Re: [DNG] On talk.do and Web forums

2016-09-30 Thread hellekin 
On 09/28/2016 03:57 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
> For me, discourse is nothing but silliness. The discourse summary and
> discourse Digest emails I occasionally get are hard to read, boring,
> and appear to be HTML formatted. HTML formatted? Sy what???
>

If they appear to be HTML formatted, you probably want to tell your MUA
to accept the prior text/plain version of the Multipart MIME message you
receive.

I looked at the source of some messages (both digest and individual) I
received from various Discourse instances, all *all* of them without
exception use multipart/alternative with the first part text/plain, and
the second part text/html, as it should be.  Is your MUA broken, that it
imposes HTML on you?

==
hk

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Re: [DNG] On talk.do and Web forums

2016-09-29 Thread Rick Moen 
Quoting Edward Bartolo (edb...@gmail.com):

> My suggestion is to use phpbb3 which is in debian.org's repositories.
> There is no reason to use something else for a forum *assuming* Devuan
> is free to install what it sees fit on its servers.

To adapt an old advertising slogan, I'd walk a mile to avoid PHP.

PHP is a huge security attack surface with a small interpreted language
hiding somewhere inside it.  ;->  

P.S.:  If you want to annoy Rasmus Lerdorf, whisper the words 'Personal
Home Page' to him.  (He's reportedly a little touchy about PHP's genesis
and original name.  I forgot to try the above the last time I met him,
but should have done so, in the name of science.)

(Seriously, though, I do like Rasmus.)


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Re: [DNG] On talk.do and Web forums

2016-09-28 Thread Peter Olson 
> On September 29, 2016 at 1:13 AM Edward Bartolo  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> My suggestion is to use phpbb3 which is in debian.org's repositories.
> There is no reason to use something else for a forum *assuming* Devuan
> is free to install what it sees fit on its servers.
> 
> Edward

I disagree: "There is no reason to use something else"

This is all about UI/UX, it's not a technical decision based of availability of 
software packages.

The question is, what is the most effective solution for our communication?

PHPBB is an enormous interface.  We need only an iota of it to work well.

Peter Olson
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Re: [DNG] On talk.do and Web forums

2016-09-28 Thread Edward Bartolo 
Hi,

My suggestion is to use phpbb3 which is in debian.org's repositories.
There is no reason to use something else for a forum *assuming* Devuan
is free to install what it sees fit on its servers.

Edward

-- 
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

Albert Einstein
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Re: [DNG] On talk.do and Web forums

2016-09-28 Thread Rick Moen 
Quoting Gregory Nowak (g...@gregn.net):

> As for this new discourse thing ... I'm not a fan of forums, unless
> it's a community I really want to be a part of, and forum is the only
> way to participate. I much prefer to have e-mails end up in my inbox,
> than to have to login somewhere, and look through what accumulated
> since I last checked in. 

In my experience, people who've been around the Internet for a while
try using Web forums, and find over time that:

o  Postings you made many years ago on mailing lists still exist and are
   findable via Web search, whereas ones one you posted to Web forums were
   wiped out three site redesigns ago.

o  Or, failing that, you still have a copy of what you posted in your 
   saved mail and can rehost it on the Web trivially, as I've done with
   many of the entries on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/ 

o  Whereas you almost never have a local copy of what you posted to some
   now vanished Web forum.  I mean, you _could_ have, but you didn't.
   (In rare cases where you did, you can end up with things like 
   'User Agent' on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Web/ .  That's a preserved
   page from a Twiki instance that suddenly vanished without plan or 
   notice one day, and fortuntely I'd made a local copy.  

   Said Twiki site was, ironically, maintained by a community (IWEThey) 
   that left InfoWorld Electric (IWE) in disgust after yet another 
   Web forum redesign had erased everyone's existing threads.  (IWEThey,
   itself, no longer exists because it was kiled by the Gods of Irony:
   It collapsed because of problems with the Web forum software.)

o  Web forums have nothing anywhere near as effective as a MUA killfile
   (though some of them have efforts that at least try), in helping 
   individual participants simply not see the threads or participants
   who they consider not worth their time.

o  _Many_ Web forums (I certainly assume Devuan's is an exception) have
   a problem of hypercontrol by control-freak administrators, e.g.,
   excessive content control, invisible banning, etc.  While mailing 
   lists can suffer this syndrome too, there's a key difference:  
   Members of a mailing list community can communicate with each other
   about administrative practices out-of-band, because they have each
   others' e-mail addresses.  Web forum denizens, by conrast, have no
   such recourse.

   The characteristic hypercontrol on _many_ (not all) Web forums is
   probably in part a consequence of the lack of anything as effective
   as MUA killfiles, which puts greater pressure on administrators to 
   apply centralised social control with less cause (than is typically
   the case on mailing lists).


Probably because of these inherent characteristics, _especially_ (IMO)
the first of those, in general (and in my long experience) technically
proficient people seldom use Web forums at all -- such that, if there
were an annual award for Worst Linux Technical Advice, it would be won
year after year by ubuntuforums.org.  (That's the place where you go to
be advised to use proprietary drivers even in situations where the open
source ones are markedly better, in particular.)


All that having been said, people who love Web forums really love them,
and it's important that they be happy, too.  As Mr. Lincoln said, 'It's
the sort of thing that will be enjoyed by those who enjoy that sort of
thing.'

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Rick Moen  my parent process.  Prepare to vi.
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Re: [DNG] On talk.do and Web forums

2016-09-28 Thread Gregory Nowak 
On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 11:09:20PM +0100, Dave Turner wrote:
> Traffic on ye olde dng@lists.dyne.org has gone down a lot.
> Is it because of this new-fangled Discourse thing?

I'll admit I don't miss the traffic. In fact, I had considered
switching over to the announce list, but then the traffic here went
down as Dave points out. I had wondered if there was a reason, but
didn't think too much about it.

As for this new discourse thing ... I'm not a fan of forums, unless
it's a community I really want to be a part of, and forum is the only
way to participate. I much prefer to have e-mails end up in my inbox,
than to have to login somewhere, and look through what accumulated
since I last checked in. 

If this new platform has a forum to mail gateway, so everything would
just arrive in my inbox, and I could reply right from my mail client,
then that's great. However, I'm quiet happy with this mailman list,
even more so with the lower traffic. That's my take on things.

Greg


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Re: [DNG] On talk.do and Web forums

2016-09-28 Thread Dave Turner 

Traffic on ye olde dng@lists.dyne.org has gone down a lot.
Is it because of this new-fangled Discourse thing?

DaveT

On 28/09/16 21:38, hellekin wrote:

On 09/28/2016 03:57 PM, Steve Litt wrote:

Does anyone remember the great, text formatted, human created Devuan
Weekly News? It's sad to think the Devuan Weekly News was supplanted by
Discourse Digest.


Oh yes I do.  After Envite burned out on it, I had to take a lot of my
own time to keep it alive, and in the end it stopped when I stopped
taking care of it because I simply couldn't take that time anymore.
You're welcome to revive it, but frankly, I'd rather see contents coming
from IRC and talk.do and git.do going to DNG rather than contents from DNG.


Yes, very few people are using it.

Perhaps this is the reason...

http://lists.netisland.net/archives/plug/plug-2016-09/msg00113.html


Of all the points, I think only 13 applies to Discourse *when it is used
as a mailing list*.

For the rest, Steve, you're trying to say that Discourse is meant to
*replace* our mailing lists: but it's not.

We're really talking about forum software.  I'm mentioning the mailing
lists only because the main argument against Discourse is that the Web
interface sucks, and so on.  But using the Web interface is not
mandatory (except for setting up the account and choosing to use the
mailing list mode.)

Mailing list mode is certainly not perfect, but it still allows
Web-allergic people to use it by email.  Since Gitlab also requires
Javascript, Discourse makes a good companion to it.  But you can read it
without Javascript, and participate by email if so you choose.  You can
also *not* use it, and it's fine.


- multiple threads talk about the same thing, adding "where?" to the
archaeology of remembering what was said.

The preceding happens often on forums. Is Discourse really any
different?


Yes it is: as I mentioned, it's very easy to select some posts and
reroute them into another existing or new topic.  I've been using Web
forum software since 1993.  The first one was a shitty CGI that allowed
almost synchronous discussion.  Then I used WebX when it was still
usable, and then Caucus.  Caucus evolved from email.  It was used in
academy for courses and had many advanced features that still today are
missing to the mainstream forum software, such as programmable
conferences and topics, and a powerful markup language that makes BBcode
and such look like plastic toys.  I remember converting the whole UI in
a way that would allow me to blaze through unread topics by hitting
alt-space on my keyboard 12 years ago.  Discourse provides a similar
feature set that leaves other forum software decades behind.


I don't see how Discourse could ameliorate bad behavior among
posters. And even if it could, why inconvenience
good citizens to accommodate the thoughtless?


It can because it encourages good behavior and grants more power with
more personal investment: it's hard to behave badly as you're learning
more not only of its usage, but also of the local culture as you go, and
you can't do much without a little personal investment which makes it
quite an incentive not to misbehave.

I don't get how it inconveniences good citizens to accommodate the
thoughtless.  Care to explain?


My archives are local.


Glad it works for you.  Have you tried finding anything in a search
engine only to end up reading empty forum threads with no relevant
answer?  This is what I'm talking about.  Not email archives.


I don't think Discourse wants to have an archives contest with email.


I don't think it has to, but I do think a nicely maintained Discourse
forum would beat it hands down.


If you mean current threads require patching up whole threads to
understand, once again that's due exclusively to poster bad behavior.


You know we can't reform people's bad behavior.  Or can we?


If everyone deleted all quoted context EXCEPT that pertenant to the
answer, and typed their answer/response directly below the last
poster's question/assertion, everything would be perfectly clear.


Yes.


Don't blame email


I don't.  I use it every day and I love it.  I don't intend to stop
using it anytime soon.


And of course there's this: There are very few offenders on the DNG
list. We're worrying about a problem that doesn't exist


What problem is that?


- mailing lists can get invaded by trolls

So can forums. I doubt Discourse has a mental telepathy module that can
read a person's thoughts when they sign up.


It doesn't.  But it has a very good strategy against spammers.  I didn't
see a single spammer in a Discourse forum so far.  That's because
spammers don't want to spend the time necessary to get to the point
where their spam can make it to a topic, and then have to start from
scratch.  Not worth it for them.


So what we're doing is adding this big new software thing to fix the
actions of bad citizens. I have a simpler fix:

http://troubleshooters.com/linux/init/killfile.htm


It's not about fixing

Re: [DNG] On talk.do and Web forums

2016-09-28 Thread hellekin 
On 09/28/2016 03:57 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
> 
> Does anyone remember the great, text formatted, human created Devuan
> Weekly News? It's sad to think the Devuan Weekly News was supplanted by
> Discourse Digest.
> 

Oh yes I do.  After Envite burned out on it, I had to take a lot of my
own time to keep it alive, and in the end it stopped when I stopped
taking care of it because I simply couldn't take that time anymore.
You're welcome to revive it, but frankly, I'd rather see contents coming
from IRC and talk.do and git.do going to DNG rather than contents from DNG.

>>
>> Yes, very few people are using it.
> 
> Perhaps this is the reason...
> 
> http://lists.netisland.net/archives/plug/plug-2016-09/msg00113.html
>

Of all the points, I think only 13 applies to Discourse *when it is used
as a mailing list*.

For the rest, Steve, you're trying to say that Discourse is meant to
*replace* our mailing lists: but it's not.

We're really talking about forum software.  I'm mentioning the mailing
lists only because the main argument against Discourse is that the Web
interface sucks, and so on.  But using the Web interface is not
mandatory (except for setting up the account and choosing to use the
mailing list mode.)

Mailing list mode is certainly not perfect, but it still allows
Web-allergic people to use it by email.  Since Gitlab also requires
Javascript, Discourse makes a good companion to it.  But you can read it
without Javascript, and participate by email if so you choose.  You can
also *not* use it, and it's fine.

>> - multiple threads talk about the same thing, adding "where?" to the
>> archaeology of remembering what was said.
> 
> The preceding happens often on forums. Is Discourse really any
> different?
>

Yes it is: as I mentioned, it's very easy to select some posts and
reroute them into another existing or new topic.  I've been using Web
forum software since 1993.  The first one was a shitty CGI that allowed
almost synchronous discussion.  Then I used WebX when it was still
usable, and then Caucus.  Caucus evolved from email.  It was used in
academy for courses and had many advanced features that still today are
missing to the mainstream forum software, such as programmable
conferences and topics, and a powerful markup language that makes BBcode
and such look like plastic toys.  I remember converting the whole UI in
a way that would allow me to blaze through unread topics by hitting
alt-space on my keyboard 12 years ago.  Discourse provides a similar
feature set that leaves other forum software decades behind.

> I don't see how Discourse could ameliorate bad behavior among
> posters. And even if it could, why inconvenience
> good citizens to accommodate the thoughtless?
>

It can because it encourages good behavior and grants more power with
more personal investment: it's hard to behave badly as you're learning
more not only of its usage, but also of the local culture as you go, and
you can't do much without a little personal investment which makes it
quite an incentive not to misbehave.

I don't get how it inconveniences good citizens to accommodate the
thoughtless.  Care to explain?

> My archives are local.
>

Glad it works for you.  Have you tried finding anything in a search
engine only to end up reading empty forum threads with no relevant
answer?  This is what I'm talking about.  Not email archives.

> I don't think Discourse wants to have an archives contest with email.
> 

I don't think it has to, but I do think a nicely maintained Discourse
forum would beat it hands down.

> If you mean current threads require patching up whole threads to
> understand, once again that's due exclusively to poster bad behavior.
>

You know we can't reform people's bad behavior.  Or can we?

> If everyone deleted all quoted context EXCEPT that pertenant to the
> answer, and typed their answer/response directly below the last
> poster's question/assertion, everything would be perfectly clear.
>

Yes.

> Don't blame email
>

I don't.  I use it every day and I love it.  I don't intend to stop
using it anytime soon.

> And of course there's this: There are very few offenders on the DNG
> list. We're worrying about a problem that doesn't exist
>

What problem is that?

>> - mailing lists can get invaded by trolls
> 
> So can forums. I doubt Discourse has a mental telepathy module that can
> read a person's thoughts when they sign up.
>

It doesn't.  But it has a very good strategy against spammers.  I didn't
see a single spammer in a Discourse forum so far.  That's because
spammers don't want to spend the time necessary to get to the point
where their spam can make it to a topic, and then have to start from
scratch.  Not worth it for them.

> So what we're doing is adding this big new software thing to fix the
> actions of bad citizens. I have a simpler fix:
> 
> http://troubleshooters.com/linux/init/killfile.htm
> 

It's not about fixing actions of bad citizens, but about offering a way
to turn casual

Re: [DNG] On talk.do and Web forums

2016-09-28 Thread Jaromil 

dears,

On Wed, 28 Sep 2016, Go Linux wrote:

> Maybe someone else has something to say?  Especially if you revel in
  beating a dead horse . . .

of course the thread is still around and we are all reading, including
hellekin. So far I (and just for one) stand by his strenous defense of
a web forum which overall works well for what it is: a web forum.
I don't believe it can be a substitute to mailinglist though.

I also think that it is good to discuss this here and among us before
Devuan takes off in the next iteration of releases. This is all part
of the beta process and we should be all fond of it being a community
based process, not a top down one. Rest assured there will be a
consensual process which does not exclude all options.

Yet, as Hellekin mentions, if we are up to have a web forum, an
alternative should come up. A lot of work was put in Discourse to work
well with Devuan and it is not acceptable to let it fade without an
alternative. Large scale community projects do need a web forum, which
is different in composition and use from a mailinglist, and we all
understand how and why...

ciao
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Re: [DNG] On talk.do and Web forums

2016-09-28 Thread Go Linux 
Maybe someone else has something to say?  Especially if you revel in beating a 
dead horse . . .

-
On Wed, 9/28/16, hellekin  wrote:

 Subject: [DNG] On talk.do and Web forums
 To: "dng" 
 Date: Wednesday, September 28, 2016, 3:08 AM
>  
> On IRC #devuan:  hellekin: Can we PLEASE move on from
> Discourse.  Very few people are using it and those who are loathe it for
> the most part.  It's holding back Devuan's community growth!
> 

I left that message on #devuan-www not #devuan

> 
> Let me state it one last time, by email, so that it can be read by
> everyone and we can have a discussion about it, instead of a persistent
> and frankly annoying counter-productive attitude regarding talk.devuan.org.
> 
> No, we're not moving on from Discourse.
> 

And there you have it.

> 
> Yes, very few people are using it.
> 

That should tell you something.

> 
> Yes, *some* people insist on loathing it, and although I have tried to
> address every single of their arguments, they keep coming at it without
> even trying (e.g., to *not* use the Web after their account is
> registered.)  Maybe there's some missing documentation about how to use
> Discourse as a mailing list only.
> 

Personally, I don't want to mix ML apples with forum oranges.  

> 
> I don't think anybody here as much to say against mailing list apart
> from the well-known issues:
>

[blah, blah why discourse is so amazing]

>
> So, I understand that Discourse is not for everyone, its web interface
> requires some heavy Javascript that can be slow, and it doesn't look
> like you would like, and certainly not like any forum out there, where
> you just sit and shout.  But you need to understand that:
> 
> 1) we're thinking of a *tool* towards a *goal*: knowledge management
> 2) it can be *used by email* (as a mailing list, requiring very few
> interaction with the Web at all)
> 3) nothing prevents anyone from *setting up another forum software*
> 

Sigh . . . As someone discussing talk.do on another forum nicely summed up:

". . .  the forum design over there is a bit perplexing given the philosophy 
that gave birth to Devuan in the first place."

How did we get from KISS to bloated, Fisher-Price SNS in a heartbeat?

> 
> Which brings me to the last argument: "It's holding back Devuan's
> community growth!"
> 
> Really, golinux, do you think it does?  FriendsOfDevuan has a wiki that
> is mentioned in the official documentation page on
> devuan.org/os/documentation while it's not operated by the VUA, so be my
> guest and make a popular forum that will help grow the Devuan community.
> I think the two objectives are orthogonal, and certainly not incompatible.
> 

I don't see multiplicity of forums/blogs as a solution to the deficiencies of 
an 'official' forum.

> 
> I know you've been arguing the talk.do was a threat to the mailing
> lists.  
> 

FTR, I don't 'argue'.  I do express opinions however . . .  At one point I 
thought dng might be going byebye once the forum was available.  It didn't and 
I'm happy about that (though lately nothing has been happening there either).  

> 
> Yet, officially, DNG has been replaced by devuan-discuss and
> devuan-announce mailing lists, which see seldom traffic so far.
> 

Which again says something.

> 
> That means we're not in an univocal world where "the VUA decide" and "the
> community follows".  
> 

We're not?

> 

[snip]

> 
> With Devuan we're trying to give another take on what an universal OS
> means, and for that we want to have a compact set of tools that enables
> more diversity in the expression of what is, how to make, and who makes
> "a distro". *In my opinion*, talk.do has an important role to play in
> this strategy, as does the devuan-sdk, and Amprolla and build
> automation, etc.  But I certainly do not support the idea that my
> opinion is the only valid one.  I'd rather not have *another* forum
> software under devuan.org to avoid dissipating energies.  But I
> certainly cannot prevent the community from deciding that my vision is
> moot and go on setting up something that may eventually replace it.
> Devuan is not Python: there's no one-true-way here.
> 

But it seems 'your vision' = the one true 'official' Devuan forum and that is 
non-negotiable.

The ship will either sail or sink.  It is a process that only time will sort 
out.  I surrender . . .

:)

golinux


> 
> <3
> 
> ==
> hk
> 
> P.S.: I'm tempted to post this to devuan-discuss and talk.do, but hey,
> let's not cross-post :)
> 
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Re: [DNG] On talk.do and Web forums

2016-09-28 Thread Steve Litt 
On Wed, 28 Sep 2016 08:08:37 +
hellekin  wrote:

===
> On IRC #devuan:  hellekin: Can we PLEASE move on from
> Discourse.  Very few people are using it and those who are loathe it
> for the most part.  It's holding back Devuan's community growth!
===


> Let me state it one last time, by email, so that it can be read by
> everyone and we can have a discussion about it, instead of a
> persistent and frankly annoying counter-productive attitude regarding
> talk.devuan.org.
> 
> No, we're not moving on from Discourse.

Yeah, I'd meant to discuss this but forgot.

For me, discourse is nothing but silliness. The discourse summary and
discourse Digest emails I occasionally get are hard to read, boring,
and appear to be HTML formatted. HTML formatted? Sy what???

Does anyone remember the great, text formatted, human created Devuan
Weekly News? It's sad to think the Devuan Weekly News was supplanted by
Discourse Digest.

> 
> Yes, very few people are using it.

Perhaps this is the reason...

http://lists.netisland.net/archives/plug/plug-2016-09/msg00113.html



> 
> Yes, *some* people insist on loathing it, and although I have tried to
> address every single of their arguments, they keep coming at it
> without even trying (e.g., to *not* use the Web after their account is
> registered.)  Maybe there's some missing documentation about how to
> use Discourse as a mailing list only.

Does this sound at all familiar? We've been using a system for a couple
decades, it still works well, everyone can understand it, we've all
adapted it to fit just right into our workflow. 

Now comes this new software to solve a few edge case problems most of
us never perceived at all. The new software seems to have replaced the
Devuan Daily News with some infathomable thing. The new software is
touted as a repository for our discoveries, so now I need to search it
instead of the local email archives I search every day.

> 
> I don't think anybody here as much to say against mailing list apart
> from the well-known issues:
> 
> - threads casually explode as people's MUA don't keep the thread
> reference (e.g., when replying from a digest)

Decades old solution: Pipe digest violators to /dev/null. Or in the few
instances where they actually have something to say, filter them to
their own folder (I have one DNG person I do that with).

> - multiple threads talk about the same thing, adding "where?" to the
> archaeology of remembering what was said.

The preceding happens often on forums. Is Discourse really any
different?

> - titles are not consistent within a thread (drifts happen before the
> title is changed)

People shouldn't hijack, and changes of subject should be accompanied
by actual subject changes. I don't see how Discourse could ameliorate
bad behavior among posters. And even if it could, why inconvenience
good citizens to accommodate the thoughtless?

> - archives are very much an accumulation of dead letters that require
> reading sometimes entire threads to figure out pertinent content.

My archives are alive, and I can usually find what I'm looking for in
seconds to minutes. My archives are local. I have local archives of
lists that went to heaven years ago, and can find specific content on
them. I don't think Discourse wants to have an archives contest with
email.

If you mean current threads require patching up whole threads to
understand, once again that's due exclusively to poster bad behavior.
If everyone deleted all quoted context EXCEPT that pertenant to the
answer, and typed their answer/response directly below the last
poster's question/assertion, everything would be perfectly clear.

Don't blame email for militant top-posters, no-delete dweebs who leave
whole threads as quoted context, and sloppy-thinkers who reply with
*no* quoted context. Blame the careless posters. And those of us who
don't like stuff like that can simply filter out the offenders.

And of course there's this: There are very few offenders on the DNG
list. We're worrying about a problem that doesn't exist, and a simple
instruction on how to post clearly without screwing up descendants of
your post would nip any future problem in the bud.

> - mailing lists can get invaded by trolls

So can forums. I doubt Discourse has a mental telepathy module that can
read a person's thoughts when they sign up. It's trivial to remove
someone's posting rights from a Mailman list. Just ask Don Armstrong :-)

> - etc.

So what we're doing is adding this big new software thing to fix the
actions of bad citizens. I have a simpler fix:

http://troubleshooters.com/linux/init/killfile.htm


[snip Discourse's elegance list]
[snip Discourse=heavy, slow javascript]
[snip 3 points]


> Which brings me to the last argument: "It's holding back Devuan's
> community growth!"
> 
> Really, golinux, do you think it does?  

I