Fergus Henderson says:
But it is difficult to track the ongoing discussion, because
- the interface is slowwwwwww (they don't call it the "World Wide Wait"
for nothing)
- it is difficult to keep track of which parts you have read already
and which parts are new
- unlike say a mailing list, those wishing to track the discussion must
remember to check the Web site regularly (or to use the jargon,
it's "pull" technology rather than "push" technology).
I spend some time looking at the Web site tonight, but eventually I got
sick of the net lag and gave up.
My question is this: was it the intent of the committee to deliberately
discourage the participation of those not on the committee?
Or was this feat achieved by accident?
Certainly not! The is the first time the Haskell committee has ever conducted
its discussions in public, and the purpose is of course to encourage
contributions from others. The committee uses just the same interface as
everyone else, by the way, so you can at least take comfort in the fact that
everyone suffers alike! The only difference is that messages can only be
*posted* by a committee member. But others are welcome to contribute via
any member of the committee. A number of people have done just that. I think
it's essential to restrict additions in this way: would you entrust the
responsibility for a language design to an unmoderated newsgroup?
The interface is designed to present each message in the context of the
preceding discussion, and thus to help people make thoughtful contributions
based on the entire discussion, rather than just react to the last message. In
that sense it's geared towards the committee, who have a responsibility to
follow the entire discussion, rather than to the occasional visitor.
It's true that the first page has become rather long, and can take a few
seconds to download. Because it's produced by a CGI script it can't be cached,
which may be more of a problem if you're sitting in Australia than it is here
in Sweden.
The software that manages the Standard Haskell pages isn't necessarily
fixed. It's a collection of small Haskell programs which I have constructed
myself. I do occasionally enhance it in response to suggestions from the
committee -- for example, the addition of colour to identify recent
additions. I can enhance it to make it more useable for other people too
(although the time I have available for that is very limited).
Here are three things I could probably do if there's strong demand for them:
(1) Make the first page cacheable.
(2) Provide an alternative interface that displays each message with its
*immediate* children in the tree, but not their descendants. Harder to
navigate in, but at least the first page would be much shorter and quicker
to download.
(3) Provide a way to register your email address with the system. New messages
would be mailed to everyone in the register. (The committee already gets
this service, so it would be quite easy to add for others). I wouldn't
sell your email addresses to junk advertisers, honest!
But maybe, Fergus, you just need to buy a faster modem (:-)
