Re: [lldb-dev] [cfe-dev] [llvm-dev] Mailing List Status Update
On Wed, Jun 23, 2021 at 12:51 AM Chris Lattner via cfe-dev wrote: > > On Jun 22, 2021, at 6:01 PM, James Y Knight wrote: > > On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 3:53 PM Chris Lattner via cfe-dev > wrote: >> >> On Jun 9, 2021, at 10:50 AM, Philip Reames via llvm-dev >> wrote: >> >> Specific to the dev lists, I'm very hesitant about moving from mailing lists >> to discourse. Why? >> >> Well, the first and most basic is I'm worried about having core >> infrastructure out of our own control. For all their problems, mailing >> lists are widely supported, there are many vendors/contractors available. >> For discourse, as far as I can tell, there's one vendor. It's very much a >> take it or leave it situation. The ability to preserve discussion archives >> through a transition away from discourse someday concerns me. I regularly >> and routinely need to dig back through llvm-dev threads which are years old. >> I've also recently had some severely negative customer experiences with >> other tools (most recently discord), and the thought of having my >> employability and ability to contribute to open source tied to my ability to >> get a response from customer service teams at some third party vendor I have >> no leverage with, bluntly, scares me. >> >> Second, I feel that we've overstated the difficulty of maintaining mailing >> lists. I have to acknowledge that I have little first hand experience >> administering mailman, so maybe I'm way off here. >> >> Hi Philip, >> >> First, despite the similar names, Discord is very different than Discourse. >> Here I’m only commenting about Discourse, I have no opinion about Discord. >> >> >> In this case, I think we need to highly weight the opinions of the people >> actively mainlining the existing systems. It has become clear that the >> priority isn’t “control our own lists”, it is “make sure they stay up” and >> “get LLVM people out of maintaining them”. >> >> The ongoing load of maintaining these lists (including moderation) and of >> dealing with the security issues that keep coming up are carried by several >> individuals, not by the entire community. I’m concerned about those >> individuals, but I’m also more broadly concerned about *any* individuals >> being solely responsible for LLVM infra. Effectively every case we’ve had >> where an individual has driving LLVM infra turns out to be a problem. LLVM >> as a project isn’t good at running web scale infra, but we highly depend on >> it. > > > I agree that the maintenance issue is definitely a problem which needs to be > solved. And there is some urgency, given the recent problems which resulted > in a need to manually subscribe people to the lists. > > But, the proposal on the table doesn't appear to actually address this issue, > because the maintainers of llvm mailman will still continue to be responsible > for keeping it functioning, for the mailing lists which were not proposed to > be migrated. On the other hand, having osci.io run a mailman3 service for us > does seem to be a way to solve this -- and doesn't require discarding mailing > lists entirely. > > > I’m not deeply familiar with osci.io, but hosted mailman services all suffer > from a major problem: they don’t solve the moderation problem. Can you explain the moderation problem a bit? As a current mailing list moderator, I'm unaware of unsolved issues in this space and the only mentions about moderation on this thread are vague "we could have better moderation tools" kind of comments without justification as to why they're important enough to necessitate a switch away from email. > More generally, I don’t see how that addresses the many other issues that > were raised repeatedly on this thread. We went through many of these same discussions a while ago about moving away from IRC and email at the same time. There was no community consensus during that discussion, but for various reasons the end result was a fracturing of the community (some people went to Discord, some people stayed on IRC, and now both communities have to tell members "if you don't get an answer here, try on the other service or the mailing lists"). IMO, this left us with a community that's less approachable because new people are never really certain if they're asking their questions "in the right place", especially when a failure to get an answer to their question requires them to try again on a different service. I am worried that a switch from email on the -dev mailing lists to using Discourse will result in a similar fracturing, as discussions will still be possible via email on -commits. To me personally, the possibility of further fracturing the community is a concern I think we need to take very seriously. ~Aaron > > -Chris > > ___ > cfe-dev mailing list > cfe-...@lists.llvm.org > https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev ___
Re: [lldb-dev] [cfe-dev] [llvm-dev] Mailing List Status Update
On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 3:53 PM Chris Lattner via cfe-dev < cfe-...@lists.llvm.org> wrote: > On Jun 9, 2021, at 10:50 AM, Philip Reames via llvm-dev < > llvm-...@lists.llvm.org> wrote: > > Specific to the dev lists, I'm very hesitant about moving from mailing > lists to discourse. Why? > > Well, the first and most basic is I'm worried about having core > infrastructure out of our own control. For all their problems, mailing > lists are widely supported, there are many vendors/contractors available. > For discourse, as far as I can tell, there's one vendor. It's very much a > take it or leave it situation. The ability to preserve discussion archives > through a transition away from discourse someday concerns me. I regularly > and routinely need to dig back through llvm-dev threads which are years > old. I've also recently had some severely negative customer experiences > with other tools (most recently discord), and the thought of having my > employability and ability to contribute to open source tied to my ability > to get a response from customer service teams at some third party vendor I > have no leverage with, bluntly, scares me. > > Second, I feel that we've overstated the difficulty of maintaining mailing > lists. I have to acknowledge that I have little first hand experience > administering mailman, so maybe I'm way off here. > > Hi Philip, > > First, despite the similar names, Discord is very different than > Discourse. Here I’m only commenting about Discourse, I have no opinion > about Discord. > > > In this case, I think we need to highly weight the opinions of the people > actively mainlining the existing systems. It has become clear that the > priority isn’t “control our own lists”, it is “make sure they stay up” and > “get LLVM people out of maintaining them”. > > The ongoing load of maintaining these lists (including moderation) and of > dealing with the security issues that keep coming up are carried by several > individuals, not by the entire community. I’m concerned about those > individuals, but I’m also more broadly concerned about *any* individuals > being solely responsible for LLVM infra. Effectively every case we’ve had > where an individual has driving LLVM infra turns out to be a problem. LLVM > as a project isn’t good at running web scale infra, but we highly depend on > it. > I agree that the maintenance issue is definitely a problem which needs to be solved. And there is some urgency, given the recent problems which resulted in a need to manually subscribe people to the lists. But, the proposal on the table doesn't appear to actually address this issue, because the maintainers of llvm mailman will still continue to be responsible for keeping it functioning, for the mailing lists which were not proposed to be migrated. On the other hand, having osci.io run a mailman3 service for us does seem to be a way to solve this -- and doesn't require discarding mailing lists entirely. It seems clear to me that we should outsource this to a proven vendor. > Your concerns about discourse seem very similar to the discussion about > moving to Github (being a single vendor who was once much smaller than > Microsoft). I think your concerns are best addressed by having the IWG > propose an answer to “what is our plan if Discourse-the-company goes > sideways?" > ___ lldb-dev mailing list lldb-dev@lists.llvm.org https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lldb-dev
Re: [lldb-dev] [cfe-dev] [llvm-dev] Mailing List Status Update
On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 3:16 PM Kevin P. Neal via cfe-dev < cfe-...@lists.llvm.org> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 12:58:22PM -0700, David Blaikie via cfe-dev wrote: > >>On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 12:53 PM Chris Lattner via cfe-dev > >><[1]cfe-...@lists.llvm.org> wrote: > >> > >>Hi Philip, > >>First, despite the similar names, Discord is very different than > >>Discourse. Here Iâm only commenting about Discourse, I have no > >>opinion about Discord. > >>In this case, I think we need to highly weight the opinions of the > >>people actively mainlining the existing systems. It has become > clear > >>that the priority isnât âcontrol our own listsâ, it is âmake sure > they > >>stay upâ and âget LLVM people out of maintaining themâ. > >>The ongoing load of maintaining these lists (including moderation) > and > >>of dealing with the security issues that keep coming up are carried > by > >>several individuals, not by the entire community. Iâm concerned > about > >>those individuals, but Iâm also more broadly concerned about *any* > >>individuals being solely responsible for LLVM infra. Effectively > >>every case weâve had where an individual has driving LLVM infra turns > >>out to be a problem. LLVM as a project isnât good at running web > >>scale infra, but we highly depend on it. > >>It seems clear to me that we should outsource this to a proven > >>vendor. Your concerns about discourse seem very similar to the > >>discussion about moving to Github (being a single vendor who was once > >>much smaller than Microsoft). I think your concerns are best > >>addressed by having the IWG propose an answer to âwhat is our plan if > >>Discourse-the-company goes sideways?" > > >Might also be worth some details on: "Why is Discourse more suitable > >than a hosted mailman solution?" - if the main goal is to get LLVM > >individual contributors out of maintaining infrastructure, moving to a > >hosted version of the current solution seems lower friction/feature > >creep/etc? (though I realize moving between solutions is expensive, > and > >it may be worthwhile gaining other benefits that Discourse may provide > >while we address the original/motivating issue of maintenance) > > I notice that Discord gets maybe 50-100 messages a day, IRC perhaps a > little less, but Discourse gets almost none. It's a very low daily number. > The mailing lists that I'm on (just clang and llvm) get 500+ messages a > day. > > Are we really going to replace email with Discourse when we can see that > almost nobody likes using Discourse? > > > Metcalfe's law - people are going to tend to use the medium that they are able to reach the audience on, but not necessarily because it's superior. Mailing lists have the benefit of long-term incumbency. I think I would prefer maintaining the status quo but if I woke up tomorrow and the conversation had moved to Discourse I would join it there. Regardless of whether it had moved by mandate or popular adoption. I suspect others may feel similar and therefore the traffic is not a good metric of preference. -- -Brian ___ lldb-dev mailing list lldb-dev@lists.llvm.org https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lldb-dev
Re: [lldb-dev] [cfe-dev] [llvm-dev] Mailing List Status Update
On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 12:53 PM Chris Lattner via cfe-dev < cfe-...@lists.llvm.org> wrote: > On Jun 9, 2021, at 10:50 AM, Philip Reames via llvm-dev < > llvm-...@lists.llvm.org> wrote: > > Specific to the dev lists, I'm very hesitant about moving from mailing > lists to discourse. Why? > > Well, the first and most basic is I'm worried about having core > infrastructure out of our own control. For all their problems, mailing > lists are widely supported, there are many vendors/contractors available. > For discourse, as far as I can tell, there's one vendor. It's very much a > take it or leave it situation. The ability to preserve discussion archives > through a transition away from discourse someday concerns me. I regularly > and routinely need to dig back through llvm-dev threads which are years > old. I've also recently had some severely negative customer experiences > with other tools (most recently discord), and the thought of having my > employability and ability to contribute to open source tied to my ability > to get a response from customer service teams at some third party vendor I > have no leverage with, bluntly, scares me. > > Second, I feel that we've overstated the difficulty of maintaining mailing > lists. I have to acknowledge that I have little first hand experience > administering mailman, so maybe I'm way off here. > > Hi Philip, > > First, despite the similar names, Discord is very different than > Discourse. Here I’m only commenting about Discourse, I have no opinion > about Discord. > > > In this case, I think we need to highly weight the opinions of the people > actively mainlining the existing systems. It has become clear that the > priority isn’t “control our own lists”, it is “make sure they stay up” and > “get LLVM people out of maintaining them”. > > The ongoing load of maintaining these lists (including moderation) and of > dealing with the security issues that keep coming up are carried by several > individuals, not by the entire community. I’m concerned about those > individuals, but I’m also more broadly concerned about *any* individuals > being solely responsible for LLVM infra. Effectively every case we’ve had > where an individual has driving LLVM infra turns out to be a problem. LLVM > as a project isn’t good at running web scale infra, but we highly depend on > it. > > It seems clear to me that we should outsource this to a proven vendor. > Your concerns about discourse seem very similar to the discussion about > moving to Github (being a single vendor who was once much smaller than > Microsoft). I think your concerns are best addressed by having the IWG > propose an answer to “what is our plan if Discourse-the-company goes > sideways?" > Might also be worth some details on: "Why is Discourse more suitable than a hosted mailman solution?" - if the main goal is to get LLVM individual contributors out of maintaining infrastructure, moving to a hosted version of the current solution seems lower friction/feature creep/etc? (though I realize moving between solutions is expensive, and it may be worthwhile gaining other benefits that Discourse may provide while we address the original/motivating issue of maintenance) ___ lldb-dev mailing list lldb-dev@lists.llvm.org https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lldb-dev
