin:

I think we should definitely be seeing what we can do to improve the
mailing list experience. :) I've not worked with Mailman 3 myself yet but
it sounds like 3.0 is a pretty significant improvement. I was pretty
curious about Posterious particularly, although I didn't manage to find an
example of it online. Is there a good example to look at?

In addition to that, I think we should also be looking at improvements for
our bug trackers and chat software as part of this. Playing with GitHub's
bug tracker may be a good start, and maybe something like Slack or Zulip
for chat would be a nice improvement. I've gotten spoiled by the ability in
Slack to see the conversations that happened while I was offline. I know
Zulip, like Posterious, is a Django-based app, and it would be cool to have
more of our infrastructure built on top of Python so long as it doesn't
become a maintenance burden. Maybe the Zulip team would even be willing to
help out?

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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From kevin-lists at theolliviers.com  Tue Jun 21 15:20:04 2016
From: kevin-lists at theolliviers.com (Kevin Ollivier)
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 12:20:04 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Issue tracker vs. real-time chat
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJLkhn6Xo0TWyoJKuw3fxNWoBCEFfbH69FB5Z4z7srNmLA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP7+vJLkhn6Xo0TWyoJKuw3fxNWoBCEFfbH69FB5Z4z7srNmLA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <D3D513F4-15DF-4B69-8BA9-932F369E979E@theolliviers.com>

Hi all,

Sorry guys, also just did a reply all, following suit here and re-posting my reply on overload-sig. 

From:  Overload-sig <overload-sig-bounces+kevin-lists=theolliviers.com at python.org> on behalf of Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>
Reply-To:  <guido at python.org>
Date:  Tuesday, June 21, 2016 at 12:02 PM
To:  <overload-sig at python.org>
Subject:  [Overload-sig] Issue tracker vs. real-time chat

(We accidentally started this discussion on private email. I assume noone has a problem with me reposting this to the sig.)

I'd like to put in a vote *for* systems or paradigms that behave more or less like issue trackers (AFAIC even Reddit and StackOverflow fall in this pattern) and *against* group chat systems (IRC, HipChat, Zulip, Slack, Skype, Hangouts).

To be sure, I'm fine with the existence of chat systems, but I find participating in them exhausting, and they tend to have a very high noise level. They exacerbate the problem that only those who can keep up with the traffic know what's been discussed already (scrollback features in Slack etc. notwithstanding). Usually the mute control is too course. AFAIK only Zulip supports any kind of "topic" selection (Slack is based on group membership, and groups are relatively static, even though membership is dynamic).

I don't consider them something everyone has to use, but I do think they serve a valuable purpose.

It's about community building. Sometimes developers should chit-chat, or post a gif meme, because when they're engaged in a big discussion later on they'll have a more holistic picture of the person they're debating with. A project named after a group famous for SPAM, holy hand-grenades, silly walks, and catapulting cows ought to have a forum for engaging in some degree of foolishness and levity, if you ask me. :) We unfortunately cannot regularly get together and share a beer together, but this is the next best thing for OSS projects.

People tend to always be very focused and serious on mailing lists, and personally I believe it's a significant contributing factor to burnout and overload. At some point, contributing simply becomes no fun. The community can start to appear as a bunch of very picky critics who pull apart your every thought. I would wholeheartedly agree that mailing lists aren't the place for chit-chatting among devs, but I think there should be such a place, and IRC isn't really the best choice these days. (At a hotel recently they even blocked my internet because the IRC protocol resembled P2P traffic!)

Anyway, that's my reasoning for it. Every community is different, so YMMV, but I will say I've seen it used somewhat heavily on the more productive and agile OSS projects I've worked with.  

Thanks,

Kevin


QUOTE from Kevin:
I think we should definitely be seeing what we can do to improve the mailing list experience. :) I've not worked with Mailman 3 myself yet but it sounds like 3.0 is a pretty significant improvement. I was pretty curious about Posterious particularly, although I didn't manage to find an example of it online. Is there a good example to look at?

In addition to that, I think we should also be looking at improvements for our bug trackers and chat software as part of this. Playing with GitHub's bug tracker may be a good start, and maybe something like Slack or Zulip for chat would be a nice improvement. I've gotten spoiled by the ability in Slack to see the conversations that happened while I was offline. I know Zulip, like Posterious, is a Django-based app, and it would be cool to have more of our infrastructure built on top of Python so long as it doesn't become a maintenance burden. Maybe the Zulip team would even be willing to help out?
-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
_______________________________________________ Overload-sig mailing list Overload-sig at python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig 

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From barry at python.org  Wed Jun 22 21:14:24 2016
From: barry at python.org (Barry Warsaw)
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2016 21:14:24 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Issue tracker vs. real-time chat
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJLkhn6Xo0TWyoJKuw3fxNWoBCEFfbH69FB5Z4z7srNmLA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP7+vJLkhn6Xo0TWyoJKuw3fxNWoBCEFfbH69FB5Z4z7srNmLA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20160622211424.60b34fa8.barry@wooz.org>

On Jun 21, 2016, at 12:02 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

>I think we should definitely be seeing what we can do to improve the
>mailing list experience. :) I've not worked with Mailman 3 myself yet but
>it sounds like 3.0 is a pretty significant improvement. I was pretty
>curious about Posterious particularly, although I didn't manage to find an
>example of it online. Is there a good example to look at?

I'm too overloaded to read all of overload-sig right now, but I just wanted to
quickly mention a few things re: MM3.  You can see several live examples:

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/
https://lists.mailman3.org/archives/

The Fedora lists are probably the most extensive; they have fully ported all
their old MM2 lists to the new software.  We have just a few lists on the
mailman3.org site (hosted on python.org infrastructure).  Mark Sapiro has
been working on putting some MM3 lists on python.org but there are a few
Postfix issues to work out when hosting MM2 and MM3 on the same domain.

Two things about MM3 that I think can significantly improve engagement with
mailing lists.  First, you don't have to actually be subscribed to post to a
list.  Hyperkitty (the archiver) has a way to post replies which show up on
the list.  So if you land on an interesting message via search, you can jump
into the conversation right away.

Second, but longer term, is porting the Systers dlist (dynamic lists) feature
to MM3.  At a high level, think of it as nosy-for-mailing-lists.  One of the
things I love about Roundup is the ability to easily nosy myself in to any
issue I care about and ignore everything else.  dlists allow you to do the
same thing and Systers has been using an MM2 implementation of it for many
years.  This is farther off because we do need some resources to get the
feature fully ported and landed, but this will be much much better than the
topic system in MM2, which has proved too cumbersome to see widespread
adoption.

What I like about the combination of these two features is that you can use
the medium that suits your level of interest best, which of course can be
fluid.  You get the best of forums and mailing lists, and can use either or
both as your needs change.

Cheers,
-Barry

From stephen at xemacs.org  Wed Jun 22 22:50:12 2016
From: stephen at xemacs.org (Stephen J. Turnbull)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 11:50:12 +0900
Subject: [Overload-sig] Issue tracker vs. real-time chat
In-Reply-To: <20160622211424.60b34fa8.barry@wooz.org>
References: <CAP7+vJLkhn6Xo0TWyoJKuw3fxNWoBCEFfbH69FB5Z4z7srNmLA@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160622211424.60b34fa8.barry@wooz.org>
Message-ID: <22379.20068.810839.557182@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>

Barry Warsaw writes:

 > Second, but longer term, is porting the Systers dlist (dynamic
 > lists) feature to MM3.  [...]  This is farther off because we do
 > need some resources to get the feature fully ported and landed, but
 > this will be much much better than the topic system in MM2, which
 > has proved too cumbersome to see widespread adoption.

I can testify that the system has worked effectively for Systers for
years.  Due to their nature as a support group as much as (or more
than) a development organization, in the last year a lot of the
conversations have moved to Slack, and this has improved the
engagement of Systers GSoC students, but as Guido has suggested, it is
clearly inferior as a channel for discussing design and coding issues
IME.

BTW, "longer term" is much nearer than "Real Soon Now."  We do have
a core developer interested in the port.

Steve

From barry at python.org  Thu Jun 23 09:49:33 2016
From: barry at python.org (Barry Warsaw)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 09:49:33 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Issue tracker vs. real-time chat
In-Reply-To: <D3D513F4-15DF-4B69-8BA9-932F369E979E@theolliviers.com>
References: <CAP7+vJLkhn6Xo0TWyoJKuw3fxNWoBCEFfbH69FB5Z4z7srNmLA@mail.gmail.com>
 <D3D513F4-15DF-4B69-8BA9-932F369E979E@theolliviers.com>
Message-ID: <20160623094933.244ad795.barry@wooz.org>

On Jun 21, 2016, at 12:20 PM, Kevin Ollivier wrote:

>People tend to always be very focused and serious on mailing lists, and
>personally I believe it's a significant contributing factor to burnout and
>overload. At some point, contributing simply becomes no fun. The community
>can start to appear as a bunch of very picky critics who pull apart your
>every thought. I would wholeheartedly agree that mailing lists aren't the
>place for chit-chatting among devs, but I think there should be such a place,
>and IRC isn't really the best choice these days. (At a hotel recently they
>even blocked my internet because the IRC protocol resembled P2P traffic!)

I've been using Telegram lately in a couple of contexts, and I agree that it's
nice to have a less formal forum for socializing.  I'm not particularly
advocating Telegram, but I think you're right that similar systems have a
place in the universe of communication channels.  We've tended to use it for
keeping in touch at sprints ("Hey, meet in the lobby at 7pm if you want to
join us for dinner") and sending interesting little pictures, quotes, etc.
The off-line and real-time notifications are the key things that make this
useful, but the multiple ways to interact with the system (smartphone apps,
web sites) are really useful too.

Clearly we don't want major decisions happening here, but then I'd argue that
IRC isn't the right place for that either.  I am mildly uncomfortable with
using closed systems and source, but given that Telegram and similar systems
are used primarily for socializing, I think it's fine.

I prefer IRC for more real-time technical discussions because I have better
ways of interfacing with it while "on the clock".  E.g. I can much more easily
cut-n-paste URLs, code snippets, tracebacks, etc. into an IRC client, and it's
trivial for me to click on URLs to view pastebins, bug tracker issues, merge
requests, etc.  IRC does have the problem of overlapping discussions, so the
lack of topic differentiation is real, although that can sometimes be
mitigated by private chat or opening a new channel.

I don't think any one forum is going to serve all our needs.  Perhaps it's
useful to identify the types of communications we want to encourage, and the
features that promote those types of communication, then survey our options
(both existing and near-term) to see what technology can best promote those
types of communication.

Some examples:

- Socializing: off-topic; anything goes; jokes; fun Python sightings; meetups

- Real-time technical discussion: remote pair programming; live debugging;
  hashing out alternative solutions; what does this code do?; real-time
  reviews

- Asynchronous focused discussions: issue tracking; PEP writing; feature
  development

- Asynchronous unfocused discussions: brainstorming; anybody else have this
  problem?; wild ideas; this is probably stupid but...

- Asynchronous decision making: are we missing anything?; any other opinions
  before we decide?; wide as possible participation so no one feels left out
  or unheard from; pronouncements and closure.

Cheers,
-Barry

From barry at python.org  Thu Jun 23 09:59:07 2016
From: barry at python.org (Barry Warsaw)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 09:59:07 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
Message-ID: <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>

On Jun 21, 2016, at 03:02 PM, Donald Stufft wrote:

>I don?t believe there is a gmane gateway for discourse, but as Brett
>mentioned there is a ?mailing list mode? that individual participants can
>select so that they never need to use the web interface. I?m told that it?s
>not as good as a dedicated mailing list software, but whether it?s good
>enough for actual day to day use I don?t know.

We have had some discussions about providing a Mailman gateway for Discourse
but haven't really gotten much farther than that.

On Jun 21, 2016, at 11:46 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

>(Note that I would personally happily participate in the Discourse
>experiment -- I'm just asking whether this would appear like a fork to
>current python-ideas subscribers or more like some kind of alternate UI
>they can ignore -- the way I ignore GMane.)

This is I think the biggest concern with adopting new forums: fracturing of
the community.  What happens when a decision is made on Discourse that mailing
list members didn't see?  I know this happened to me years ago when a decision
was made on a Roundup issue that I somehow missed until it was too late.

Gmane is easily ignorable (although I like it) because it's a two-way mirror
of the mailing list.  This works because you can use the interface that best
suits you, but you won't miss any topics you care about.  I like it because my
NNTP reader has a much better way of managing topics than my mail reader, so
for things like python-ideas, I just pop in every few days and see what's
interesting.  Plus, there's a permanent record so I can always go back and
search for things I might have missed.

Segregation based on topics is fine, as long as those topics are
discoverable, e.g. Roundup and nosy lists.  Segregation based on forum or
channel is more troublesome because it's yet another client/website/timeslot
that people have to devote to keeping up, and it's another chance to easily
miss out on something.

I'm not saying we shouldn't look into things like Discourse, but just to keep
these issues in mind as we do.

Cheers,
-Barry

From donald at stufft.io  Thu Jun 23 10:27:20 2016
From: donald at stufft.io (Donald Stufft)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 10:27:20 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
Message-ID: <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>


> On Jun 23, 2016, at 9:59 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> (Note that I would personally happily participate in the Discourse
>> experiment -- I'm just asking whether this would appear like a fork to
>> current python-ideas subscribers or more like some kind of alternate UI
>> they can ignore -- the way I ignore GMane.)
> 
> This is I think the biggest concern with adopting new forums: fracturing of
> the community.  What happens when a decision is made on Discourse that mailing
> list members didn't see?  I know this happened to me years ago when a decision
> was made on a Roundup issue that I somehow missed until it was too late.


So I definitely think that long term we should not have parallel forums like both
mailman *and* discourse. For a short time period I think it?s fine to try and test
the waters, but long term we should pick one tool, whatever that tool is, for this
kind of discussion [1] and bless that and get rid of anything else. Whether that?s
mailman or discourse or something else.

I realize now that I didn?t fully parse what Guido was asking though. If we tried
discourse it would essentially be a fork as I don?t think they have a way to mirror
that information back into Mailman or provide a two way interface between the two.
In my searches it appears that the discourse folks are split on what a project should
do if moving from Mailman to Discourse. Some of them suggest that the data models of
the two are divergent enough that there?s not a good way to import without it
appearing ugly and they suggest closing down the MM list but leaving the archives and
starting fresh. However some of them also seem to suggest closing down the MM list
and importing past discussions, and they?ve provided a tool to import Mailman?s mbox
files.

It appears that there is a one-way sync being added via a Mozilla grant so that
discourse can act as a read-only front end to an active list, but that won?t allow
people to post to the list via discourse, only read it.

It appears the Wikimedia foundation is going through a similar question as documented
by https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discourse. It looks like they have a discourse
instance setup as a pilot phase and they go over some of the pros/cons between the two
systems as they see it.

In looking at the MOSS grant, which they?re targeting for completion in July 2016 it
appears the main focus was to implement the features required to allow people to use
Discourse entirely from within an email client and never need to use the web UI. Details
of that grant can be found at https://meta.discourse.org/t/moss-roadmap-mailing-lists/36432


[1] E.g. real time is fine to have somewhere else, but we shouldn?t have two sort
    of async long form topic based communication mechanisms.

?
Donald Stufft




From skip.montanaro at gmail.com  Thu Jun 23 11:51:52 2016
From: skip.montanaro at gmail.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 10:51:52 -0500
Subject: [Overload-sig] Issue tracker vs. real-time chat
In-Reply-To: <20160623094933.244ad795.barry@wooz.org>
References: <CAP7+vJLkhn6Xo0TWyoJKuw3fxNWoBCEFfbH69FB5Z4z7srNmLA@mail.gmail.com>
 <D3D513F4-15DF-4B69-8BA9-932F369E979E@theolliviers.com>
 <20160623094933.244ad795.barry@wooz.org>
Message-ID: <CANc-5Uy3XPLJeYDqYmhZJEVZO_nf9eGOGbFQpZnj_9EeZMX5MQ@mail.gmail.com>

As I've aged, I've grown curmudgeonly, so keep that in mind.

Barry> I don't think any one forum is going to serve all our needs....

I'm not sure what you're referring to when you use the word "forum". I hope
it's not stuff like VBulletin or IB forum software. Those have a purpose,
but as an alternative to email (or websites when preserving state is
desired), they are definitely a step backward. (Not to mention that forum
moderators can sometimes get a bit too dictatorial for my taste.) I trust
this august group is up on more modern software tools which advance the
state of the forum art. Pointers appreciated.

Skip Montanaro
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From skip.montanaro at gmail.com  Thu Jun 23 12:00:36 2016
From: skip.montanaro at gmail.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 11:00:36 -0500
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
Message-ID: <CANc-5Uxr-Q87cXbXNmHSzpOPe51voPc51aTbGqxz98jUzyjZPA@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:27 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:

> For a short time period I think it?s fine to try and test
> the waters, but long term we should pick one tool, whatever that tool is,
> for this
> kind of discussion [1] and bless that and get rid of anything else.
> Whether that?s
> mailman or discourse or something else.
>

If you decided that (for example) python-dev would move to Discourse, is
there

a) some way to suck the old MM archives into Discourse?

b) allow search engines to index them?

It's not clear that the infinite scroll thing allows for (easy) indexing,
though I assume Google and Bing have their collective act together in this
regard.

Would the MM->some-kind-of-forum decision be made on a list-by-list basis,
or would some lists always remain MM-hosted? I can see where the natives
might get very restless if you migrated comp.lang.python/
python-list at python.org to some sort of forum tool. Python-dev or
python-ideas would be bad enough, but for c.l.p it would probably be
torches and pitchforks time.

Skip
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From donald at stufft.io  Thu Jun 23 12:07:35 2016
From: donald at stufft.io (Donald Stufft)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 12:07:35 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <CANc-5Uxr-Q87cXbXNmHSzpOPe51voPc51aTbGqxz98jUzyjZPA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CANc-5Uxr-Q87cXbXNmHSzpOPe51voPc51aTbGqxz98jUzyjZPA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <18A25069-29BD-412A-ADDD-EE58727D0632@stufft.io>


> On Jun 23, 2016, at 12:00 PM, Skip Montanaro <skip.montanaro at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:27 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io <mailto:donald at stufft.io>> wrote:
> For a short time period I think it?s fine to try and test
> the waters, but long term we should pick one tool, whatever that tool is, for this
> kind of discussion [1] and bless that and get rid of anything else. Whether that?s
> mailman or discourse or something else.
> 
> If you decided that (for example) python-dev would move to Discourse, is there
> 
> a) some way to suck the old MM archives into Discourse?

Discourse has an importer yes, I don?t know the quality of said importer but it has one (and actually, having discourse being able to function as a read only interface to an MM list is one of the goals of a recent Mozilla Grant they?ve gotten).


> 
> b) allow search engines to index them?
> 
> It's not clear that the infinite scroll thing allows for (easy) indexing, though I assume Google and Bing have their collective act together in this regard.

Well I haven?t explicitly looked for this, but given that I regularly get discourse results in my google queries I suspect that it works fine.

> 
> Would the MM->some-kind-of-forum decision be made on a list-by-list basis, or would some lists always remain MM-hosted? I can see where the natives might get very restless if you migrated comp.lang.python/python-list at python.org <mailto:python-list at python.org> to some sort of forum tool. Python-dev or python-ideas would be bad enough, but for c.l.p it would probably be torches and pitchforks time.

It?s possible to use email to some degree (what degree exactly I?m not sure about, previously it wasn?t able to completely replace the web interface, but it appears that they want to make it so that it?s possible to use Discourse to fully replace the feature set of mailing lists rather than just having email as an added on feature. So it?s sort of a like a cross between a forum and a mailing list.

That being said, I think there are benefits to standardizing around one medium, but I suspect that if we did decide to switch to Discourse we wouldn?t be able to shut down MM entirely since it?s also hosting mailing lists for things that aren?t python-dev affiliated but are written in Python and I think we wouldn?t want to force them all onto discourse or to find their own solution. Given that, it seems low cost (besides losing the standardization benefits) to allowing the decision to be made on a per-list basis.

Of course, it?s not my decision :)

?
Donald Stufft



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From brett at python.org  Thu Jun 23 12:15:59 2016
From: brett at python.org (Brett Cannon)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 16:15:59 +0000
Subject: [Overload-sig] Issue tracker vs. real-time chat
In-Reply-To: <CANc-5Uy3XPLJeYDqYmhZJEVZO_nf9eGOGbFQpZnj_9EeZMX5MQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP7+vJLkhn6Xo0TWyoJKuw3fxNWoBCEFfbH69FB5Z4z7srNmLA@mail.gmail.com>
 <D3D513F4-15DF-4B69-8BA9-932F369E979E@theolliviers.com>
 <20160623094933.244ad795.barry@wooz.org>
 <CANc-5Uy3XPLJeYDqYmhZJEVZO_nf9eGOGbFQpZnj_9EeZMX5MQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAP1=2W5qx-_RjHWUoftJTq=UdxxuAhbqeu9Jvj0zRRgGq+PYPQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, 23 Jun 2016 at 08:52 Skip Montanaro <skip.montanaro at gmail.com>
wrote:

> As I've aged, I've grown curmudgeonly, so keep that in mind.
>
> Barry> I don't think any one forum is going to serve all our needs....
>
> I'm not sure what you're referring to when you use the word "forum". I
> hope it's not stuff like VBulletin or IB forum software.
>

I don't even know what those things are. :)


> Those have a purpose, but as an alternative to email (or websites when
> preserving state is desired), they are definitely a step backward. (Not to
> mention that forum moderators can sometimes get a bit too dictatorial for
> my taste.)
>


> I trust this august group is up on more modern software tools which
> advance the state of the forum art. Pointers appreciated.
>

Part of the point of this SIG will be when Stephen rings the bell and says,
"bring out your proposals". At this point all people have talked about are
Discourse, MM3/Hyperkitty, and GitHub issues (and status quo implicitly,
although I don't think any of us like that idea), but when Stephen outlines
the specific aims and gives people a deadline then we might get some other
alternatives than those we have lightly touched on.
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From guido at python.org  Thu Jun 23 12:31:14 2016
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 09:31:14 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
Message-ID: <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 7:27 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:

>
> > On Jun 23, 2016, at 9:59 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> (Note that I would personally happily participate in the Discourse
> >> experiment -- I'm just asking whether this would appear like a fork to
> >> current python-ideas subscribers or more like some kind of alternate UI
> >> they can ignore -- the way I ignore GMane.)
> >
> > This is I think the biggest concern with adopting new forums: fracturing
> of
> > the community.  What happens when a decision is made on Discourse that
> mailing
> > list members didn't see?  I know this happened to me years ago when a
> decision
> > was made on a Roundup issue that I somehow missed until it was too late.
>
>
> So I definitely think that long term we should not have parallel forums
> like both
> mailman *and* discourse. For a short time period I think it?s fine to try
> and test
> the waters, but long term we should pick one tool, whatever that tool is,
> for this
> kind of discussion [1] and bless that and get rid of anything else.
> Whether that?s
> mailman or discourse or something else.
>
> I realize now that I didn?t fully parse what Guido was asking though. If
> we tried
> discourse it would essentially be a fork as I don?t think they have a way
> to mirror
> that information back into Mailman or provide a two way interface between
> the two.
> In my searches it appears that the discourse folks are split on what a
> project should
> do if moving from Mailman to Discourse. Some of them suggest that the data
> models of
> the two are divergent enough that there?s not a good way to import without
> it
> appearing ugly and they suggest closing down the MM list but leaving the
> archives and
> starting fresh. However some of them also seem to suggest closing down the
> MM list
> and importing past discussions, and they?ve provided a tool to import
> Mailman?s mbox
> files.
>
> It appears that there is a one-way sync being added via a Mozilla grant so
> that
> discourse can act as a read-only front end to an active list, but that
> won?t allow
> people to post to the list via discourse, only read it.
>
> It appears the Wikimedia foundation is going through a similar question as
> documented
> by https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discourse. It looks like they have a
> discourse
> instance setup as a pilot phase and they go over some of the pros/cons
> between the two
> systems as they see it.
>
> In looking at the MOSS grant, which they?re targeting for completion in
> July 2016 it
> appears the main focus was to implement the features required to allow
> people to use
> Discourse entirely from within an email client and never need to use the
> web UI. Details
> of that grant can be found at
> https://meta.discourse.org/t/moss-roadmap-mailing-lists/36432
>
>
> [1] E.g. real time is fine to have somewhere else, but we shouldn?t have
> two sort
>     of async long form topic based communication mechanisms.
>

You dug up some very interesting research! It's good to know we're not the
only ones grappling with this.

Bear with me while I veer off-topic in a variety of directions (this list
is exposing the problems we're discussing quite well :-).

I am not that worried about fracturing of the community -- that has already
happened, in a sense, with the splits between python-ideas, python-dev, and
various SIGs, and the use of the tracker for many discussions (including
decisions). We're surviving that part of the problem just fine: the current
problem (reflected in the name of this sig) is too many people posting in
one place, not too many places where people post.

I know that Stephen believes that we have a social problem and hence
shouldn't try to solve it by technical means. That's a common meme, but I'm
not sure it is necessarily correct. Technical solutions can very seriously
alter social behavior (e.g. chat apps on smartphones). And my sense is that
the social problem we have *can* be addressed by a change in technology, if
we are willing to invest in the change (like we are for e.g. the hg->git
transition).

My own workflow is super browser based. I have two browsers open on GMail
(Firefox for "personal", which includes all Python work, Chrome for work --
Dropbox) and I check these all the time. I also have tabs open on Slack and
Google Calendar (for work) and Twitter (personal). Slack and GCal sometimes
pop notifications on my screen (I've configured Slack to do this only when
people call my name or say "python 3" :-).

Many, many workflows that I use are integrated with these, and by far the
strongest integration is with email. When Slack sees I've been called while
I was online, it sends me an email. When someone comments on an issue or
code review I am subscribed to I get an email. Calendar invites come in
email (and can be accepted right there).

All in all I can handle a very large amount of email efficiently. But
what's hard is discussions on python-dev and python-ideas, and I believe
part of the problem is due to the variety in email tools that people use
(and in workflows, and in experience and maturity). The net effect is that
discussions quickly go back and forth between needless repetition,
off-topic diatribes, on-topic rebuttals, multiple discussions going on in
the same topic, the same discussion going on in many topics, and so on.

Note the focus on topics here. I am wishing for a UI that keeps the
discussions more organized. I think that as long as people's model is a
mailing list with a smart UI, it's not going to satisfy me. I think that
what I'm looking for must be modeled in people's minds as a database for
discussions with a high-quality web UI, and personalized email integration.
Google groups, terrible as it is, actually gets that part right. You can
configure it so that every email has a permalink to the same message in the
web UI. This is of course also what issue trackers do. But in other areas
Google groups has no imagination compared to what GitHub's tracker can do.

One last thing. Replies to digest emails should not be allowed to start a
new "topic". Ever.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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From brett at python.org  Thu Jun 23 13:02:29 2016
From: brett at python.org (Brett Cannon)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 17:02:29 +0000
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAP1=2W6OpP4ui4wgxbVR-v8Duq=VkVz42xOkkcnbeYC1AUeZjA@mail.gmail.com>

I just want to say that I agree with Guido's assessment that the variety of
email workflows and tools is not helping the situation. Notice how many
people reply with the same answer to the same email simply because their
email client doesn't notify them that there's a new email (e.g. I was about
to reply to one of Skip's emails but Inbox notified me of a new email and
so I checked and sure enough, Donald beat me to it; most people don't
notice this sort of thing as shown on python-dev when someone mis-posts). I
wonder how much noise would be cut down if we simply had a system where
there was a harmonious UI for everyone that smoothed out things like
notifying when there's an update?

And the separate topics thing is also something I agree with. Due to email
lacking a canonical URL, we can't point people at topics short of saying
"search your email history" (which once again varies in abilities from
person to person). This comes up not only when we say there's an old topic
people should be building off of, but also when a conversation forks. Add
to that when someone joins a mailing list mid-conversation and they have no
way to reply to a message pre-joining and all of this compounds itself
thanks to email's inherent "personal experience".

On Thu, 23 Jun 2016 at 09:31 Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 7:27 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>
>>
>> > On Jun 23, 2016, at 9:59 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
>> >
>> >>
>> >> (Note that I would personally happily participate in the Discourse
>> >> experiment -- I'm just asking whether this would appear like a fork to
>> >> current python-ideas subscribers or more like some kind of alternate UI
>> >> they can ignore -- the way I ignore GMane.)
>> >
>> > This is I think the biggest concern with adopting new forums:
>> fracturing of
>> > the community.  What happens when a decision is made on Discourse that
>> mailing
>> > list members didn't see?  I know this happened to me years ago when a
>> decision
>> > was made on a Roundup issue that I somehow missed until it was too late.
>>
>>
>> So I definitely think that long term we should not have parallel forums
>> like both
>> mailman *and* discourse. For a short time period I think it?s fine to try
>> and test
>> the waters, but long term we should pick one tool, whatever that tool is,
>> for this
>> kind of discussion [1] and bless that and get rid of anything else.
>> Whether that?s
>> mailman or discourse or something else.
>>
>> I realize now that I didn?t fully parse what Guido was asking though. If
>> we tried
>> discourse it would essentially be a fork as I don?t think they have a way
>> to mirror
>> that information back into Mailman or provide a two way interface between
>> the two.
>> In my searches it appears that the discourse folks are split on what a
>> project should
>> do if moving from Mailman to Discourse. Some of them suggest that the
>> data models of
>> the two are divergent enough that there?s not a good way to import
>> without it
>> appearing ugly and they suggest closing down the MM list but leaving the
>> archives and
>> starting fresh. However some of them also seem to suggest closing down
>> the MM list
>> and importing past discussions, and they?ve provided a tool to import
>> Mailman?s mbox
>> files.
>>
>> It appears that there is a one-way sync being added via a Mozilla grant
>> so that
>> discourse can act as a read-only front end to an active list, but that
>> won?t allow
>> people to post to the list via discourse, only read it.
>>
>> It appears the Wikimedia foundation is going through a similar question
>> as documented
>> by https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discourse. It looks like they have a
>> discourse
>> instance setup as a pilot phase and they go over some of the pros/cons
>> between the two
>> systems as they see it.
>>
>> In looking at the MOSS grant, which they?re targeting for completion in
>> July 2016 it
>> appears the main focus was to implement the features required to allow
>> people to use
>> Discourse entirely from within an email client and never need to use the
>> web UI. Details
>> of that grant can be found at
>> https://meta.discourse.org/t/moss-roadmap-mailing-lists/36432
>>
>>
>> [1] E.g. real time is fine to have somewhere else, but we shouldn?t have
>> two sort
>>     of async long form topic based communication mechanisms.
>>
>
> You dug up some very interesting research! It's good to know we're not the
> only ones grappling with this.
>
> Bear with me while I veer off-topic in a variety of directions (this list
> is exposing the problems we're discussing quite well :-).
>
> I am not that worried about fracturing of the community -- that has
> already happened, in a sense, with the splits between python-ideas,
> python-dev, and various SIGs, and the use of the tracker for many
> discussions (including decisions). We're surviving that part of the problem
> just fine: the current problem (reflected in the name of this sig) is too
> many people posting in one place, not too many places where people post.
>
> I know that Stephen believes that we have a social problem and hence
> shouldn't try to solve it by technical means. That's a common meme, but I'm
> not sure it is necessarily correct. Technical solutions can very seriously
> alter social behavior (e.g. chat apps on smartphones). And my sense is that
> the social problem we have *can* be addressed by a change in technology, if
> we are willing to invest in the change (like we are for e.g. the hg->git
> transition).
>
> My own workflow is super browser based. I have two browsers open on GMail
> (Firefox for "personal", which includes all Python work, Chrome for work --
> Dropbox) and I check these all the time. I also have tabs open on Slack and
> Google Calendar (for work) and Twitter (personal). Slack and GCal sometimes
> pop notifications on my screen (I've configured Slack to do this only when
> people call my name or say "python 3" :-).
>
> Many, many workflows that I use are integrated with these, and by far the
> strongest integration is with email. When Slack sees I've been called while
> I was online, it sends me an email. When someone comments on an issue or
> code review I am subscribed to I get an email. Calendar invites come in
> email (and can be accepted right there).
>
> All in all I can handle a very large amount of email efficiently. But
> what's hard is discussions on python-dev and python-ideas, and I believe
> part of the problem is due to the variety in email tools that people use
> (and in workflows, and in experience and maturity). The net effect is that
> discussions quickly go back and forth between needless repetition,
> off-topic diatribes, on-topic rebuttals, multiple discussions going on in
> the same topic, the same discussion going on in many topics, and so on.
>
> Note the focus on topics here. I am wishing for a UI that keeps the
> discussions more organized. I think that as long as people's model is a
> mailing list with a smart UI, it's not going to satisfy me. I think that
> what I'm looking for must be modeled in people's minds as a database for
> discussions with a high-quality web UI, and personalized email integration.
> Google groups, terrible as it is, actually gets that part right. You can
> configure it so that every email has a permalink to the same message in the
> web UI. This is of course also what issue trackers do. But in other areas
> Google groups has no imagination compared to what GitHub's tracker can do.
>
> One last thing. Replies to digest emails should not be allowed to start a
> new "topic". Ever.
>
> --
> --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
> _______________________________________________
> Overload-sig mailing list
> Overload-sig at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig
>
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From donald at stufft.io  Thu Jun 23 13:09:53 2016
From: donald at stufft.io (Donald Stufft)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 13:09:53 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>


> On Jun 23, 2016, at 12:31 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> 
> Note the focus on topics here. I am wishing for a UI that keeps the discussions more organized. I think that as long as people's model is a mailing list with a smart UI, it's not going to satisfy me. I think that what I'm looking for must be modeled in people's minds as a database for discussions with a high-quality web UI, and personalized email integration.

From my experience thus far with discourse, this is basically what it is. Originally they didn?t even allow starting new topics via email only replying to existing topics (although I think they have since changed this so it?s optional based on configuration). Thinking of it like a more discussion focused Github Issue tracker is probably a reasonable mental model for how it functions in practice.

I think it has a number of features and (for lack of a better word) ?patterns" that will help reduce the trend for endless cycling and the ?deluge? of email, such as:

* Topic based workflow that includes built in support for moderation.
    * Close a topic to new replies when it?s obvious that discussion is not productive.
    * Move topics to the correct category (e.g. move from python-dev to python-list) instead of having 12 people reply ?wrong list!?.
    * The ability to automatically allow long term, good users to move up in ?level? to gain additional privileges to help moderate the community (similar to StackOverflow).

* Features to reduce the need for new messages and reduce repetition .
    * Notification *while* you?re writing that new posts have been added so you can scroll down and read them to see if someone else already said what you were going to say.
    * Ability to multi quote in a single response in a structured way, and compose those multi quotes as you read (adding a reply is done inline as you read down the thread, and you can click a button to quote another post as you read down further).
    * Mentioned above, but writing a response is done inline as you read the post (it floats on the bottom of the UI) so you can compose while you read, and keep composing until you read the entire thread, instead of firing off multiple email responses to multiple people.
    * ?Likes? on posts to remove mindless +1?s (I thought this was silly when Github introduced it, but I now quite like it).
    * A suggestion of possible duplicated topics when posting a new topic to try and guide people towards previous or ongoing discussions instead of rehashing the same thing over and over again.
   * A ?Summarize? topic button that filters the topic down to the "most interesting posts as determined by the community? (I don?t know how well this actually works in practice).

* Features to make inter-related discussions work better.
   * Ability to split a topic into two different topics.
   * Interlinking between posts in different topics as well as quotes and the like.


??

Now, all of the above is theoretically achievable with a traditional mailing list, but I think that discourse offers a better medium for achieving those things. Largely for one main reason: Mailing lists push the burden of achieving all of that onto each and every individual participating in the discussion whereas discourse (and other ?forum?-esque software) tends to push the burden of that onto the software itself. This is made even more difficult with the disparate workflows and clients that people are actually using which ends up causing strife as different tools interpret things differently.

For instance, if you want to split a discussion out into a different thread, you have to change the subject of the new thread and make a post, possibly quoting the old post in that. However you?re relying on social convention that people aren?t going to keep responding to that split discussion in the original thread. This sort of works but it also sort of doesn?t, particularly when dealing with mail clients that will render the new thread as part of the sub thread causing people to not realize that it was ever split out to begin with.

Another example is say you want to redirect someone who errantly posts to python-dev instead of python-list. Currently the typical workflow for this is they post incorrectly, and they get somewhere between 1 and 10 people responding with the same message that they need to take that to python-list. Only one reply was needed but because email doesn?t offer a way to mark a topic as closed, there?s no way to prevent additional email, versus something like discourse where you can actually physically move the topic along with a message saying that it was posted in the wrong location.

Now, historically forums have worked by having a finite set of moderators whose job it is to do this sort of janitorial work, however discourse functions more like StackOverflow [1] where the community itself moderates the forums and people gain moderation power over time as they demonstrate a positive interaction with the community at large. I think this could work very well for us since it?s basically the model we use for bugs.python.org (except there we don?t even require people to build up reputation, if you get an account you can munge the state of issues however you want). The exact specifics how fast someone gains reputations and what powers they gain are of course, configurable. I think this is a powerful way to deal with a lot of these problems though, and it allows centralizing these actions (like moving a topic) instead of relying on all users to sort of agree in a sort of hive mind for how to deal with particular threads.


[1] Which shouldn?t be surprising, given Jeff Atwood is involved in both.

?
Donald Stufft



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From guido at python.org  Thu Jun 23 13:14:44 2016
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 10:14:44 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Should we import old MM discussions into e.g.
 Discourse?
Message-ID: <CAP7+vJJKCcc4b2vb3TWYMn0=L_RG37OHDv1fWuXetBPnUG0k+A@mail.gmail.com>

I'm trying something new here: moving a reply to a different subject.

On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:00 AM, Skip Montanaro <skip.montanaro at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:27 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>
>> For a short time period I think it?s fine to try and test
>> the waters, but long term we should pick one tool, whatever that tool is,
>> for this
>> kind of discussion [1] and bless that and get rid of anything else.
>> Whether that?s
>> mailman or discourse or something else.
>>
>
> If you decided that (for example) python-dev would move to Discourse, is
> there
>
> a) some way to suck the old MM archives into Discourse?
>
> b) allow search engines to index them?
>
> It's not clear that the infinite scroll thing allows for (easy) indexing,
> though I assume Google and Bing have their collective act together in this
> regard.
>
> Would the MM->some-kind-of-forum decision be made on a list-by-list basis,
> or would some lists always remain MM-hosted? I can see where the natives
> might get very restless if you migrated comp.lang.python/
> python-list at python.org to some sort of forum tool. Python-dev or
> python-ideas would be bad enough, but for c.l.p it would probably be
> torches and pitchforks time.
>

I personally think that in this case (unlike hg->git) there is little
benefit to importing old discussions. The old discussions *do* have
permalinks, in pipermail and various other archives (e.g. activestate).
Those links are already being used and we should try very hard not to break
such links. That probably means keeping pipermail running forever, in
read-only mode.

FWIW I also don't think we need to shut down the existing mailing lists.
They serve a purpose. But they should not be the only place where we
discuss things (that's my definition of "forum" BTW) and probably not the
busiest place. I hope we can move all lists on mail.python.org to
MM3/HyperKitty with minimal disruption -- again I think it would be fine if
the archives weren't imported, even if that means some threads will be
split across two archival systems. That's not the end of the world.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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From guido at python.org  Thu Jun 23 13:19:03 2016
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 10:19:03 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
Message-ID: <CAP7+vJKy7LjyLEf-LT_QogM7FuOn3hnq7CY7c33kUhZJd=n8mA@mail.gmail.com>

I'm sold. Let's start by moving this very sig to Discourse, or at least by
setting up a parallel Discourse instance where we can discuss this and
experiment.

If anyone has a different system they want to promote let's do that too.
E.g. maybe we should migrate to MM3 as another experiment.

I would also be happy to set up a GitHub tracker named python/overload-sig,
but I'm not sure I'd personally learn anything new from that (though others
may, and I might find it less useful for the kind of discussions we're
having here than for discussing software features and bugs).

On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 10:09 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:

>
> On Jun 23, 2016, at 12:31 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>
> Note the focus on topics here. I am wishing for a UI that keeps the
> discussions more organized. I think that as long as people's model is a
> mailing list with a smart UI, it's not going to satisfy me. I think that
> what I'm looking for must be modeled in people's minds as a database for
> discussions with a high-quality web UI, and personalized email integration.
>
>
> From my experience thus far with discourse, this is basically what it is.
> Originally they didn?t even allow starting new topics via email only
> replying to existing topics (although I think they have since changed this
> so it?s optional based on configuration). Thinking of it like a more
> discussion focused Github Issue tracker is probably a reasonable mental
> model for how it functions in practice.
>
> I think it has a number of features and (for lack of a better word)
> ?patterns" that will help reduce the trend for endless cycling and the
> ?deluge? of email, such as:
>
> * Topic based workflow that includes built in support for moderation.
>     * Close a topic to new replies when it?s obvious that discussion is
> not productive.
>     * Move topics to the correct category (e.g. move from python-dev to
> python-list) instead of having 12 people reply ?wrong list!?.
>     * The ability to automatically allow long term, good users to move up
> in ?level? to gain additional privileges to help moderate the community
> (similar to StackOverflow).
>
> * Features to reduce the need for new messages and reduce repetition .
>     * Notification *while* you?re writing that new posts have been added
> so you can scroll down and read them to see if someone else already said
> what you were going to say.
>     * Ability to multi quote in a single response in a structured way, and
> compose those multi quotes as you read (adding a reply is done inline as
> you read down the thread, and you can click a button to quote another post
> as you read down further).
>     * Mentioned above, but writing a response is done inline as you read
> the post (it floats on the bottom of the UI) so you can compose while you
> read, and keep composing until you read the entire thread, instead of
> firing off multiple email responses to multiple people.
>     * ?Likes? on posts to remove mindless +1?s (I thought this was silly
> when Github introduced it, but I now quite like it).
>     * A suggestion of possible duplicated topics when posting a new topic
> to try and guide people towards previous or ongoing discussions instead of
> rehashing the same thing over and over again.
>    * A ?Summarize? topic button that filters the topic down to the "most
> interesting posts as determined by the community? (I don?t know how well
> this actually works in practice).
>
> * Features to make inter-related discussions work better.
>    * Ability to split a topic into two different topics.
>    * Interlinking between posts in different topics as well as quotes and
> the like.
>
>
> ??
>
> Now, all of the above is theoretically achievable with a traditional
> mailing list, but I think that discourse offers a better medium for
> achieving those things. Largely for one main reason: Mailing lists push the
> burden of achieving all of that onto each and every individual
> participating in the discussion whereas discourse (and other ?forum?-esque
> software) tends to push the burden of that onto the software itself. This
> is made even more difficult with the disparate workflows and clients that
> people are actually using which ends up causing strife as different tools
> interpret things differently.
>
> For instance, if you want to split a discussion out into a different
> thread, you have to change the subject of the new thread and make a post,
> possibly quoting the old post in that. However you?re relying on social
> convention that people aren?t going to keep responding to that split
> discussion in the original thread. This sort of works but it also sort of
> doesn?t, particularly when dealing with mail clients that will render the
> new thread as part of the sub thread causing people to not realize that it
> was ever split out to begin with.
>
> Another example is say you want to redirect someone who errantly posts to
> python-dev instead of python-list. Currently the typical workflow for this
> is they post incorrectly, and they get somewhere between 1 and 10 people
> responding with the same message that they need to take that to
> python-list. Only one reply was needed but because email doesn?t offer a
> way to mark a topic as closed, there?s no way to prevent additional email,
> versus something like discourse where you can actually physically move the
> topic along with a message saying that it was posted in the wrong location.
>
> Now, historically forums have worked by having a finite set of moderators
> whose job it is to do this sort of janitorial work, however discourse
> functions more like StackOverflow [1] where the community itself moderates
> the forums and people gain moderation power over time as they demonstrate a
> positive interaction with the community at large. I think this could work
> very well for us since it?s basically the model we use for bugs.python.org
> (except there we don?t even require people to build up reputation, if you
> get an account you can munge the state of issues however you want). The
> exact specifics how fast someone gains reputations and what powers they
> gain are of course, configurable. I think this is a powerful way to deal
> with a lot of these problems though, and it allows centralizing these
> actions (like moving a topic) instead of relying on all users to sort of
> agree in a sort of hive mind for how to deal with particular threads.
>
>
> [1] Which shouldn?t be surprising, given Jeff Atwood is involved in both.
>
> ?
> Donald Stufft
>
>
>
>


-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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From donald at stufft.io  Thu Jun 23 13:22:13 2016
From: donald at stufft.io (Donald Stufft)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 13:22:13 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Should we import old MM discussions into e.g.
 Discourse?
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJJKCcc4b2vb3TWYMn0=L_RG37OHDv1fWuXetBPnUG0k+A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP7+vJJKCcc4b2vb3TWYMn0=L_RG37OHDv1fWuXetBPnUG0k+A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <9E4DAA5C-73A9-4C8C-9360-41475F0A2976@stufft.io>


> On Jun 23, 2016, at 1:14 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> 
> I'm trying something new here: moving a reply to a different subject.
> 
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:00 AM, Skip Montanaro <skip.montanaro at gmail.com <mailto:skip.montanaro at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:27 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io <mailto:donald at stufft.io>> wrote:
> For a short time period I think it?s fine to try and test
> the waters, but long term we should pick one tool, whatever that tool is, for this
> kind of discussion [1] and bless that and get rid of anything else. Whether that?s
> mailman or discourse or something else.
> 
> If you decided that (for example) python-dev would move to Discourse, is there
> 
> a) some way to suck the old MM archives into Discourse?
> 
> b) allow search engines to index them?
> 
> It's not clear that the infinite scroll thing allows for (easy) indexing, though I assume Google and Bing have their collective act together in this regard.
> 
> Would the MM->some-kind-of-forum decision be made on a list-by-list basis, or would some lists always remain MM-hosted? I can see where the natives might get very restless if you migrated comp.lang.python/python-list at python.org <mailto:python-list at python.org> to some sort of forum tool. Python-dev or python-ideas would be bad enough, but for c.l.p it would probably be torches and pitchforks time.
> 
> I personally think that in this case (unlike hg->git) there is little benefit to importing old discussions. The old discussions *do* have permalinks, in pipermail and various other archives (e.g. activestate). Those links are already being used and we should try very hard not to break such links. That probably means keeping pipermail running forever, in read-only mode.

This is two things I think, I totally agree we should not break those existing links and we should keep piper mail running forever in read-only mode. When it comes to importing the old discussions, I think there is benefit to them:

* It would provide a seeding of ?We noticed you were posting a topic that looks similar to an older one??
* It?d enable interlinking using the discourse mechanisms for those older posts instead of having to find the piper mail url and linking to that.

I don?t think these are super huge benefits though, so I?m also perfectly happy to start fresh (particularly if we try and import and it ends up munging up the formatting to the degree the old messages aren?t very useful).

> 
> FWIW I also don't think we need to shut down the existing mailing lists. They serve a purpose. But they should not be the only place where we discuss things (that's my definition of "forum" BTW) and probably not the busiest place. I hope we can move all lists on mail.python.org <http://mail.python.org/> to MM3/HyperKitty with minimal disruption -- again I think it would be fine if the archives weren't imported, even if that means some threads will be split across two archival systems. That's not the end of the world.

Does this mean that you you?d want to say (pretending we decide to move python-dev to discourse) keep a python-dev MM list and have them run parallel, disparate discussions?

> 
> -- 
> --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido <http://python.org/~guido>)
> _______________________________________________
> Overload-sig mailing list
> Overload-sig at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig


?
Donald Stufft



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From donald at stufft.io  Thu Jun 23 13:25:46 2016
From: donald at stufft.io (Donald Stufft)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 13:25:46 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJKy7LjyLEf-LT_QogM7FuOn3hnq7CY7c33kUhZJd=n8mA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJKy7LjyLEf-LT_QogM7FuOn3hnq7CY7c33kUhZJd=n8mA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <5EFFBC05-446A-4CE9-8596-E9FE1C69123A@stufft.io>


> On Jun 23, 2016, at 1:19 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> 
> I'm sold. Let's start by moving this very sig to Discourse, or at least by setting up a parallel Discourse instance where we can discuss this and experiment.


Ok. I guess I can take on doing that. Let me investigate the options for hosting. I know that discourse the company offers paid hosting of discourse the software and I think they give it free to OSS projects, even at their own domain, provided they make the URL something like ``discourse.python.org``. If that?s acceptable I can reach out to them and try to set that up. If we?d rather have a name that isn?t tied to a specific piece of software (like ``discuss.python.org``) or we?d rather not host this externally then i can see about setting that up on our own infrastructure.

Either way, Discourse provides a way to suck up all of the data out of it into a backup and ?take it with you? which you can import into a running instance elsewhere so the downside of using hosted is pretty low I think.

?
Donald Stufft



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From kevin-lists at theolliviers.com  Thu Jun 23 13:26:11 2016
From: kevin-lists at theolliviers.com (Kevin Ollivier)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 10:26:11 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Issue tracker vs. real-time chat
In-Reply-To: <20160623094933.244ad795.barry@wooz.org>
References: <CAP7+vJLkhn6Xo0TWyoJKuw3fxNWoBCEFfbH69FB5Z4z7srNmLA@mail.gmail.com>
 <D3D513F4-15DF-4B69-8BA9-932F369E979E@theolliviers.com>
 <20160623094933.244ad795.barry@wooz.org>
Message-ID: <386616AC-A237-4408-816A-18C1F692BC7E@theolliviers.com>

Hi Barry,



On 6/23/16, 6:49 AM, "Overload-sig on behalf of Barry Warsaw" <overload-sig-bounces+kevin-lists=theolliviers.com at python.org on behalf of barry at python.org> wrote:

>On Jun 21, 2016, at 12:20 PM, Kevin Ollivier wrote:
>
>>People tend to always be very focused and serious on mailing lists, and
>>personally I believe it's a significant contributing factor to burnout and
>>overload. At some point, contributing simply becomes no fun. The community
>>can start to appear as a bunch of very picky critics who pull apart your
>>every thought. I would wholeheartedly agree that mailing lists aren't the
>>place for chit-chatting among devs, but I think there should be such a place,
>>and IRC isn't really the best choice these days. (At a hotel recently they
>>even blocked my internet because the IRC protocol resembled P2P traffic!)
>
>I've been using Telegram lately in a couple of contexts, and I agree that it's
>nice to have a less formal forum for socializing.  I'm not particularly
>advocating Telegram, but I think you're right that similar systems have a
>place in the universe of communication channels.  We've tended to use it for
>keeping in touch at sprints ("Hey, meet in the lobby at 7pm if you want to
>join us for dinner") and sending interesting little pictures, quotes, etc.
>The off-line and real-time notifications are the key things that make this
>useful, but the multiple ways to interact with the system (smartphone apps,
>web sites) are really useful too.

I just downloaded Telegram and my main concern with it is that it requires a phone number to get started. I ended up not signing up. For me this would be a disqualifier, especially with solid tools like Slack already available and in wide use. 


>Clearly we don't want major decisions happening here, but then I'd argue that
>IRC isn't the right place for that either.  I am mildly uncomfortable with
>using closed systems and source, but given that Telegram and similar systems
>are used primarily for socializing, I think it's fine.
>
>I prefer IRC for more real-time technical discussions because I have better
>ways of interfacing with it while "on the clock".  E.g. I can much more easily
>cut-n-paste URLs, code snippets, tracebacks, etc. into an IRC client, and it's
>trivial for me to click on URLs to view pastebins, bug tracker issues, merge
>requests, etc.  IRC does have the problem of overlapping discussions, so the
>lack of topic differentiation is real, although that can sometimes be
>mitigated by private chat or opening a new channel.

I've not used Telegram, but I don't find any of these things to be an issue with Slack. I see people posting URLs, code snippets, etc. using pastebin and co. all the time. Slack for me is basically IRC + group channel browsing + ability to catch up on offline messages, basically IRC++. :)

>I don't think any one forum is going to serve all our needs.  Perhaps it's
>useful to identify the types of communications we want to encourage, and the
>features that promote those types of communication, then survey our options
>(both existing and near-term) to see what technology can best promote those
>types of communication.

+1 to this! :)

Thanks,

Kevin

>Some examples:
>
>- Socializing: off-topic; anything goes; jokes; fun Python sightings; meetups
>
>- Real-time technical discussion: remote pair programming; live debugging;
>  hashing out alternative solutions; what does this code do?; real-time
>  reviews
>
>- Asynchronous focused discussions: issue tracking; PEP writing; feature
>  development
>
>- Asynchronous unfocused discussions: brainstorming; anybody else have this
>  problem?; wild ideas; this is probably stupid but...
>
>- Asynchronous decision making: are we missing anything?; any other opinions
>  before we decide?; wide as possible participation so no one feels left out
>  or unheard from; pronouncements and closure.
>
>Cheers,
>-Barry
>_______________________________________________
>Overload-sig mailing list
>Overload-sig at python.org
>https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig


From guido at python.org  Thu Jun 23 13:29:30 2016
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 10:29:30 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Should we import old MM discussions into e.g.
 Discourse?
In-Reply-To: <9E4DAA5C-73A9-4C8C-9360-41475F0A2976@stufft.io>
References: <CAP7+vJJKCcc4b2vb3TWYMn0=L_RG37OHDv1fWuXetBPnUG0k+A@mail.gmail.com>
 <9E4DAA5C-73A9-4C8C-9360-41475F0A2976@stufft.io>
Message-ID: <CAP7+vJJD0-gDMPuFnF8uh4TCQdnw92EvmbjH35ntcptNiPeXdg@mail.gmail.com>

I think a clean break would actually be preferable.

I think it would be fine to have the Discourse and MM instance both be
active, for slightly different purposes. E.g. python-dev would be more of a
news broadcast, with a social convention to discourage responses and have
discussions on Discourse instead.

On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 10:22 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:

>
> On Jun 23, 2016, at 1:14 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>
> I'm trying something new here: moving a reply to a different subject.
>
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:00 AM, Skip Montanaro <skip.montanaro at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:27 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>>
>>> For a short time period I think it?s fine to try and test
>>> the waters, but long term we should pick one tool, whatever that tool
>>> is, for this
>>> kind of discussion [1] and bless that and get rid of anything else.
>>> Whether that?s
>>> mailman or discourse or something else.
>>>
>>
>> If you decided that (for example) python-dev would move to Discourse, is
>> there
>>
>> a) some way to suck the old MM archives into Discourse?
>>
>> b) allow search engines to index them?
>>
>> It's not clear that the infinite scroll thing allows for (easy) indexing,
>> though I assume Google and Bing have their collective act together in this
>> regard.
>>
>> Would the MM->some-kind-of-forum decision be made on a list-by-list
>> basis, or would some lists always remain MM-hosted? I can see where the
>> natives might get very restless if you migrated comp.lang.python/
>> python-list at python.org to some sort of forum tool. Python-dev or
>> python-ideas would be bad enough, but for c.l.p it would probably be
>> torches and pitchforks time.
>>
>
> I personally think that in this case (unlike hg->git) there is little
> benefit to importing old discussions. The old discussions *do* have
> permalinks, in pipermail and various other archives (e.g. activestate).
> Those links are already being used and we should try very hard not to break
> such links. That probably means keeping pipermail running forever, in
> read-only mode.
>
>
> This is two things I think, I totally agree we should not break those
> existing links and we should keep piper mail running forever in read-only
> mode. When it comes to importing the old discussions, I think there is
> benefit to them:
>
> * It would provide a seeding of ?We noticed you were posting a topic that
> looks similar to an older one??
> * It?d enable interlinking using the discourse mechanisms for those older
> posts instead of having to find the piper mail url and linking to that.
>
> I don?t think these are super huge benefits though, so I?m also perfectly
> happy to start fresh (particularly if we try and import and it ends up
> munging up the formatting to the degree the old messages aren?t very
> useful).
>
>
> FWIW I also don't think we need to shut down the existing mailing lists.
> They serve a purpose. But they should not be the only place where we
> discuss things (that's my definition of "forum" BTW) and probably not the
> busiest place. I hope we can move all lists on mail.python.org to
> MM3/HyperKitty with minimal disruption -- again I think it would be fine if
> the archives weren't imported, even if that means some threads will be
> split across two archival systems. That's not the end of the world.
>
>
> Does this mean that you you?d want to say (pretending we decide to move
> python-dev to discourse) keep a python-dev MM list and have them run
> parallel, disparate discussions?
>
>
> --
> --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
> _______________________________________________
> Overload-sig mailing list
> Overload-sig at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig
>
>
>
> ?
> Donald Stufft
>
>
>
>


-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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From donald at stufft.io  Thu Jun 23 13:38:58 2016
From: donald at stufft.io (Donald Stufft)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 13:38:58 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Should we import old MM discussions into e.g.
 Discourse?
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJJD0-gDMPuFnF8uh4TCQdnw92EvmbjH35ntcptNiPeXdg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP7+vJJKCcc4b2vb3TWYMn0=L_RG37OHDv1fWuXetBPnUG0k+A@mail.gmail.com>
 <9E4DAA5C-73A9-4C8C-9360-41475F0A2976@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJD0-gDMPuFnF8uh4TCQdnw92EvmbjH35ntcptNiPeXdg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <ED6D0583-22A3-44B2-9338-559472E653E9@stufft.io>


> On Jun 23, 2016, at 1:29 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> 
> I think a clean break would actually be preferable.
> 
> I think it would be fine to have the Discourse and MM instance both be active, for slightly different purposes. E.g. python-dev would be more of a news broadcast, with a social convention to discourage responses and have discussions on Discourse instead.
> 

Fine with me on both counts! Less work on the first count too :)


?
Donald Stufft



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From brett at python.org  Thu Jun 23 13:44:43 2016
From: brett at python.org (Brett Cannon)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 17:44:43 +0000
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <5EFFBC05-446A-4CE9-8596-E9FE1C69123A@stufft.io>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJKy7LjyLEf-LT_QogM7FuOn3hnq7CY7c33kUhZJd=n8mA@mail.gmail.com>
 <5EFFBC05-446A-4CE9-8596-E9FE1C69123A@stufft.io>
Message-ID: <CAP1=2W79egpVBn-iADStNrOEaZe6gFkv0C_eZzkviwm6PUMb_A@mail.gmail.com>

The free-for-OSS details can be found at
http://blog.discourse.org/2016/03/free-discourse-forum-hosting-for-community-friendly-github-projects/
. If we want to start the experiment without a custom domain I think that's
fine since I assume we can add it later. Might as well go for the easiest
solution for now while we play with an installation before we worry about
whether we want their free offer, paid-by-PSF hosting, or self-run hosting.

On Thu, 23 Jun 2016 at 10:25 Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:

>
> On Jun 23, 2016, at 1:19 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>
> I'm sold. Let's start by moving this very sig to Discourse, or at least by
> setting up a parallel Discourse instance where we can discuss this and
> experiment.
>
>
> Ok. I guess I can take on doing that. Let me investigate the options for
> hosting. I know that discourse the company offers paid hosting of discourse
> the software and I think they give it free to OSS projects, even at their
> own domain, provided they make the URL something like ``
> discourse.python.org``. If that?s acceptable I can reach out to them and
> try to set that up. If we?d rather have a name that isn?t tied to a
> specific piece of software (like ``discuss.python.org``) or we?d rather
> not host this externally then i can see about setting that up on our own
> infrastructure.
>
> Either way, Discourse provides a way to suck up all of the data out of it
> into a backup and ?take it with you? which you can import into a running
> instance elsewhere so the downside of using hosted is pretty low I think.
>
> ?
>
> Donald Stufft
> _______________________________________________
> Overload-sig mailing list
> Overload-sig at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig
>
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From brett at python.org  Thu Jun 23 13:57:55 2016
From: brett at python.org (Brett Cannon)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 17:57:55 +0000
Subject: [Overload-sig] Should we import old MM discussions into e.g.
 Discourse?
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJJD0-gDMPuFnF8uh4TCQdnw92EvmbjH35ntcptNiPeXdg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP7+vJJKCcc4b2vb3TWYMn0=L_RG37OHDv1fWuXetBPnUG0k+A@mail.gmail.com>
 <9E4DAA5C-73A9-4C8C-9360-41475F0A2976@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJD0-gDMPuFnF8uh4TCQdnw92EvmbjH35ntcptNiPeXdg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAP1=2W6Wu05WBRb1qsUB3M=-9L8q1j=vRToUHyUq_UifhFirAg@mail.gmail.com>

So basically python-dev implicitly becoming python-dev-announce while all
actual discussion occurring on Discourse? If that's the case I would be
curious to know how the separation would be as to what should go where. I
can see things like release details being announced (e.g. "we're cutting
3.6.a2 on such-and-such a date"), but otherwise I would think everything
else would involve some form of discussion. And if that's the case then
it's more of a python-releases mailing list where anyone can subscribe but
only RMs can post (and maybe maintainers of other implementations).

And if whatever wins this discussion requires a migration, we can do it in
phases based on things directly tied to Python's development (e.g.
python-dev and SIGs), then consider expanding it (e.g. python-list if
people want to go that far).

On Thu, 23 Jun 2016 at 10:29 Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

> I think a clean break would actually be preferable.
>
> I think it would be fine to have the Discourse and MM instance both be
> active, for slightly different purposes. E.g. python-dev would be more of a
> news broadcast, with a social convention to discourage responses and have
> discussions on Discourse instead.
>
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 10:22 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jun 23, 2016, at 1:14 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>>
>> I'm trying something new here: moving a reply to a different subject.
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:00 AM, Skip Montanaro <skip.montanaro at gmail.com
>> > wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:27 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>>>
>>>> For a short time period I think it?s fine to try and test
>>>> the waters, but long term we should pick one tool, whatever that tool
>>>> is, for this
>>>> kind of discussion [1] and bless that and get rid of anything else.
>>>> Whether that?s
>>>> mailman or discourse or something else.
>>>>
>>>
>>> If you decided that (for example) python-dev would move to Discourse, is
>>> there
>>>
>>> a) some way to suck the old MM archives into Discourse?
>>>
>>> b) allow search engines to index them?
>>>
>>> It's not clear that the infinite scroll thing allows for (easy)
>>> indexing, though I assume Google and Bing have their collective act
>>> together in this regard.
>>>
>>> Would the MM->some-kind-of-forum decision be made on a list-by-list
>>> basis, or would some lists always remain MM-hosted? I can see where the
>>> natives might get very restless if you migrated comp.lang.python/
>>> python-list at python.org to some sort of forum tool. Python-dev or
>>> python-ideas would be bad enough, but for c.l.p it would probably be
>>> torches and pitchforks time.
>>>
>>
>> I personally think that in this case (unlike hg->git) there is little
>> benefit to importing old discussions. The old discussions *do* have
>> permalinks, in pipermail and various other archives (e.g. activestate).
>> Those links are already being used and we should try very hard not to break
>> such links. That probably means keeping pipermail running forever, in
>> read-only mode.
>>
>>
>> This is two things I think, I totally agree we should not break those
>> existing links and we should keep piper mail running forever in read-only
>> mode. When it comes to importing the old discussions, I think there is
>> benefit to them:
>>
>> * It would provide a seeding of ?We noticed you were posting a topic that
>> looks similar to an older one??
>> * It?d enable interlinking using the discourse mechanisms for those older
>> posts instead of having to find the piper mail url and linking to that.
>>
>> I don?t think these are super huge benefits though, so I?m also perfectly
>> happy to start fresh (particularly if we try and import and it ends up
>> munging up the formatting to the degree the old messages aren?t very
>> useful).
>>
>>
>> FWIW I also don't think we need to shut down the existing mailing lists.
>> They serve a purpose. But they should not be the only place where we
>> discuss things (that's my definition of "forum" BTW) and probably not the
>> busiest place. I hope we can move all lists on mail.python.org to
>> MM3/HyperKitty with minimal disruption -- again I think it would be fine if
>> the archives weren't imported, even if that means some threads will be
>> split across two archival systems. That's not the end of the world.
>>
>>
>> Does this mean that you you?d want to say (pretending we decide to move
>> python-dev to discourse) keep a python-dev MM list and have them run
>> parallel, disparate discussions?
>>
>>
>> --
>> --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
>> _______________________________________________
>> Overload-sig mailing list
>> Overload-sig at python.org
>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig
>>
>>
>>
>> ?
>> Donald Stufft
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
> _______________________________________________
> Overload-sig mailing list
> Overload-sig at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig
>
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From skip.montanaro at gmail.com  Thu Jun 23 14:06:44 2016
From: skip.montanaro at gmail.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 13:06:44 -0500
Subject: [Overload-sig] Sampling multiple options...
Message-ID: <CANc-5UyhdrbCx+tQDu9K46MOFfS-HHzqhzfu4272eBpd98vf8w@mail.gmail.com>

I was going to ask why not try Discourse, but Guido beat me to it. Good
thing I poked the "new mail" button in Gmail before hitting send. :-)

I don't know what the timeframe for this sig is supposed to be, or how many
options you want to more-or-less thoroughly examine, but it might be
worthwhile to move it from one option to the next over the course of a few
days|weeks|months. It might highlight a few things:

* How hard is it to get started (spool up a new tool or group within a
tool)?

* How difficult is it for individual users to get up-to-speed with new
tools?

* What import/export features to the various tools support?

I realize the last item isn't as high priority, but with such a short
lifespan, it might be worthwhile to see (for example), how hard it is to
import the modest MM archives into Discourse. If a decision to try another
is made, then what's Discourse's export feature like (and/or the next
tool's import feature)? You might also keep overload-sig active as a
Gmane-ish mirror of the different options, presuming they support sending
messages to email. You could just always use an email-to-<shiny new tool>
each time you try another tool.

I'm interested in this process partly because when I asked about getting
help for the typeshed stub stuff, Guido said, "just use the Github issue
tracker." That seemed completely foreign to me, so I have yet to try it,
but it seems that is one of the options. I'd like to see if "getting help"
mixes well with "discussing really important things" or "settling on a
place for beer at PyCon".

Someone mentioned they'd never heard of forums like VBulletin before. I'm
not advocating them as a possible tool, however these sorts of forums exist
all over the internet. Here are a few I follow in my alternate existence as
a cyclist:

http://www.bikeforums.net/

http://forums.thepaceline.net/

http://www.thechainlink.org/forum

There are enough of these beasts that there are even apps to provide a more
smartphone-friendly interface:

https://tapatalk.com/

Again, I'm not advocating any of them as candidate tools. I suppose it
might help to know who Discourse's and Telegram's ancestors are, though. :-)

Skip
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From guido at python.org  Thu Jun 23 14:38:02 2016
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 11:38:02 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <CAP1=2W79egpVBn-iADStNrOEaZe6gFkv0C_eZzkviwm6PUMb_A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJKy7LjyLEf-LT_QogM7FuOn3hnq7CY7c33kUhZJd=n8mA@mail.gmail.com>
 <5EFFBC05-446A-4CE9-8596-E9FE1C69123A@stufft.io>
 <CAP1=2W79egpVBn-iADStNrOEaZe6gFkv0C_eZzkviwm6PUMb_A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAP7+vJKQfBbf9rDTPbH_W1zBQEhGB77HpFX+4qN7tmj662TDLg@mail.gmail.com>

Donald: please go ahead and set up what's quickest to set up just as an
experiment for overload-sig! I do like the idea of slurping in the (brief)
history of overload-sig into the Discourse instance, so we can experience
what that feels like too.

On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 10:44 AM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:

> The free-for-OSS details can be found at
> http://blog.discourse.org/2016/03/free-discourse-forum-hosting-for-community-friendly-github-projects/
> . If we want to start the experiment without a custom domain I think that's
> fine since I assume we can add it later. Might as well go for the easiest
> solution for now while we play with an installation before we worry about
> whether we want their free offer, paid-by-PSF hosting, or self-run hosting.
>
> On Thu, 23 Jun 2016 at 10:25 Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jun 23, 2016, at 1:19 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>>
>> I'm sold. Let's start by moving this very sig to Discourse, or at least
>> by setting up a parallel Discourse instance where we can discuss this and
>> experiment.
>>
>>
>> Ok. I guess I can take on doing that. Let me investigate the options for
>> hosting. I know that discourse the company offers paid hosting of discourse
>> the software and I think they give it free to OSS projects, even at their
>> own domain, provided they make the URL something like ``
>> discourse.python.org``. If that?s acceptable I can reach out to them and
>> try to set that up. If we?d rather have a name that isn?t tied to a
>> specific piece of software (like ``discuss.python.org``) or we?d rather
>> not host this externally then i can see about setting that up on our own
>> infrastructure.
>>
>> Either way, Discourse provides a way to suck up all of the data out of it
>> into a backup and ?take it with you? which you can import into a running
>> instance elsewhere so the downside of using hosted is pretty low I think.
>>
>> ?
>>
>> Donald Stufft
>> _______________________________________________
>> Overload-sig mailing list
>> Overload-sig at python.org
>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig
>>
>


-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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From guido at python.org  Thu Jun 23 14:42:37 2016
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 11:42:37 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Should we import old MM discussions into e.g.
 Discourse?
In-Reply-To: <CAP1=2W6Wu05WBRb1qsUB3M=-9L8q1j=vRToUHyUq_UifhFirAg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP7+vJJKCcc4b2vb3TWYMn0=L_RG37OHDv1fWuXetBPnUG0k+A@mail.gmail.com>
 <9E4DAA5C-73A9-4C8C-9360-41475F0A2976@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJD0-gDMPuFnF8uh4TCQdnw92EvmbjH35ntcptNiPeXdg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W6Wu05WBRb1qsUB3M=-9L8q1j=vRToUHyUq_UifhFirAg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAP7+vJL0RR=7uuu3o8MTHBF_qTeWjme8iNUDqYCFEbJYH7X3aw@mail.gmail.com>

It's too soon to actually do this, but the way I imagine it, it would be
very organic. We announce that there's a new forum (e.g. Discourse) and we
encourage people to try it out. That's all for phase 1. If we end up liking
it we can have a discussion (on Discourse :-) for how to make its use more
mandatory, and for what purposes to keep using the list. And those
rules/conventions can evolve.

PS. Above, 'Discourse' is really just a variable standing in for the actual
system we're going to try. But for overload-sig specifically let's move to
Discourse, if Donald can set it up.

(And yes, I'm intentionally ignoring list etiquette here, to demonstrate
the problems we're trying to solve.)

--Guido

On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 10:57 AM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:

> So basically python-dev implicitly becoming python-dev-announce while all
> actual discussion occurring on Discourse? If that's the case I would be
> curious to know how the separation would be as to what should go where. I
> can see things like release details being announced (e.g. "we're cutting
> 3.6.a2 on such-and-such a date"), but otherwise I would think everything
> else would involve some form of discussion. And if that's the case then
> it's more of a python-releases mailing list where anyone can subscribe but
> only RMs can post (and maybe maintainers of other implementations).
>
> And if whatever wins this discussion requires a migration, we can do it in
> phases based on things directly tied to Python's development (e.g.
> python-dev and SIGs), then consider expanding it (e.g. python-list if
> people want to go that far).
>
> On Thu, 23 Jun 2016 at 10:29 Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>
>> I think a clean break would actually be preferable.
>>
>> I think it would be fine to have the Discourse and MM instance both be
>> active, for slightly different purposes. E.g. python-dev would be more of a
>> news broadcast, with a social convention to discourage responses and have
>> discussions on Discourse instead.
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 10:22 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 23, 2016, at 1:14 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm trying something new here: moving a reply to a different subject.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:00 AM, Skip Montanaro <
>>> skip.montanaro at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:27 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> For a short time period I think it?s fine to try and test
>>>>> the waters, but long term we should pick one tool, whatever that tool
>>>>> is, for this
>>>>> kind of discussion [1] and bless that and get rid of anything else.
>>>>> Whether that?s
>>>>> mailman or discourse or something else.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> If you decided that (for example) python-dev would move to Discourse,
>>>> is there
>>>>
>>>> a) some way to suck the old MM archives into Discourse?
>>>>
>>>> b) allow search engines to index them?
>>>>
>>>> It's not clear that the infinite scroll thing allows for (easy)
>>>> indexing, though I assume Google and Bing have their collective act
>>>> together in this regard.
>>>>
>>>> Would the MM->some-kind-of-forum decision be made on a list-by-list
>>>> basis, or would some lists always remain MM-hosted? I can see where the
>>>> natives might get very restless if you migrated comp.lang.python/
>>>> python-list at python.org to some sort of forum tool. Python-dev or
>>>> python-ideas would be bad enough, but for c.l.p it would probably be
>>>> torches and pitchforks time.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I personally think that in this case (unlike hg->git) there is little
>>> benefit to importing old discussions. The old discussions *do* have
>>> permalinks, in pipermail and various other archives (e.g. activestate).
>>> Those links are already being used and we should try very hard not to break
>>> such links. That probably means keeping pipermail running forever, in
>>> read-only mode.
>>>
>>>
>>> This is two things I think, I totally agree we should not break those
>>> existing links and we should keep piper mail running forever in read-only
>>> mode. When it comes to importing the old discussions, I think there is
>>> benefit to them:
>>>
>>> * It would provide a seeding of ?We noticed you were posting a topic
>>> that looks similar to an older one??
>>> * It?d enable interlinking using the discourse mechanisms for those
>>> older posts instead of having to find the piper mail url and linking to
>>> that.
>>>
>>> I don?t think these are super huge benefits though, so I?m also
>>> perfectly happy to start fresh (particularly if we try and import and it
>>> ends up munging up the formatting to the degree the old messages aren?t
>>> very useful).
>>>
>>>
>>> FWIW I also don't think we need to shut down the existing mailing lists.
>>> They serve a purpose. But they should not be the only place where we
>>> discuss things (that's my definition of "forum" BTW) and probably not the
>>> busiest place. I hope we can move all lists on mail.python.org to
>>> MM3/HyperKitty with minimal disruption -- again I think it would be fine if
>>> the archives weren't imported, even if that means some threads will be
>>> split across two archival systems. That's not the end of the world.
>>>
>>>
>>> Does this mean that you you?d want to say (pretending we decide to move
>>> python-dev to discourse) keep a python-dev MM list and have them run
>>> parallel, disparate discussions?
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Overload-sig mailing list
>>> Overload-sig at python.org
>>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ?
>>> Donald Stufft
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
>> _______________________________________________
>> Overload-sig mailing list
>> Overload-sig at python.org
>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig
>>
>


-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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From barry at python.org  Fri Jun 24 10:41:57 2016
From: barry at python.org (Barry Warsaw)
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 10:41:57 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Should we import old MM discussions into e.g.
 Discourse?
In-Reply-To: <9E4DAA5C-73A9-4C8C-9360-41475F0A2976@stufft.io>
References: <CAP7+vJJKCcc4b2vb3TWYMn0=L_RG37OHDv1fWuXetBPnUG0k+A@mail.gmail.com>
 <9E4DAA5C-73A9-4C8C-9360-41475F0A2976@stufft.io>
Message-ID: <20160624104157.4f7342a1.barry@wooz.org>

On Jun 23, 2016, at 01:22 PM, Donald Stufft wrote:

>This is two things I think, I totally agree we should not break those
>existing links and we should keep piper mail running forever in read-only
>mode. When it comes to importing the old discussions, I think there is
>benefit to them:

I definitely don't think we should ever *remove* the old Pipermail archives,
but there's still benefit in importing them into Hyperkitty.  Pipermail
urls are not guaranteed to be stable, and in fact our postmasters have
inadvertently broken urls for one or two archives in the past, by accidentally
regenerating them.

Hyperkitty urls are permanent; they will never change even if the databases
are regenerated.  MM3 also uses a protocol to "pre-determine" the permalink
for a message based on the Message-ID (which is for all practical purposes,
unique) and a base archiver url, without interaction of the archiver, which is
something Pipermail also can't do.

It may be possible to use this protocol to auto-generate redirects from
Pipermail to Hyperkitty.

Cheers,
-Barry

From barry at python.org  Fri Jun 24 10:44:58 2016
From: barry at python.org (Barry Warsaw)
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 10:44:58 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Issue tracker vs. real-time chat
In-Reply-To: <CANc-5Uy3XPLJeYDqYmhZJEVZO_nf9eGOGbFQpZnj_9EeZMX5MQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP7+vJLkhn6Xo0TWyoJKuw3fxNWoBCEFfbH69FB5Z4z7srNmLA@mail.gmail.com>
 <D3D513F4-15DF-4B69-8BA9-932F369E979E@theolliviers.com>
 <20160623094933.244ad795.barry@wooz.org>
 <CANc-5Uy3XPLJeYDqYmhZJEVZO_nf9eGOGbFQpZnj_9EeZMX5MQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20160624104458.04a10e89@subdivisions.wooz.org>

On Jun 23, 2016, at 10:51 AM, Skip Montanaro wrote:

>I'm not sure what you're referring to when you use the word "forum". I hope
>it's not stuff like VBulletin or IB forum software.

No, it was really just a generic term to describe "place where we discuss
stuff".

Cheers,
-Barry
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From guido at python.org  Fri Jun 24 10:56:14 2016
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 07:56:14 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Should we import old MM discussions into e.g.
 Discourse?
In-Reply-To: <20160624104157.4f7342a1.barry@wooz.org>
References: <CAP7+vJJKCcc4b2vb3TWYMn0=L_RG37OHDv1fWuXetBPnUG0k+A@mail.gmail.com>
 <9E4DAA5C-73A9-4C8C-9360-41475F0A2976@stufft.io>
 <20160624104157.4f7342a1.barry@wooz.org>
Message-ID: <CAP7+vJKcknwgsJiLH-8Buz3YBpxyNmBoSv=rdSzYkdRBU-=PVQ@mail.gmail.com>

OK, maybe we can start moving *this* list to MM3 and also do the pipermail
-> HyperKitty import.

On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 7:41 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:

> On Jun 23, 2016, at 01:22 PM, Donald Stufft wrote:
>
> >This is two things I think, I totally agree we should not break those
> >existing links and we should keep piper mail running forever in read-only
> >mode. When it comes to importing the old discussions, I think there is
> >benefit to them:
>
> I definitely don't think we should ever *remove* the old Pipermail
> archives,
> but there's still benefit in importing them into Hyperkitty.  Pipermail
> urls are not guaranteed to be stable, and in fact our postmasters have
> inadvertently broken urls for one or two archives in the past, by
> accidentally
> regenerating them.
>
> Hyperkitty urls are permanent; they will never change even if the databases
> are regenerated.  MM3 also uses a protocol to "pre-determine" the permalink
> for a message based on the Message-ID (which is for all practical purposes,
> unique) and a base archiver url, without interaction of the archiver,
> which is
> something Pipermail also can't do.
>
> It may be possible to use this protocol to auto-generate redirects from
> Pipermail to Hyperkitty.
>
> Cheers,
> -Barry
> _______________________________________________
> Overload-sig mailing list
> Overload-sig at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/overload-sig
>



-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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From barry at python.org  Fri Jun 24 11:13:31 2016
From: barry at python.org (Barry Warsaw)
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 11:13:31 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Should we import old MM discussions into e.g.
 Discourse?
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJKcknwgsJiLH-8Buz3YBpxyNmBoSv=rdSzYkdRBU-=PVQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP7+vJJKCcc4b2vb3TWYMn0=L_RG37OHDv1fWuXetBPnUG0k+A@mail.gmail.com>
 <9E4DAA5C-73A9-4C8C-9360-41475F0A2976@stufft.io>
 <20160624104157.4f7342a1.barry@wooz.org>
 <CAP7+vJKcknwgsJiLH-8Buz3YBpxyNmBoSv=rdSzYkdRBU-=PVQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20160624111331.515b7263@subdivisions.wooz.org>

On Jun 24, 2016, at 07:56 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

>OK, maybe we can start moving *this* list to MM3 and also do the pipermail
>-> HyperKitty import.  

I would like to see that, yes.  If we're going to be guinea pigs, less go
whole hog :).

I'm CC'ing Mark Sapiro to see if he has bandwidth to do that.  I think there
are still some Postfix issues to iron out, but I'm way behind on my email due
to recent travels.

-Barry
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From guido at python.org  Fri Jun 24 12:24:04 2016
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 09:24:04 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Should we import old MM discussions into e.g.
 Discourse?
In-Reply-To: <8e59e9ec-a4c7-a18a-df43-383967a303bf@msapiro.net>
References: <CAP7+vJJKCcc4b2vb3TWYMn0=L_RG37OHDv1fWuXetBPnUG0k+A@mail.gmail.com>
 <9E4DAA5C-73A9-4C8C-9360-41475F0A2976@stufft.io>
 <20160624104157.4f7342a1.barry@wooz.org>
 <CAP7+vJKcknwgsJiLH-8Buz3YBpxyNmBoSv=rdSzYkdRBU-=PVQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160624111331.515b7263@subdivisions.wooz.org>
 <8e59e9ec-a4c7-a18a-df43-383967a303bf@msapiro.net>
Message-ID: <CAP7+vJKWWN5EyHk+8+e=+6x6H8JSdwztSqfmBoemHyRe3VPN+A@mail.gmail.com>

This distributed decision making drives me nuts. Just do it please!

On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 8:25 AM, Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net> wrote:

> On 6/24/16 8:13 AM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
> > On Jun 24, 2016, at 07:56 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> >
> >> OK, maybe we can start moving *this* list to MM3 and also do the
> pipermail
> >> -> HyperKitty import.
> >
> > I would like to see that, yes.  If we're going to be guinea pigs, less go
> > whole hog :).
> >
> > I'm CC'ing Mark Sapiro to see if he has bandwidth to do that.  I think
> there
> > are still some Postfix issues to iron out, but I'm way behind on my
> email due
> > to recent travels.
>
>
> I suggested this to Steve and he didn't want to, but there is a MM3
> overload-sig at python.org all ready to go, but the mail goes to the MM2
> list as long as there is one, and the MM3 list isn't 'configured' yet.
>
> --
> Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
> San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan
>
>


-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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From barry at python.org  Fri Jun 24 13:28:37 2016
From: barry at python.org (Barry Warsaw)
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 13:28:37 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <20160624132837.7d494481@subdivisions.wooz.org>

On Jun 23, 2016, at 09:31 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

>My own workflow is super browser based.

I think that's a very important observation, and it may expose the fracture
lines in any tool adoption.  My own workflow is heavily email based because I
don't use gmail and literally everything that I have to care about on a daily
basis for work comes to me through email.  As an extension of that, I can
respond to email with my regular editor, which is also my interface to IRC.
So my environment is integrated and efficient, but not browser based.

That's why I find Launchpad code reviews so much more pleasant than GH/GL.
The former can be done via email (or the web of course) but the latter is only
web based.

I can see why if your workflow was browser based, more browser tabs/windows
wouldn't be a big deal.  For me, it would very much be a pain if I had to
bring my browser to the forefront of my attention.  I do use a browser of
course (in fact, two different ones, with 4 total windows and countless plus
changing number of tabs), but it's always a break in my workflow to go deal
with them.

Cheers,
-Barry
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From donald at stufft.io  Fri Jun 24 13:31:00 2016
From: donald at stufft.io (Donald Stufft)
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 13:31:00 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <20160624132837.7d494481@subdivisions.wooz.org>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
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 <20160624132837.7d494481@subdivisions.wooz.org>
Message-ID: <9A49B47B-86A3-4FAB-BB37-7CA6CE3AE989@stufft.io>


> On Jun 24, 2016, at 1:28 PM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> 
> On Jun 23, 2016, at 09:31 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
>> My own workflow is super browser based.
> 
> I think that's a very important observation, and it may expose the fracture
> lines in any tool adoption.  My own workflow is heavily email based because I
> don't use gmail and literally everything that I have to care about on a daily
> basis for work comes to me through email.  As an extension of that, I can
> respond to email with my regular editor, which is also my interface to IRC.
> So my environment is integrated and efficient, but not browser based.
> 
> That's why I find Launchpad code reviews so much more pleasant than GH/GL.
> The former can be done via email (or the web of course) but the latter is only
> web based.
> 
> I can see why if your workflow was browser based, more browser tabs/windows
> wouldn't be a big deal.  For me, it would very much be a pain if I had to
> bring my browser to the forefront of my attention.  I do use a browser of
> course (in fact, two different ones, with 4 total windows and countless plus
> changing number of tabs), but it's always a break in my workflow to go deal
> with them.
> 


My own workflow is similar to Guido?s, except I don?t use Gmail I use Mail.app,
but those emails I get are largely notifications that I click to go and do
something in my browser (Typically GitHub now days).


?
Donald Stufft




From barry at python.org  Fri Jun 24 13:39:35 2016
From: barry at python.org (Barry Warsaw)
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 13:39:35 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJKLzV6tYPw1Zz5ehf9bUroby6wbjdjtG9tDWfEa4r7=gA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
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 <CAP7+vJKLzV6tYPw1Zz5ehf9bUroby6wbjdjtG9tDWfEa4r7=gA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20160624133935.04b0b1ee@subdivisions.wooz.org>

On Jun 24, 2016, at 10:31 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

>One of the reasons I do it this way is that I see most people around me do
>it. I imagine I want to experience how most people's setup works, not some
>super awesome wizard way that most people would have a hard time emulating.

Another interesting difference.  My work is entirely virtual (except for the
occasional sprint) so there's less opportunity to shoulder surf.  It makes you
very efficient in your own use of tools but more idiosyncratic.

I'm eager for experimentation, but let's do keep in mind that different
workflows exist for a reason.  Let's strive not to disenfranchises a
significant portion our community due to tool choice.

Cheers,
-Barry
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From skip.montanaro at gmail.com  Fri Jun 24 14:04:43 2016
From: skip.montanaro at gmail.com (Skip Montanaro)
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 13:04:43 -0500
Subject: [Overload-sig] Should we import old MM discussions into e.g.
 Discourse?
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJKWWN5EyHk+8+e=+6x6H8JSdwztSqfmBoemHyRe3VPN+A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP7+vJJKCcc4b2vb3TWYMn0=L_RG37OHDv1fWuXetBPnUG0k+A@mail.gmail.com>
 <9E4DAA5C-73A9-4C8C-9360-41475F0A2976@stufft.io>
 <20160624104157.4f7342a1.barry@wooz.org>
 <CAP7+vJKcknwgsJiLH-8Buz3YBpxyNmBoSv=rdSzYkdRBU-=PVQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160624111331.515b7263@subdivisions.wooz.org>
 <8e59e9ec-a4c7-a18a-df43-383967a303bf@msapiro.net>
 <CAP7+vJKWWN5EyHk+8+e=+6x6H8JSdwztSqfmBoemHyRe3VPN+A@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CANc-5UxOnt-X0Op7gecGHTqXOYZRxcw+FsV=QZHgw67aD-Tv_A@mail.gmail.com>

Guido> This distributed decision making drives me nuts.

Makes you think we need a BDFL or something. :-)

S

From stephen at xemacs.org  Fri Jun 24 14:05:35 2016
From: stephen at xemacs.org (Stephen J. Turnbull)
Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2016 03:05:35 +0900
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <22381.30319.310589.179410@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>

Guido van Rossum writes:

 > I know that Stephen believes that we have a social problem and hence
 > shouldn't try to solve it by technical means.

That's not exactly my position.  I don't deprecate technical
improvements -- simply allowing people to dispose of conversations
more quickly will reduce the burden, for example.  But we should be
entirely unsurprised if the social problems aren't resolved.

 > That's a common meme, but I'm not sure it is necessarily
 > correct. Technical solutions can very seriously alter social
 > behavior (e.g. chat apps on smartphones).

Alter, yes, but rarely is that alteration something we can tune to our
needs.  It may be a close match if we're lucky.

The main thing I see in web fora that would help is "collision
avoidance" by using a synchronous system.  Email is asynchronous, so
it's very frequent that you see multiple posts saying nearly identical
things (that's especially annoying when it's a chorus of "off-topic,
try c.l.p"), or beating a deceased parrot because they missed the
vet's declaration of death, etc.

 > And my sense is that the social problem we have *can* be addressed
 > by a change in technology, if we are willing to invest in the
 > change (like we are for e.g. the hg->git transition).

Not a good analogy to support the "solution to social problems" claim,
though.

 > All in all I can handle a very large amount of email efficiently. But
 > what's hard is discussions on python-dev and python-ideas, and I believe
 > part of the problem is due to the variety in email tools that people use
 > (and in workflows, and in experience and maturity).

Er, are you sure you want to mention social problems? ;-)

 > Note the focus on topics here. I am wishing for a UI that keeps the
 > discussions more organized.

That's dlists, coming more-or-less-soon to a Mailman 3 near you.  (OK,
it's not the only one, and definitely trackers and maybe Discourse
already satisfy that requirement.)

 > I think that as long as people's model is a mailing list with a
 > smart UI, it's not going to satisfy me.

That's not dlists.  Dlists really do create issue-like threads,
essentially multiple lists based on participation.

But it's still email; dlists do not help synchronize a thread where
posts arrive at 5-minute intervals.

 > You can configure it so that every email has a permalink to the
 > same message in the web UI.

Mailman 3 has that.

You should take the Mailman 3 advocacy with a grain of salt,
especially since dlists aren't available yet (not even as a patch).
However, I think the direction Mailman 3 is going certainly validates
your analysis (and vice-versa).


From stephen at xemacs.org  Fri Jun 24 14:05:45 2016
From: stephen at xemacs.org (Stephen J. Turnbull)
Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2016 03:05:45 +0900
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
Message-ID: <22381.30329.87081.984855@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>

Donald Stufft writes:

 > * Topic based workflow that includes built in support for moderation.
 >     * Close a topic to new replies when it?s obvious that
 >       discussion is not productive.

That would not have worked in the security discussion.  There was
still work for Guido and mostly Larry to do even after pronouncement,
and there were useful comments from third parties.  Yes, they could
have moved to private email, but doing that would have made the
security advocates even less happy.

In general I don't think python-{dev,ideas} has a problem with
unproductive threads.  It has a problem with unproductive posts, and
(rarely) unproductive posters.

Anyway, in development channels, you often do want to be able to
reopen old topics (when they regress or when new technology becomes
available that obsoletes the old solution).  This operation shouldn't
be limited to a 100-hit-point BDFL with a +32 magic sword, any J.
Random User should be able to do so.

 >     * Move topics to the correct category (e.g. move from
 >       python-dev to python-list) instead of having 12 people reply
 >       ?wrong list!?.

True, but a fairly minor example.  I think the thread-splitting case
is where this is a killer feature.  Assuming people will actually
split threads more effectively than they do in email.  I think that's
quite possible (likely, if you like), because of the synchronous
nature of posting, and because it will be cheap for people who accept
the responsibility to curate the threads.

 >     * The ability to automatically allow long term, good users to
 >       move up in ?level? to gain additional privileges to help
 >       moderate the community (similar to StackOverflow).

This doesn't actually work very well in some contexts (eg,
Wikipedia).  On SO, I've noticed that I frequently disagree pretty
strongly with the relative ratings of posts.

 > * Features to reduce the need for new messages and reduce repetition .
 >     * Notification *while* you?re writing that new posts have been
 >       added so you can scroll down and read them to see if someone
 >       else already said what you were going to say.

+1

 >     * Ability to multi quote in a single response in a structured
 >       way, and compose those multi quotes as you read

+1  But then I already have that, because I use XEmacs.  There rest of
the world doesn't, because they use GMail.  Granted, that battle is
long since lost.  Mail clients are by and large going to suck for the
rest of eternity, because they're the low-denominated commoners. :-(

 >       (adding a reply is done inline as you read down the thread,
 >       and you can click a button to quote another post as you read
 >       down further).

And this works well on a smartphone in your experience?  Smartphones
are the bane of email IMO.

 >     * ?Likes? on posts to remove mindless +1?s

Excuse me, but they're not mindless.  Most people who +1 do trim,
which is more than most people who write longer replies seem capable
of these days.  Agreed, having the UI track this as a count rather
than as separate messages is a very good thing.

 >     * A suggestion of possible duplicated topics when posting a new
 >       topic to try and guide people towards previous or ongoing
 >       discussions instead of rehashing the same thing over and over
 >       again.

I suspect that the AI isn't good enough for a dev channel.  Fine
distinctions matter more than for blog comments or user support where
90% of the queries refer to FAQs.

 >    * A ?Summarize? topic button that filters the topic down to
 >      the "most interesting posts as determined by the community?
 >      (I don?t know how well this actually works in practice).

This is bad IMHO, whether it works well or not.  Guido is going to get
lots of likes no matter what.  The problem is people who are coming
out of lurking for the first time will get ignored unless the bar is
so low that little gets excluded.  People who write English as a
second language are not going to get as many "likes".  Etc.

 > * Features to make inter-related discussions work better.
 >    * Ability to split a topic into two different topics.

This is easy enough to do in email; people just fail.  Perhaps Guido
is right on this one, the technology may make it easy enough that
people will do it.  Specifically, the ability to move inadvertant
posts to the old topic to the new one as appropriate -- email
threading won't permit that.

 > Now, all of the above is theoretically achievable with a
 > traditional mailing list, but I think that discourse offers a
 > better medium for achieving those things. Largely for one main
 > reason: Mailing lists push the burden of achieving all of that onto
 > each and every individual participating in the discussion whereas
 > discourse (and other ?forum?-esque software) tends to push the
 > burden of that onto the software itself.

Wishful thinking.  What makes discourse civilized in Jeff Atwood's
forums is Jeff Atwood, mostly.  He does not hesitate to come down hard
on barbarians.  The software may facilitate this, but the work has to
be done by people.  We have people who have the social standing and
interpersonal skills to do this well; it remains to be seen if they
also have the time.

Also remember, StackExchange is a discussion/user support forum, not a
development channel (at least as far as I've seen).  Coding Horror is
a blog.  The stakes are small and the cost of booting a French soldier
for farting in your general direction is small.  Compare that to
os.urandom() or %-formatting for bytes or even making type annotations
the standard use for function annotations -- where the first is what
inspired this whole channel because people were so wound up in the
discussion that they unsubscribed.

 > For instance, if you want to split a discussion out into a
 > different thread, you have to change the subject of the new thread
 > and make a post, possibly quoting the old post in that. However you?
 > re relying on social convention that people aren?t going to keep
 > responding to that split discussion in the original thread. This
 > sort of works but it also sort of doesn?t, particularly when
 > dealing with mail clients that will render the new thread as part
 > of the sub thread causing people to not realize that it was ever
 > split out to begin with.

This will be just as true in Discourse, I think -- except that (1) you
can provide a link to parallel threads and (2) moderators can move
posts.  (1) is a burden on the software, but if people by and large
can't distinguish HTTP connections from HTTPS connections in their
browser nor phishing from a real Christmas e-card from Grandma, I
wonder if they'll actually notice the split thread.  (2) is work for
people.

Bottom line: I'm not as enthusiastic as Guido about the theory, but I
agree Discourse has a lot of interesting features and is well worth
trying.  Just be careful to configure it so that newbies (who may
actually be long-term lurkers or even Uncle Timmy who hasn't posted in
two years! -- well, it seemed like that long) are visible to the Cabal
(even though there is no Cabal).


From stephen at xemacs.org  Fri Jun 24 14:21:37 2016
From: stephen at xemacs.org (Stephen J. Turnbull)
Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2016 03:21:37 +0900
Subject: [Overload-sig] Should we import old MM discussions into e.g.
 Discourse?
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJJD0-gDMPuFnF8uh4TCQdnw92EvmbjH35ntcptNiPeXdg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP7+vJJKCcc4b2vb3TWYMn0=L_RG37OHDv1fWuXetBPnUG0k+A@mail.gmail.com>
 <9E4DAA5C-73A9-4C8C-9360-41475F0A2976@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJD0-gDMPuFnF8uh4TCQdnw92EvmbjH35ntcptNiPeXdg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <22381.31281.315170.533775@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>

Guido van Rossum writes:

 > I think it would be fine to have the Discourse and MM instance both be
 > active, for slightly different purposes. E.g. python-dev would be more of a
 > news broadcast, with a social convention to discourage responses and have
 > discussions on Discourse instead.

Mailman Reply-To set to the Discourse mail gateway, maybe.  But that
would be a pretty strong signal that the Mailman channel is close to a
pure announce list.

I think it would be cool if the "dlist" feature were used to direct
replies to an appropriate Discourse topic.  Not sure how that would
work technically, though.


From kevin-lists at theolliviers.com  Fri Jun 24 21:13:46 2016
From: kevin-lists at theolliviers.com (Kevin Ollivier)
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 18:13:46 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <22381.30329.87081.984855@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
 <22381.30329.87081.984855@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
Message-ID: <B5EE634E-DFE3-4866-9544-F5D2F3DEF27A@theolliviers.com>

Hi Stephen,



On 6/24/16, 11:05 AM, "Overload-sig on behalf of Stephen J. Turnbull" <overload-sig-bounces+kevin-lists=theolliviers.com at python.org on behalf of stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:

>Donald Stufft writes:
>
> > * Topic based workflow that includes built in support for moderation.
> >     * Close a topic to new replies when it?s obvious that
> >       discussion is not productive.
>
>That would not have worked in the security discussion.  There was
>still work for Guido and mostly Larry to do even after pronouncement,
>and there were useful comments from third parties.  Yes, they could
>have moved to private email, but doing that would have made the
>security advocates even less happy.
>
>In general I don't think python-{dev,ideas} has a problem with
>unproductive threads.  It has a problem with unproductive posts, and
>(rarely) unproductive posters.

Actually, I have yet to be convinced that there was anything regarding os.urandom that needed discussing at all. The whole discussing revolved around a hypothetical use case that, as far as I am aware, is both pretty unlikely to happen and has never actually even been reported.

I think this is actually a good example of how going straight to the issue tracker would have led to a much different outcome. Imagine the ticket created:

Title: Python script calling os.urandom on hardware init may block
Affects: embedded / rPI (Others?)
Priority: Low (if it was marked high I'm pretty certain a review of it would get it marked down)
Attachment: None (no actual use / test case that I saw)
Assigned To: (would someone take ownership?)
Blocks: None
Watching: <probably almost no one>

Already we can see that this would not be put at the top of the ticket list. If it was investigated at all, someone probably would have asked for a test case so we can know the specific nature of the problem we're trying to fix. Probably would have been pretty quiet after that. It may eventually have gotten marked Won't Fix.

A lot of people talk about filtering in mailing lists, but the only piece of information you have when skimming mailing list discussions is the title. How serious the issue is, how many people it affects, what the impact of doing something vs not doing something would be, those are all only discernible by reading the thread. Once a few people have jumped in, many if not all those factors may even be in dispute. Issue trackers let you easily see context and priority at a glance, this is all missing from mailing lists and there's no easy way to add it. 

I think Guido is exactly right that switching to better tools would have a significant impact on the project. Of course, the only way to find out is by trying. Doing > discussing, the brain is actually hard wired to learn from doing, so that gives you the best bang for the buck. So I personally am eager to just try some things. :)

Thanks,

Kevin





From donald at stufft.io  Fri Jun 24 22:18:30 2016
From: donald at stufft.io (Donald Stufft)
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 22:18:30 -0400
Subject: [Overload-sig] Discourse is Deployed
Message-ID: <25EA54A9-87C1-46F1-9B6E-E42F6FBB1B4F@stufft.io>

I?ve deployed discourse at https://discuss.python.org/ so you can go over there and create a new account.

I suggest reading https://discuss.python.org/t/trying-out-discourse/13 first as I wrote down any notes that I thought were important about how I have it currently configured.

?
Donald Stufft




From mark at msapiro.net  Fri Jun 24 11:25:16 2016
From: mark at msapiro.net (Mark Sapiro)
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 08:25:16 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Should we import old MM discussions into e.g.
 Discourse?
In-Reply-To: <20160624111331.515b7263@subdivisions.wooz.org>
References: <CAP7+vJJKCcc4b2vb3TWYMn0=L_RG37OHDv1fWuXetBPnUG0k+A@mail.gmail.com>
 <9E4DAA5C-73A9-4C8C-9360-41475F0A2976@stufft.io>
 <20160624104157.4f7342a1.barry@wooz.org>
 <CAP7+vJKcknwgsJiLH-8Buz3YBpxyNmBoSv=rdSzYkdRBU-=PVQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160624111331.515b7263@subdivisions.wooz.org>
Message-ID: <8e59e9ec-a4c7-a18a-df43-383967a303bf@msapiro.net>

On 6/24/16 8:13 AM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
> On Jun 24, 2016, at 07:56 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
>> OK, maybe we can start moving *this* list to MM3 and also do the pipermail
>> -> HyperKitty import.  
> 
> I would like to see that, yes.  If we're going to be guinea pigs, less go
> whole hog :).
> 
> I'm CC'ing Mark Sapiro to see if he has bandwidth to do that.  I think there
> are still some Postfix issues to iron out, but I'm way behind on my email due
> to recent travels.


I suggested this to Steve and he didn't want to, but there is a MM3
overload-sig at python.org all ready to go, but the mail goes to the MM2
list as long as there is one, and the MM3 list isn't 'configured' yet.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan

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From gvanrossum at gmail.com  Fri Jun 24 13:31:38 2016
From: gvanrossum at gmail.com (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 10:31:38 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <20160624132837.7d494481@subdivisions.wooz.org>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <20160624132837.7d494481@subdivisions.wooz.org>
Message-ID: <CAP7+vJKLzV6tYPw1Zz5ehf9bUroby6wbjdjtG9tDWfEa4r7=gA@mail.gmail.com>

One of the reasons I do it this way is that I see most people around me do
it. I imagine I want to experience how most people's setup works, not some
super awesome wizard way that most people would have a hard time emulating.

--Guido (mobile)
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From stephen at xemacs.org  Sat Jun 25 13:13:51 2016
From: stephen at xemacs.org (Stephen J. Turnbull)
Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2016 02:13:51 +0900
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <B5EE634E-DFE3-4866-9544-F5D2F3DEF27A@theolliviers.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
 <22381.30329.87081.984855@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <B5EE634E-DFE3-4866-9544-F5D2F3DEF27A@theolliviers.com>
Message-ID: <22382.48079.782619.553884@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>

Kevin Ollivier writes:

 > Actually, I have yet to be convinced that there was anything
 > regarding os.urandom that needed discussing at all. The whole
 > discussing revolved around a hypothetical use case that, as far as
 > I am aware, is both pretty unlikely to happen and has never
 > actually even been reported.

You have plenty of company, but the people who disgree with you are
precisely those who have devoted many hours to getting up to speed on
security issues, and to responding to them when they are reported in
Python.  Guido was unwilling to make the call without advice from
prominent OS-level security experts including the maintainer of the
Linux CSPRNG functionality, which I think is indicative that there
really was something to discuss.

 > I think this is actually a good example of how going straight to
 > the issue tracker would have led to a much different
 > outcome.

Ah, but it *did* start on the tracker!  But the actual history was
rather different from your thought experiment.  There was heated
discussion of the issue over a 48- or 72-hour period, there was an
impasse in the discussion, the Release Manager who technically has the
authority to make the call decided it was above his pay grade, and
brought in the BDFL -- and it was that decision that *started* the
thread on python-dev.

I hope that our discussion in this SIG can contribute to more orderly
discussion of security issues, too.  But they bring special problems
(the passion that people feel about both security and backward
compatibility), and they are outliers in terms of the intensity of the
thread and their relative infrequency.  Sometimes it's useful to use
them as examples, but I do not think they should be considered
typical.

Steve

From stephen at xemacs.org  Sun Jun 26 13:55:15 2016
From: stephen at xemacs.org (Stephen J. Turnbull)
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 02:55:15 +0900
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <EAA956A9-14C0-4C65-8EE9-B49EE93E0255@theolliviers.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
 <22381.30329.87081.984855@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <B5EE634E-DFE3-4866-9544-F5D2F3DEF27A@theolliviers.com>
 <22382.48079.782619.553884@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <EAA956A9-14C0-4C65-8EE9-B49EE93E0255@theolliviers.com>
Message-ID: <22384.5891.242850.378556@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>

Kevin Ollivier writes:

 > Yes, but all of that served no purpose if they were debating a fix
 > to a problem that we haven't even proved exists, much less is being
 > experienced in the wild.

None of the protagonists questioned that both problems (a security
problem and a performance problem, depending on whether the 3.4
behavior or the 3.5.1 behavior is adopted) exist.  The entire
discussion revolved around which problem should be fixed in 3.5.2.  So
as far as I can see, your analysis that there was no problem has no
bearing on the social dynamics, even if you are correct -- everybody
else believed otherwise throughout the thread.

Steve


From kevin-lists at theolliviers.com  Sun Jun 26 12:17:08 2016
From: kevin-lists at theolliviers.com (Kevin Ollivier)
Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2016 09:17:08 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <22382.48079.782619.553884@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
 <22381.30329.87081.984855@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <B5EE634E-DFE3-4866-9544-F5D2F3DEF27A@theolliviers.com>
 <22382.48079.782619.553884@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
Message-ID: <EAA956A9-14C0-4C65-8EE9-B49EE93E0255@theolliviers.com>

HI Stephen,



On 6/25/16, 10:13 AM, "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:

>Kevin Ollivier writes:
>
> > Actually, I have yet to be convinced that there was anything
> > regarding os.urandom that needed discussing at all. The whole
> > discussing revolved around a hypothetical use case that, as far as
> > I am aware, is both pretty unlikely to happen and has never
> > actually even been reported.
>
>You have plenty of company, but the people who disgree with you are
>precisely those who have devoted many hours to getting up to speed on
>security issues, and to responding to them when they are reported in
>Python.  Guido was unwilling to make the call without advice from
>prominent OS-level security experts including the maintainer of the
>Linux CSPRNG functionality, which I think is indicative that there
>really was something to discuss.

Yes, but all of that served no purpose if they were debating a fix to a problem that we haven't even proved exists, much less is being experienced in the wild. 

> > I think this is actually a good example of how going straight to
> > the issue tracker would have led to a much different
> > outcome.
>
>Ah, but it *did* start on the tracker!  But the actual history was
>rather different from your thought experiment.  There was heated
>discussion of the issue over a 48- or 72-hour period, there was an
>impasse in the discussion, the Release Manager who technically has the
>authority to make the call decided it was above his pay grade, and
>brought in the BDFL -- and it was that decision that *started* the
>thread on python-dev.

Thanks, I went to the tracker and was able to find the tickets #27250 and #27266. 

Looking at them, though, I still don't see anything that refutes my point above. I see nothing in the os.urandom blocking tickets referencing a real world problem report. They just reference the CPython problem, which was fixed without needing to touch os.urandom.

Here's my point. If, when those tickets were created, someone asked for an actual, valid use case of the problem before proceeding, then as far as I can tell this whole discussion would never have happened. It would have stopped with the CPython fix, and we would not have lost contributors over it.

I'm pressing this because this problem is a very big deal. The democratic and distributed nature of open source often creates a tendency to focus on details rather than big picture. This leads to very real problems where devs are spending considerable time fighting over fixes to minor issues while being oblivious to much bigger problems, like, say, that due to changes in the market, the software they're building now only runs on a minority of the computers out there. [1] It can become a boiling frog situation.

Any large-scale open source project like this one needs tools and strategies that help keep things on track, and focused on the major issues. A better issue tracker can really help with this - I noticed that bugs.python.org pops uses the 'last activity' to sort by default. It should default to ticket priority and target release instead. There may also need to be some discussion with people who regularly work in the issue tracker about better prioritization and filtering of issues. 

And frankly, asking for a valid use case (or ideally a committable unit test) seems a no-brainer - without one you really can't test whether or not the fix works in the real world as designed. That's kind of important for creating robust software... ;-) On occasion, this requirement may prove overly burdensome, but this happens rarely enough that waving this requirement should be done only after careful consideration.

Thanks,

Kevin

[1] http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/

[2] 

>Steve


From kevin-lists at theolliviers.com  Sun Jun 26 20:58:26 2016
From: kevin-lists at theolliviers.com (Kevin Ollivier)
Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2016 17:58:26 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <22384.5891.242850.378556@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
 <22381.30329.87081.984855@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <B5EE634E-DFE3-4866-9544-F5D2F3DEF27A@theolliviers.com>
 <22382.48079.782619.553884@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <EAA956A9-14C0-4C65-8EE9-B49EE93E0255@theolliviers.com>
 <22384.5891.242850.378556@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
Message-ID: <2D50843D-FE63-4030-8753-77C60974263B@theolliviers.com>


On 6/26/16, 10:55 AM, "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:





>Kevin Ollivier writes:
>
> > Yes, but all of that served no purpose if they were debating a fix
> > to a problem that we haven't even proved exists, much less is being
> > experienced in the wild.
>
>None of the protagonists questioned that both problems (a security
>problem and a performance problem, depending on whether the 3.4
>behavior or the 3.5.1 behavior is adopted) exist.  The entire
>discussion revolved around which problem should be fixed in 3.5.2.  So
>as far as I can see, your analysis that there was no problem has no
>bearing on the social dynamics, even if you are correct -- everybody
>else believed otherwise throughout the thread.

Yes, but we all believe incorrect things all the time, a fair amount of it intuitively and unconsciously. The fact that a whole group of people might do it is not evidence of its correctness. 

Facts and data help us sanity check ourselves and keep us from letting unchecked assumptions take us down rabbit holes. I don't see the problem with asking a project to rely more on hard data.

Thanks,

Kevin 

>Steve
>


From guido at python.org  Sun Jun 26 21:10:07 2016
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2016 18:10:07 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <2D50843D-FE63-4030-8753-77C60974263B@theolliviers.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
 <22381.30329.87081.984855@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <B5EE634E-DFE3-4866-9544-F5D2F3DEF27A@theolliviers.com>
 <22382.48079.782619.553884@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <EAA956A9-14C0-4C65-8EE9-B49EE93E0255@theolliviers.com>
 <22384.5891.242850.378556@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <2D50843D-FE63-4030-8753-77C60974263B@theolliviers.com>
Message-ID: <CAP7+vJJyujmHiFzJyMxasbq5ZG5azibtHY2WoDBzyF62j0dMzw@mail.gmail.com>

Are you guys intentionally repeating this pointless debate?

Proving that the discussion was misguided doesn't change the problem,
which is that it nevertheless happened. I don't think Stephen is
claiming that the debate *should* have happened. He is just pointing
out *that* it happened. This merely illustrates that people don't
always behave rationally.

From kevin-lists at theolliviers.com  Sun Jun 26 21:35:50 2016
From: kevin-lists at theolliviers.com (Kevin Ollivier)
Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2016 18:35:50 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJJyujmHiFzJyMxasbq5ZG5azibtHY2WoDBzyF62j0dMzw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
 <22381.30329.87081.984855@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <B5EE634E-DFE3-4866-9544-F5D2F3DEF27A@theolliviers.com>
 <22382.48079.782619.553884@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <EAA956A9-14C0-4C65-8EE9-B49EE93E0255@theolliviers.com>
 <22384.5891.242850.378556@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <2D50843D-FE63-4030-8753-77C60974263B@theolliviers.com>
 <CAP7+vJJyujmHiFzJyMxasbq5ZG5azibtHY2WoDBzyF62j0dMzw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <61370C79-4CCD-4EB1-9AFF-70419CE62F70@theolliviers.com>

On 6/26/16, 6:10 PM, "Guido van Rossum" <gvanrossum at gmail.com on behalf of guido at python.org> wrote:

>Are you guys intentionally repeating this pointless debate?
>
>Proving that the discussion was misguided doesn't change the problem,
>which is that it nevertheless happened. I don't think Stephen is
>claiming that the debate *should* have happened. He is just pointing
>out *that* it happened. This merely illustrates that people don't
>always behave rationally.

I don't think he was arguing it should have happened, but I did feel our thoughts on the underlying causes, and thus the fixes, for this sort of problem were different. 

In either case, I agree the discussion has become unproductive. When the issue tracker stuff comes into focus, I would suggest we consider adding a requirement to produce a valid use case or test case before proposing a bug or API fix. That's the point I was pushing for, and I was just using the previous case as an example of how it could have changed the trajectory of how that all happened.

Thanks,

Kevin





From guido at python.org  Sun Jun 26 22:11:41 2016
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2016 19:11:41 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <61370C79-4CCD-4EB1-9AFF-70419CE62F70@theolliviers.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
 <22381.30329.87081.984855@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <B5EE634E-DFE3-4866-9544-F5D2F3DEF27A@theolliviers.com>
 <22382.48079.782619.553884@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <EAA956A9-14C0-4C65-8EE9-B49EE93E0255@theolliviers.com>
 <22384.5891.242850.378556@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <2D50843D-FE63-4030-8753-77C60974263B@theolliviers.com>
 <CAP7+vJJyujmHiFzJyMxasbq5ZG5azibtHY2WoDBzyF62j0dMzw@mail.gmail.com>
 <61370C79-4CCD-4EB1-9AFF-70419CE62F70@theolliviers.com>
Message-ID: <CAP7+vJJTeevpsirbp5KTqFausdMVNBuxhRnSvY3QBRACREgHHg@mail.gmail.com>

You couldn't have changed the trajectory that way, because the
discussion was about people's feelings. It only *appeared* to be about
a code change.

Anyway, indeed let's stop.

From kevin-lists at theolliviers.com  Mon Jun 27 03:56:25 2016
From: kevin-lists at theolliviers.com (Kevin Ollivier)
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 00:56:25 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <CAP7+vJJTeevpsirbp5KTqFausdMVNBuxhRnSvY3QBRACREgHHg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
 <22381.30329.87081.984855@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <B5EE634E-DFE3-4866-9544-F5D2F3DEF27A@theolliviers.com>
 <22382.48079.782619.553884@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <EAA956A9-14C0-4C65-8EE9-B49EE93E0255@theolliviers.com>
 <22384.5891.242850.378556@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <2D50843D-FE63-4030-8753-77C60974263B@theolliviers.com>
 <CAP7+vJJyujmHiFzJyMxasbq5ZG5azibtHY2WoDBzyF62j0dMzw@mail.gmail.com>
 <61370C79-4CCD-4EB1-9AFF-70419CE62F70@theolliviers.com>
 <CAP7+vJJTeevpsirbp5KTqFausdMVNBuxhRnSvY3QBRACREgHHg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <90B8C388-F105-4279-B564-1EB96D949C14@theolliviers.com>



On 6/26/16, 7:11 PM, "Guido van Rossum" <gvanrossum at gmail.com on behalf of guido at python.org> wrote:

>You couldn't have changed the trajectory that way, because the
>discussion was about people's feelings. It only *appeared* to be about
>a code change.

Yes, I was *very* well aware that it was about emotions when making my suggestion. It's the very reason I made the suggestion. I wish people would at least consider that possibility before jumping to conclusions.

Anyway, just felt compelled to make that clear. I hope you'll reconsider your assumption that the idea has no merit, but I won't say any more on the matter unless asked.

>Anyway, indeed let's stop.


From guido at python.org  Mon Jun 27 11:37:26 2016
From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum)
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 08:37:26 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
In-Reply-To: <90B8C388-F105-4279-B564-1EB96D949C14@theolliviers.com>
References: <CAP1=2W5AFLFo7QmTj-wwN8derLdbpL=hzs7gEd7L064ThRn-Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP7+vJJnGEDFZD1tTmsQPRbRpQMi5z4K+PoLGL9Hp5QG=a6wRQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAP1=2W5gtD_VpAWJ9JqJ9TtPdBgHobRAubwna5WLDE-QR7avgw@mail.gmail.com>
 <620C00B1-E9F2-40F3-A11E-A03BB7C34469@stufft.io>
 <20160623095907.2241494f.barry@wooz.org>
 <A9117EDF-26B5-4289-B02B-D070137FD5E7@stufft.io>
 <CAP7+vJJYJaspeUPAKJ=U2es6Ve_43y8Qk=uk2QofaWH-nGaGAQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <8DAB3FA6-E31A-4C6C-B988-AD96DE093126@stufft.io>
 <22381.30329.87081.984855@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <B5EE634E-DFE3-4866-9544-F5D2F3DEF27A@theolliviers.com>
 <22382.48079.782619.553884@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <EAA956A9-14C0-4C65-8EE9-B49EE93E0255@theolliviers.com>
 <22384.5891.242850.378556@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
 <2D50843D-FE63-4030-8753-77C60974263B@theolliviers.com>
 <CAP7+vJJyujmHiFzJyMxasbq5ZG5azibtHY2WoDBzyF62j0dMzw@mail.gmail.com>
 <61370C79-4CCD-4EB1-9AFF-70419CE62F70@theolliviers.com>
 <CAP7+vJJTeevpsirbp5KTqFausdMVNBuxhRnSvY3QBRACREgHHg@mail.gmail.com>
 <90B8C388-F105-4279-B564-1EB96D949C14@theolliviers.com>
Message-ID: <CAP7+vJLAAJkZ3kOVL4dV6SQhVy0qBSNDqMMajTfF+A3yRkoLQw@mail.gmail.com>

Let me summarize what I think you're saying: "instead of having
emotions flare we should have redirected the discussion to the issue
tracker requesting a reproducible bug, use case and fix".

If that's not what you're saying then (in this very long and emotional
thread) please summarize what you *are* proposing.

My response to what I think you said is: whatever, it happened that
time (despite having started in the tracker), and it will happen
again, no matter what policies we institute; we need a way to guide
future discussions once they have derailed, not a set of rules to
prevent it from happening (because if everyone behaved rationally we
would never have such derailments).

From kevin-lists at theolliviers.com  Mon Jun 27 17:42:30 2016
From: kevin-lists at theolliviers.com (Kevin Ollivier)
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 14:42:30 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
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On 6/27/16, 8:37 AM, "Guido van Rossum" <gvanrossum at gmail.com on behalf of guido at python.org> wrote:

>Let me summarize what I think you're saying: "instead of having
>emotions flare we should have redirected the discussion to the issue
>tracker requesting a reproducible bug, use case and fix".

Yes, that's correct.

>If that's not what you're saying then (in this very long and emotional
>thread) please summarize what you *are* proposing.
>
>My response to what I think you said is: whatever, it happened that
>time (despite having started in the tracker), and it will happen
>again, no matter what policies we institute; we need a way to guide
>future discussions once they have derailed, not a set of rules to
>prevent it from happening (because if everyone behaved rationally we
>would never have such derailments).

Well, we disagree here, I think most of it in fact can be prevented. The behavior may not be rational, but it is predictable, and you can predict what types of situations will trigger the problem. 

Guiding them back on track is certainly better than nothing, but I'm not sure how you would propose to do that in a way that undoes the damage caused. If you don't undo the damage, the bad feelings will remain, and it would seem likely that the cycle of good contributors leaving would continue.



From stephen at xemacs.org  Tue Jun 28 02:33:06 2016
From: stephen at xemacs.org (Stephen J. Turnbull)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2016 15:33:06 +0900
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
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Kevin Ollivier writes:

 > Well, we disagree here, I think most of it in fact can be
 > prevented.

But how?  You have made no argument except that "people don't 'need'
to do it, and so they shouldn't do it."  If you don't have a concrete
proposal that doesn't amount to "we should require people to have
better self-control", we're done here.  People are what they are;
requiring them to change is a recipe for failure and intense
frustration -- because they won't unless encouraged to by procedural
changes.

The only procedural suggestion so far ("provide a concrete case") is
already in place, and worked effectively, in the case of os.urandom.
As far as Python-Dev is concerned, there is no question of the
validity of the bug.  I can say that because it is being addressed in
3.6.  It's just that the RM and the PSRT had very different opinions
about the importance of the case presented, and the consequences of
different policies for dealing with it in 3.5.2.

I also see a big practical problem with what I understand you to be
suggesting in the case of the security brouhaha.  That is, it's the
PSRT members who are frustrated to the point of disengaging from the
community.  According to your analysis, we should impose an even
greater burden on exactly the folks who were most stressed by the
outcome.  Developer retention is an important goal of our work here,
so I think that's counterproductive.

Note that the opposite allocation of burden applies to the case of
inexperienced developers, who did not help develop the patch being
discussed, pontificating aggressively on issues they have (as yet)
only shallow understanding.  The core developers get frustrated, the
new folks find it addicting -- cooling the latter down is a good idea
all around.

Regards,
Steve


From kevin-lists at theolliviers.com  Tue Jun 28 17:48:25 2016
From: kevin-lists at theolliviers.com (Kevin Ollivier)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2016 14:48:25 -0700
Subject: [Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with
 potential solutions
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We really do need to stop debating the os.urandom issue. Stephen, there is definitely some misunderstanding. Some of your assessments of my arguments are very different from what I was trying to say. (I think the PSRT should not have even had to argue their position because the evidence was clearly in their favor, for example.) Still, trying to clear things up has failed so far, and I think it's likely that another series of emails will only serve to further deepen the misunderstandings. If you really want to discuss this further, we should at least take it off-list. 



Showing > talking, so if I can find a good way to show an example of my proposal with, say, the GitHub issue tracker, I will try to do so. Until then, let's just move on. It's better to focus on moving forward with the other ideas and showing some progress.