[Python-ideas] A bit meta

[Guido van Rossum]

On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 7:39 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 30 January 2016 at 01:30, Mirmojtaba Gharibi
> <mojtaba.gharibi at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I support a stack exchange website.
>
> There are lots of things we could do to improve the communications
> infrastructure the PSF provides the community, but the current
> limiting factors are management capacity and (infrastructure)
> contributor time, rather than ideas for potential improvement :)
>
> There's also a vicious cycle where the limited management capacity
> makes it difficult to use volunteer time effectively, which is why the
> PSF is currently actively attempting to break that cycle by hiring an
> Infrastructure Manager (applications already closed for that role,
> though).

I do have to say I find the idea of using a dedicated StackExchange
site intriguing. I have been a big fan of its cofounder Joel Spolsky
for many years. A StackExchange discussion has some advantages over a
thread in a mailing list -- it's got a clear URL that everyone can
easily find and reference (as opposed to the variety of archive sites
that are currently used), and there is a bit more structure to the
discussion (question, answers, comments). I believe there are some
good examples of other communities of experts that have really
benefited (e.g. mathoverflow.net).

A downside may be that it's hard to read via an email client (although
you can set up notifications). That doesn't bother me personally (I
live in a web browser these days anyway) but I can imagine it will be
harder for some folks to participate.

I don't think it takes much effort to set up one of these -- if
someone feels particularly strong about this I encourage them to
figure out how to set up a StackExchange site to augment python-ideas.
(I think that's where we should start; leave python-dev alone.)

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)