[Python-ideas] A bit meta

[Sjoerd Job Postmus]

On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 02:52:11PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Steven D'Aprano writes:
> ...
> On the other hand, one attribute that you have mentioned (the ease of
> finding issues) has a useful effect.  To the extent that StackExchange
> makes traffic management easy (specifically filtering, threading, and
> linking), it might encourage users to follow links to other threads
> where relevant discussion is posted. ... . A forum that encourages
> retrieval of previous discussion before posting would make a big
> difference, I suspect.  Eg, one with a check box "I have read and
> understood the discussions cited and I still want to post"[4] for
> comment entry and a "No! He didn't do his homework!" button next to
> the posted comment.<wink/>

To be honest, I don't think that would make that big of a difference,
less so than the difference caused by having the discussion area more
easily accessible. In the end, there's always going to be a group of
people who are likely to ignore best practices and add irrelevant
comments (some of whom will not really learn). In fact, I'd expect the
ease of using a website to make it more likely for people to join which
at first do not follow best practices at all.

Think of using a mailing list as placing a filter on minimum intellect.

I'm also a visitor on some of the stack-exchange sites, and I see a lot
of topics that gets closed quite soon-ish on account of not fitting the
model of a Q&A site for [insert any of a thousand reasons here].

On the other hand, in (at least) python-ideas and python-dev, I don't
see any 'crap' coming by. Sometimes an idea I might think of as crap,
but at least the idea is (quite often) well-substantiated and argued for
in the initial postings.

I myself am inclined to assign the praise for the high-quality to not
only the core community, but also to the somewhat unusual sign-up
procedure[1], and would be very (happily) surprised if the quality would
stay the same when switching to something web-based with an obvious UI.


[1] Unusual in the sense that it's so not 2016 to have a mailing list
instead of a web forum. Mailing lists are a lot less common now than it
was some time ago.

> ...
> 
> [2]  I'm sorry about the wording, but I don't have a better one.
> Python channels do not ignore *people*.  However, new participants are
> more like to make comments that will have no effect, and thus their
> comments are likely to be ignored or dismissed with a stock response.
> Especially if to the experienced eye the comment has already been
> responded to fully in the same thread.
> 

Maybe there should be a document describing expected behaviour, instead
of expecting people to somehow 'get' it by observing. For instance, I
did not know if it was OK for me to say '-1' or '+0' or ... on a
suggestion. If there were some guidelines on that, "Everybody can
'vote', but please keep in mind that ..." and "Voting happens by
<procedure>" as well as something along the lines of "It's not a
democracy, voting is just a way of showing your support for/against, but
there will not be a formal tally.".

> [3]  Every core wants new members who can fit right in.  What makes
> Python different from the typical project is effective mentoring of
> those with mere potential.
 
On that topic, would it make sense to at the very least make a list of
some things you want to look for in members 'who can fit right in'?
Well, I'm not really sure that would be a good idea, but what I think
might be a good idea would be something to help people in drawing up
their opening post with an idea. That would help in people getting an
idea of what would be effective behaviour.

Things like:

- If you're proposing syntax changes, please document as fully as
  possible why what you want is not possible with the current syntax, or
  just too burdensome.
  Why what you want to do is common enough to justify the additional
  burden of the mental overhead the suggested syntax (naturally)
  imposes. Yes, your new syntax might reduce the mental overhead in the
  case you are considering, but please keep ... in mind.
- ... (Additional suggestions here)

(now, I'm just brainstorming here, but suggestions that would help
people write better opening posts, or give more effective feedback would
probably not hurt. However, I don't think I'm the proper person to write
down suggestions like that, as I'm still relatively new)