"I feel we have a lof of 'silent' people reading the list." Maybe someone who is in charge of running this mailing list can provide the ratio: (distinct email addresses which sent email to internals in the last X months) / (number of email addresses subscribed to internals) to actually see an estimate.
I am guessing my experience might extrapolate to others, but internals being a mailing list makes me _think twice_ before I send email to it, because I know EVERYONE on this list WILL see it (most likely). On the other hand, I believe a forum has a different psychological impact on 'silent' readers: ANYONE on this forum CAN see it, but there is no guarantee that everyone will see it. Thus, exchanging mailing list for a forum would effectively transform self-based moderation to community-based moderation, as I see it. I refrain myself from expressing opinion whether this is good or bad. Personally I like the relative "quietness" of the internals, with occasional volume spikes. Anyhow, to actually support active contributors with the opinion of the masses, we could use a web-based frontend to mailing list, which would not allow comments (to keep the conversation concentrated on ML) but would provide voting facility for the posts, not unlike Stack Overflow or SlashDot. On the second thought, this could also be done for RFCs. b. On 11 September 2013 17:36, Levi Morrison <morrison.l...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Yes, I know those sites, but don't you think that internals is a > different > >> kind of a discussion? First of all, the volume is different. We get two > >> obvious trolls a day? Meh. On the other hand, I could downvote a person > >> that has a different opinion than I do. > >> > > > > I think that it could be useful for the RFC process mainly. Sometimes > > someone will dominate a discussion but if they are doing so against the > > popular opinion on an issue it would significantly lower the impact of > the > > dominator in a voting system. > > > > > > On the other hand, that could end up being tyranny of the majority. But > > I'm not a fan of forums, I think reddit-like systems are not good for the > > discussions of the like we have on internals (for the reasons I wrote > > before), and that's it :) If anyone likes and wants to set up the > > environment that wouldn't disrupt existing discussion patterns, who can > > stop him or her? :) > > > > I feel that we have a lot of 'silent' people reading the list. If they had > some way they can quietly voice their opinion that would greatly benefit > everyone. My thinking is that voting can allow that to happen without > creating noise. I am open to other suggestions that would facilitate quiet > contribution. >
