I've thought about this sort of thing a few times. My concern has always been that it'd be "just one more channel" when there are already too many to follow: here, django-users, IRC (multiple channels) and so on.
If we did it under the aegis of the Django (Org/...SF) and we as a group of active folks said that that's where we'd hang out, I think it would work, and would unify those channels. So +1 What does it need from Ops? (Is there a `docker run-my-service`? Could we leverage djangoproject.com (and GitHub) logins, or are they always going to be separate?) Super. Carlton On Saturday, 10 August 2019 05:03:18 UTC+2, Andrew Godwin wrote: > > Hi everyone, > > This might be slightly controversial, but I would like to propose that we > have a forum for discussing Django development (and potentially user > support), alongside the mailing list and maybe, eventually replacing it. > > My full reasoning is below, but in short, it would be more accessible for > new users, have a better UI, give us the ability to moderate away > problematic posts, be better for privacy, and still allow email-based > interaction. > > At DjangoCon AU, the opening keynote was an invited speaker from the Rust > community (E. Dunham, https://twitter.com/QEDunham). I invite you to > watch the full talk if you are at all interested in how another language > handles their community (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW7PxyrCBR0), > but the takeaway for me was their use of forums rather than mailing lists. > > The Django mailing lists were an excellent choice when Django began, but I > feel they have aged out of the modern Web somewhat. The user interface for > accessing them is particularly poor, which makes it particularly bad for > new contributors. > > In addition, when looking at how to organise the effort to help bring > async into Django, something more dynamic, and more segmented, than mailing > lists would be incredibly useful. I don't want to drown out the list in > specific discussions of how to port certain features, but we need to have > those discussions somewhere permanent and asynchronous (so not IRC). > > The mutability of a forum is also not to be overlooked - as well as > allowing things like pinned posts and post edits for small issues (or a > living header on a long discussion topic), it also allows for permanent > removal of things that break the Code of Conduct. On the people front, it > also allows people to post without their email being public, allows for > name changes, and provides for someone's right to be forgotten via > anonymisation of prior content. > > Now, I'm not suggesting we kill the mailing list and switch over or > anything like that; instead, I suggest we run an instance of Discourse as a > test, and use it as the primary discussion area for async work, as well as > anything else that people want to discuss - with the expectation that > anything important still goes out to this mailing list. > > Why Discourse? Apart from being a mature, open source forum project, it's > also very fully featured, and even supports subscribing and interacting > with the forum over email, so it can still fit into an email-based > workflow. There are also plenty of small niceties, like the option to have > it hosted for us via a paid service, or the ability to use GitHub for login > rather than requiring a separate username and password. It also helps that > Rust seems quite happy with it. > > I'm mostly asking for the "temperature of the room" on this one - if we > get some small objections, I think a trial period is still worthwhile. If > there are major objections, then I'd like to ask people what their > alternative suggestions are for solving this sort of communication. > > Do I think this would replace the mailing list? Not in the short term, but > maybe if it takes off and we all like it better. I personally would > interact with django-developers a whole lot more if I could just subscribe > to certain topics (rather than trying to emulate that with an email filter > as I do now!), and honestly the same thing for django-users. That said, I > also recognise that diluting the support/discussion pool is not exactly an > attractive idea, which is why I'm asking for input! > > Thanks, > Andrew > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers (Contributions to Django itself)" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-developers/589434d9-a34a-4801-9599-dc1ec6646c5b%40googlegroups.com.
