[python-committers] python-committers is dead, long live discuss.python.org

[Paul Moore]

On Sat, 29 Sep 2018 at 12:06, Łukasz Langa <lukasz at langa.pl> wrote:
>
> > On Sep 29, 2018, at 12:02, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Isn't that just a restart of the conversation that happened on this
> > list not too long ago (prompted by a question from MAL, IIRC) but
> > missing the context of that previous question, and with less
> > participants (so far)?
>
> Did you read it? I address this in the original post. I even link to the committers discussion.
>
> The context is not missed but different.

I thought I did, but I've reached a point where I'm struggling to
follow the various threads and posts. At the moment, I've burned out
on trying to cope with both email (for all my non python-committers
emails)  and Discourse, so I'm struggling to follow discussions. I'll
probably stop following python-contributors for the rest of the day,
and hope I can catch up on what I missed tomorrow.

I consider that a negative indication of the usability of Discourse
for me, but I'm willing to mark it down as "early days" for now.

Apologies for misreading the mail in that thread.

For the record, and adding it here because I'm done with Discourse for
the day, I consider myself a core Python developer, and I am proud to
do so - I enjoy being able to say that. I'm *not* particularly active
in terms of commits - there are a number of reasons for that (other
commitments, struggling to keep up with the details of the CPython
workflow, ...) but it's a reality. However, I *do* contribute a lot to
discussions, as I always have, and I feel a great responsibility to do
that "as a core developer" and always try to ensure that my posts in
that context are for the benefit of the language. I would fight to
retain my right to call myself a "core Python developer", with the
same implications as anyone else (I do *not* want to call myself
"Emeritus" or "Inactive" or any of the other terms previously
mentioned for "not contributing much these days").

I would feel very disappointed and rejected if it became the case
because I didn't commit actual code, and I don't attend
conferences/sprints, that my views were ignored or under-represented.
I'm concerned already that it's becoming harder and harder to be heard
in the core dev community. I'd really like it if experiments like
Discord made it *easier* for people to be heard and represented - but
I fear that they won't, and the voices of people with real life
commitments that make working with forum software harder will be lost
(and not having a good way for people to communicate "I can't
effectively communicate via this new mechanism" is a particularly
pernicious way of losing people's input).

I'll catch up with discussions again in a day or two. For now, I need
to go and read my emails :-) (Yeah, that's a joke - I really need to
go and hang out with my family).

Paul