And after writing this long thing… I *meant* to send to the *general* discussion list, not dev, oh well… will resend, apologies to those on both lists
On 08/08/2015 11:11 PM, Aaron Wolf wrote: > Hi everyone! > > I've done a lot lately to reach out to people to encourage folks to sign > up for our mailing lists (sent many hundreds of emails, although > hundreds more to do). I don't want to delay much longer actually > engaging with the new email lists. > > ------- > > INTRODUCTIONS: Everyone can read about me on my user profile on the > site: https://snowdrift.coop/u/3 > > I'd love if others would post here with some brief introductions, > thoughts, questions… > > Let's get engaged and build this community and encourage each other to > figure out how we can all work together to achieve this ambitious but > important mission that Snowdrift.coop stands for! > > -------- > > SUMMARY OF STUFF BELOW: I'm trying to figure out best tools and > approaches to engage with folks, maximize the amount the people stay > engaged and motivated to help us succeed. I'm going to go through > referencing all sorts of issues about mailing lists, forums, our tools, etc. > > **If long detailed stuff will be overwhelming right now, please feel > free to skip this.** I'd love everyone to read and reply if you have > helpful ideas to share, but I don't want anyone to feel pushed away by > my crazy long email. > > Right now, this email list is just getting started. If it gets overly > busy, you can always switch to the digest version… I hope everyone will > care enough to stay involved to the extent manageable. Thanks for > understanding and for your support and interest. > > ========================================== > > MAILING LISTS, FORUMS, ETC. (as its on my mind right now) > > I don't want these new Snowdrift.coop email lists to be so active that > people push away from them, and there's lots of concerns about the > nature of mailing lists. Such lists don't have good ways to handle > conflict or tangents… there's lots of tools with better and worse > features. The issues involve balancing the amount of mail, the fact that > people today often do terribly with managing email, people moving to > other systems, wanting to keep things on topic… > > I saw a proprietary tool that has some great features I wish we had: > getting emails only for *new topics* but opting-IN to getting replies > once you decide you like a topic… I want to see us add that to our > built-in website discussion boards… shouldn't be too hard, but it's one > of tons of lists of things we'd like… > > Mailman 3 has a lot of improvements. I haven't tried it lately, and we > could update to that sometime soon, it might have value. > > Alternatively, I was just reading the updates for Discourse 1.3 — see > http://blog.discourse.org/2015/06/discourse-1-3-released/ > and I'm really impressed. > > Discourse initially had several design issues I didn't like, but today > it's really powerful. The new better controls for various > notifications, moderation, and more all seem excellent. I'm even up for > consider deprecating these new email lists and just moving to Discourse > maybe! > > Using Discourse would certainly let people better manage and review > things in a nice web format (although Mailman 3 does some of that). On > the other hand, our built-in discussion boards are already more like > what Discourse offers (but are beta state, not as polished, and I have > mixed feelings about reimplementing all the good, select elements from > Discourse, certainly it's distraction from core mission, although we'd > build them specific to fit our needs). > > I do *not* want to have too many separate systems. My *ideal* dream is > in fact to have most of the appropriate aspects of Discourse built into > our integrated discussion system. And that's why it seems moving to > Discourse makes sense. But in practice *today*, I find most Discourse > instances (on other projects' sites) to be somewhat overwhelming and > hard to manage. > > I see our built-in system as being designed around a different use case > versus email lists and forums: we're discussing very specific questions > / tickets / concerns about pages… in other words, it's project > management stuff. We're not building around general community chat. Each > topic on our discussion boards, gets dealt with, closed, wikis updated > etc. But we need better organizing and searching tools to use it more > effectively… > > My feeling is that email lists and forums often have really valuable > community discussions that then just get lost in the bulk. That's why I > like our system's ability to move (i.e. rethread) comments, close > comments, and *tag* individual comments. We're really about *managing* > the comments to serve the needs of the project, which is different than > the social feel we get more at IRC in live chat. > > Of course, there's stack-exchange style QA formats too… sheesh. > > At any rate, our discussion system wiki page > https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/discussion-system and its > connected discussion board itself have lots more details about related > issues. The whole topic is overwhelming, and I apologize for > overwhelming YOU if you're reading this. That's partly the fault of > email as a format maybe… > > In *principle*, posting pointed, threaded comments on the site allows us > to tease apart each issue and break things into manageable bits. So, > *ideally* we would adjust things so that comments can be *split* as in > my recent comment: > https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/discussion-system/c/3305 > > Imagine replying in-line to this long email but each in-line reply gets > its own thread so that things don't get longer and longer, and we don't > need to see quotes, we just see the comments in context. That would be > like the in-line comments on Medium.com, which a Yesod-based FLO system > like https://github.com/thoughtbot/carnival supports… except *threaded* > so that instead of just blog posts have in-line comments, each comment > itself can have similar in-line replies… I think that's probably the > best design. I *honestly* believe that such a tool would *greatly* > improve my own ability to manage this project. Our discussion board > could have that, and having that in FLO software would be superbly valuable. > > This very email is excessively long, and yet if I sent two dozen emails, > that wouldn't go well. But we're working to address FUNDING. We can't be > solving every last problem…! except we need this solved for our *own* use… > > At any rate, there certainly are some advantages to mailing lists, that > no web forum can match. Here's something super-meta (HAHA): a link on > this mailing list to a post on our discussion board linking to an > insightful comment in a comment system on a web forum about mailing > lists versus forums: > https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/discussion-system/c/3010 > > I've also started exploring some mainly unidirectional mailing list > tools, namely https://phplist.com/ https://www.mautic.org/ and > http://www.freelists.org/ — all of which are entirely FLO and offer > no-charge service to FLO projects… In some sense, what we need is to > send updates to specific people separately from having back-and-forth > discussions. > > And this doesn't even get into real-time meeting technologies (IRC, > WebRTC)… This is the nature of a 21st century online project. > > ## Proprietary communication tools threat ## > > All this confusion is related to how proprietary silos are coming in and > seeing a need and working to capture the market. > > The more general people communicate only in proprietary walled gardens, > the more those entities will influence the discussion. The more the > hard-core folks who refuse to use those systems will have their views > unrepresented in the community discourse. > > Of course, we need to focus on our own immediate tools for how to reach > everyone NOW and get enough people involved to finish the minimum work > to launch Snowdrift.coop. But I think this is a good case study for the > status quo of the FLO and proprietary tech world today. Everything is > still in flux, but the *need* is there, the demand is there, and we > need, both for ourselves and in general, to figure out how to solve > these things and in ways that lead to FLO success long-term… > > Okay, all that wasn't carefully edited. Apologies for sending something > of a brain dump. I'm making a decision to avoid perfection and try to > engage with people more. We will make these things happen if we all work > together. > > ----------- > > ## Volunteering, teams, and roles > > On that note, I started https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/teams to > get into figuring out all the roles and responsibilities we need people > to cover. There are places for everyone in smaller and larger roles! You > CAN participate and make a difference. If THIS VERY EMAIL isn't the most > inspiring, readable, etc. — i.e. if it could do better at motivating YOU > to come help or to know how to get started helping, then the complex > situation that led to this email has room for improvement, obviously. > I'd love help. None of this will be easy, but you've made the first > step: you're on the email list (unless you're a lurker reviewing the > archive). > > I *promise* not to send tons more long brain-dump emails (although I > have about 180 more big topics I *want* to hash out besides this one). > I'm taking this risk as part of the learning process. I'm not sure what > to expect (maybe it'll get marked as spam for most people, oh no! maybe > not…) > > Anyway, we're going to solve these things. It will get better from here, > although getting there won't be easy. Please know that even brief > "thanks, keep it up" messages are meaningful contributions… i.e. we > appreciate all levels of engagement, though obviously the more everyone > puts in, the greater and sooner our success… > > I suppose I should adapt this email into a more manageable thing that > could be a blog post… > > Overall, this email reflects the fact that we have imperfect tools and > we need to just figure out how to use them as best we can and improve > our tools as feasible. I'm probably overly worried in some ways. Perhaps > many people will respond to this with wonderful, supportive, productive, > constructive, critical feedback… and then I'll accept that this mailing > list option may work out well enough, at least for now. I'm going to hit > send, and we'll see. > > All the best, > Aaron > -- Aaron Wolf Snowdrift.coop <https://snowdrift.coop> _______________________________________________ Dev mailing list Dev@lists.snowdrift.coop https://lists.snowdrift.coop/mailman/listinfo/dev
