On 13 August 2016 at 19:44, David Mertz <me...@gnosis.cx> wrote: > I find email list VASTLY easier to deal with than any newfangled web-based > custom discussion forum. Part of that is that it is a uniform interface to > every list I belong too, and I can choose my own MUA. With all those web > things, every site works a little bit different from every other one, that > imposes an unnecessary cognitive burden (and usually simply lacks some > desired capability)
For me, the important point is "uniform interface to all lists". I like email for the forums I participate in, simply because I only need *one* browser tab open (gmail) and I don't have to remember or bookmark a variety of URLs. On forums that have their own web interface, I participate much less frequently, and tend to fall into much more of a "drive by" interaction, only contributing to "my" threads, rather than fully participating like I do on mailing lists. Whereas with my email lists, I read pretty much everything (sometimes only skimming, of course), which leads to me participating in threads I would otherwise have ignored. I can't really offer any opinion on the "mailing lists are more efficient" debate, as I simply dump all my lists into gmail, with a label per list, so I'm not exactly a power user, but the "single website for everything" aspect is the huge bonus for me. Would I follow python-ideas if it moved to a different forum? Certainly, if the new forum let me just click on something and from there on interact solely by email. Maybe, if I found that having a python-ideas tab permanently open was worthwhile. Otherwise, I don't know. Likely not, except on specific topics (but without an email feed, I don't know how I'd find out about such topics). And my participation would be much less frequent. (I leave it to others to judge whether that would be a good thing ;-)) In my opinions, forums tend to encourage a much more focused style of discussion. In one way, that's a good thing (and I'm sure many people would prefer python-ideas to have more focus). But it *also* tends to deter people from contributing - I can't quite express why, but there's somehow less of a sense of being an open debate with a forum. Maybe that's just me - it's certainly a subjective thing - but in a forum I'd expect the quality of discussion to increase, but the quantity (and breadth) to decrease. While I'm mentioning random thoughts, email replies to a forum like a github tracker are often a little disruptive, because etiquette is different. Email users tend to quote extensively for context, and often include signatures. Neither of these things is typically as necessary on a tracker (minimal, careful quoting is frequent, but not the extensive quoting common on mailing lists). So I could imagine a "mixed" interface actually being *less* comfortable for both types of participant. Paul _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
