[Python-ideas] A bit meta

[Brett Cannon]

On Mon, 1 Feb 2016 at 11:23 M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:

> On 01.02.2016 19:02, Brett Cannon wrote:
> > On Mon, 1 Feb 2016 at 00:12 M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> >> Jeff's reply doesn't sound overly optimistic.
> >>
> >> If the only way to get Discourse working for python-ideas
> >> (or any other PSF mailing list) is to *switch* to it, I'm
> >> firmly -1 on that approach.
> >>
> >> Forums are nice for things like Stack Overflow which are focusing
> >> more on questions and answer, with just a single linear
> >> thread being active going from the question to the answer.
> >>
> >> For discussions, which often branch in multiple sub-threads and
> >> don't necessarily start with a clear questions and final answers,
> >> I find mailing lists much more practical and closer to real life
> >> discussions in groups. Mailing list discussion "features" like
> >> being able to overhear something in another thread and the jumping in
> >> to participate should not be underestimated either.
> >>
> >
> > I don't quite understand how any of that is exclusive to a mailing list?
> If
> > a forum has thread topics which are clearly marked with new content since
> > the last time you visited then how is that any different then a threaded
> > email client that tells you have new mail on that thread?
>
> I was referring to the standard feature of email clients to
> display the threads in a tree which shows the subthreads.
> I haven't seen such a feature in Discourse. Some forums and gmane
> use indentation to a similar effect.
>

I don't think that is as standard as you think. I know for a fact that
Gmail and Inbox don't have a tree view, and based on searches I don't think
Yahoo or Hotmail/Outlook support it either. I also know for a fact that
Outlook (web or desktop) don't support a tree view. All of them only
support a conversation view where emails that part of the same conversation
end up in a serialized thread of email (so you can think of it as a tree
view of depth 2: folder and then conversation).

The only place I have come across a tree view for email is in some desktop
email clients and terminal-based ones which I'm willing to bet are not the
way the majority of people read their email these days.


>
> The way Discourse handles replies to in-thread postings is
> also a bit strange, since the replies to messages are shown
> both under the parent message and in the chronological
> order (i.e. twice):
>
>
> https://community.lsst.org/t/understanding-and-using-discourses-flat-threading/150
>
> See e.g.
>
> https://community.lsst.org/t/preparing-the-dm-update-for-scientists-session/72/14
> for an example.
>
> Forking off new topics inside a thread breaks the threading
> as well. In email you simply change the subject line.
>
> >> I know that other tools have grown bridges between the UI client
> >> world and serial line communication protocols, e.g. Slack and IRC,
> >> which works reasonably well. If we could make that happen,
> >> I'd be +1 on giving Discourse a try in order to invite new
> >> input from people who prefer the forum style UI approach.
> >>
> >
> > I guess what we need is someone who is going to want to stay on the
> > email-based side of things to look at the feature set of Discourse and
> let
> > us know whether its feature set is adequate, or if not what is falls
> short
> > of.
>
> I had already posted a few links to people summarizing their
> experience.
>

Yes, but what I'm talking about is someone who knows how the Python
community has historically worked to write their own summary instead of
asking all of us to read a bunch of separate summaries. Consider it a
literature review or a summary of summaries. :)


>
> > And I have not heard what HyperKitty offers either.
> >
> >> PS: I've added some extra quoting chars to your reply. HTML
> >> emails don't work well for mailing lists - better use plain
> >> text to start with, so that the context is not lost when
> >> an email client or archiver converts messages to plain text :-)
> >>
> >
> > That assumes you can even do that, e.g., I use Google Inbox and there is
> no
> > plain text option. I'm afraid this is an example of the OSS community
> > trying to swim against the stream where the rest of the world has moved
> on
> > and it is slowly making it harder to get new people to participate in
> OSS.
>
> Gmail sends both plain text and HTML, so this is not much of
> an issue. Mailman will pick the plain text for archiving.
> The formatting problems only occur when a mail client only sends
> HTML which then has to be converted to plain text by Mailman
> or other mail clients. Features such as indentation or highlighting
> in different colors are often lost in this conversion.
>
> Anyway, this whole discussion is way off-topic for the mailing
> list


I disagree with that. As I said in my reply to Nick Chammas, we
occasionally need to re-evaluate our choice in tooling to make sure we are
not ignoring improvements made in the wider world that we are ignoring. And
this becomes especially important if the way we manage our communication
becomes an impediment to people newcomers because the ramp-up costs are too
high for what becomes a "unique" requirement we impose on others.


> and I haven't really seen a compelling argument for
> switching away from mailing lists completely yet, though
> several who would like to see both the mailing list and
> a Discourse like client for people who prefer web UI
> and forum style discussions.
>

This whole discussion kicked off when the point was brought up that having
some way to infer reputation would be useful. If it was obvious who on this
list consistently posts in an off-topic fashion, then new people would know
that they should probably ignore those people's emails until they are more
familiar with the mailing lists. We have persistently had this problem
where long-time subscribers know who to mute and thus spare themselves a
lot of time and anguish with poor actors, while new people have no idea and
then engage people in conversations that go nowhere.


>
> I'd suggest to postpone any decision until better tools are
> available to make this happen. Email is not going to go away,
> but I certainly have seen a lot of other communication tools
> come and go - and I bet there's something to learn in that :-)


As I have said before, this switch won't happen until someone takes up an
evaluation to properly show what we would gain or lose from a switch to
something like Discourse or HyperKitty.
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