Dear all, Currently, the place where big changes should be discussed is IRC (according to houz, as I have not seen this information anywhere, which is problematic as new contributors may make big changes, so they have at least to be able to know where is the place to discuss things). I think IRC is not convenient at all.
I would like to discuss why I think making these discussion on IRC is bad, and what alternatives we have. IRC: pros: honestly, I don't see any (it is nice for casual talk, but discussing important changes is very different than casual talk...) cons: - no logs. Basically, if you are not connected at the right time to discuss about the changes, you cannot catch up, and you cannot even know what decision was taken! - instantaneous chatting. While it is nice for casual talk, it forces to write answer fastly. For making important decision, we should have least have a platform were anyone can take time to write argumented answers. In addition, answering quickly does leave enough time to think about the way to say things, which can result in misunderstandings, under-thought answers, potentially even anger. - people at different places in the planet just can't be all at the same time connected - all topics are messed up in the discussion, thus even if we had a logging system it would be hard to find a particular topic easily Existing dev mailing list: pros: - it is logical for new devs to join the mailing list (way more logical than connecting 24h/24h to an IRC channel in my opinion) - people can see the message when they want, and reply when they want, wherever they are on the planet - we can have conversations organised by topics cons: - the mailing list is used for several purpose (help requested to develop a module, bugs, interaction between user and devs, and information about ongoing developments). This con could be compensated by using a tag in subjects related to big changes, like [big-changes] or whatever you prefer. This way, even devs which are overwhelmed with emails would have a way to filter out email that may involve important decision. Creating another mailing list: Basically the same pros than using the existing mailing list. The only difference I see is that we wouldn't need to put a tag in the email topic. Using discuss.pixls.us with a category with limited access: pros: - we could benefit from the forum's math support to discuss while showing math stuff if needed - people can see the message when they want, and reply when they want, wherever they are on the planet - we can have conversations organised by topics cons: - a limited access would exclude new contributors from the conversation, whereas in my opinion any contributor should be able to defend his ideas Using github by commenting directly on PRs pros: - we can comment directly near the code, and we can comment code details - people can see the message when they want, and reply when they want, wherever they are on the planet - we can have conversations organised by topics (PRs) cons: - devs will have to check new PRs regularly to give their opinion, and a big-change PR may "hide" in between small ones. However, we could easily have a tag "big-change" to request devs to pay attention to particular PRs, or use the PRs names to indicate such big changes - big changes should be discussed before making them. Yet, I think this drawback can be compensated by making PRs really early, which is already done by several of us (see PRs with [WIP] in the title) What do you think? Please, give your opinion on all options, and select at least 2 solutions that could be ok for you, so that we can make a decision at the end. Also, if you don't like a solution, please explain why. I personally prefer the use of current mailing list with tags in the topic names, or to use github and comment directly on PRs. It would be ok for me as well if we use discuss.pixls.us. I think creating a new mailing list is a bit overkill, but I would be ok with it if others prefer this. Last, I think continuing using IRC for this purpose would be a big mistake, that will lead to more communication issues, so I am totally against this solution. I hope we will find a solution so that amazing changes to this amazing software can be peacefully discussed in the future. Cheers, rawfiner ___________________________________________________________________________ darktable developer mailing list to unsubscribe send a mail to darktable-dev+unsubscr...@lists.darktable.org
