[Python-ideas] Personal views/filters (summaries) for discussions

[anatoly techtonik]

I find it really hard to track proposals, ideas and various deviations in
mailing lists, which is especially actual for lists such as python-ideas. I
bet other people experience this problem too. The typical scenario:

1. You make a proposal
2. The discussion continues
3. Part of the discussion is hijacked
4. Another part brings the problem you haven't seen
5. You don't have time to investigate the problem
6. Discussion continues
7. Thread quickly gets out of scope of daily emails
8. Contact lost

Several week later you remember about the proposal:

9. You open the original proposal to notice a small novel
10. You start to reread
11. Got confused
13. Recall the details
14, Find a way out from irrelevant deviation
15. Encounter the problem
16. Spend what is left to investigate the problem
17. Run out of time

The major problem I have is steps 9-15. Sometimes these take the most of
the time. What would help to make all the collaboration here more
productive are colored view/filters (summaries) for discussions. It would
work like so:

00. The discussion is laid out as a single page
01. You define some aspect of discussion (name the filter)
02. You mark text related to the aspect
03. You save the markings.
04. You insert summaries and TODOs

05. Now you select the aspect
06. Irrelevant parts are grayed out
07. Additionally you can collapse grayed sections

An ability to edit and enhance these filters will allow to devote a small
bits of free time to analyze and summarize the discussion state instead of
requiring a single big piece to reread the whole discussion.

This way you can split the task of dealing with complexity over time, which
I think is more than actual nowadays. IMO this process can be very
beneficial for Python development.
-- 
anatoly t.
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