I would love to participate in swift evolution discussions, and I made and defended one of the proposals for Swift here (SE-0025), but using email for this is so difficult that I stopped following the list. The only thing that kept me going with that proposal was that I really really wanted the change. And in the end I even missed part of a discussion about that (I stopped following after it was accepted). I wasn't quiet because I no longer wanted to participate. It was because participating was too difficult due to email.
I caught this thread completely by accident on twitter. I really hope that we switch to Discorse or something similar. I'd love to get back into discussions and contribute. I am sure that there are many people like me. On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 3:19 PM Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution < [email protected]> wrote: > I have no problem with the project moving to forums instead of the Mailman > mailing lists we have now — if it is the right set of tradeoffs. > > My preference is to approach the topic objectively, working from goals and > seeing how the mailing lists are aligning with those goals and how an > alternative, such as Discourse, might do a better job. > > The current use of mailing lists has been carry-over of how both LLVM does > public discussion (which is all mailing lists) and how the Swift team at > Apple has used mailing lists for discussion. That inertia has benefits in > that it is a familiar workflow that is “proven” to work — but the doesn’t > mean it is the best option going forward. > > Here are some of the things that matter to me: > > - Topics are easy to manage and search, with stable URLs for archives. > > - It is easy to reference other topics with a stable (canonical) URL that > allows you to jump into that other topic easily. That’s hard to do if you > haven’t already been subscribed to the list. > > - Works fine with email clients, for those who want to keep that workflow > (again this inertia is important). > > - Code formatting, and other tools that add clarity in communication, are > a huge plus. > > I’d like to understand more the subjective comments on this thread, such > as "may intimidate newcomers”. This feels very subjective, and while I am > not disagreeing with that statement I don’t fully understand its > justification. Signing up for mailing lists is fairly straightforward, and > one isn’t obligated to respond to threads. Are forums really any less > “intimating”? If so, why is that the case? Is this simply a statement > about mailing lists not being in vogue? > > I do also think the asynchronous nature of the mailing lists is important, > as opposed to discussions feeling like a live chat. Live chat, such as the > use of Slack the SwiftPM folks have been using, is very useful too, but I > don’t want participants on swift-evolution or any of our mailing lists feel > obligated to respond in real time — that’s simply not the nature of the > communication on the lists. > > So in short, using mailing lists specifically is not sacred — we can > change what we use for our community discussions. I just want an objective > evaluation of the needs the mailing lists are meant to serve, and work from > there. If moving to something like (say) Discourse would be a negative on > a critical piece that is well-served by the mailing lists, that would (in > my opinion) a bad direction to take. I’m not saying that is the case, just > that this is how I prefer we approach the discussion. > > Ted > > > On Jan 23, 2017, at 3:18 PM, Ole Begemann via swift-evolution < > [email protected]> wrote: > > Obligatory prior discussion sheds, er, I mean threads: > > > https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mon-20151207/001537.html > > https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mon-20160725/025692.html > / > https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mon-20160801/thread.html#25765 > > > I haven't followed the previous discussions closely. As someone who mostly > follows the discussions passively and only rarely posts something to the > list, I have two major complaints with the current situation: > > * The disconnect between the messages in my mail client and their URLs in > the list archive makes sharing or bookmarking messages a major pain in the > ass. If it were possible for each message to contain its own permalink in > the footer, I would be much happier. It seems this feature is available in > Mailman 3 [1], but the Swift lists seem to be running on Mailman 2.x. > > * The web archive has very bad usability. I suppose design is a matter of > taste, but having the archive organized by week is just wrong. This means > that readers will regularly miss significant parts of threads that cross > week boundaries without even noticing it. > > I don't like the mailing lists (and hadn't subscribed to any for close to > a decade before Swift), but fixing the above two points would go 90% of the > way for me. > > If you're counting votes, I'm also +1 for trying out Discourse. > > Another, less important complaint: > > * Readability is inconsistent because people use different formatting and > email allows full control over HTML. I assume a forum that allows Markdown > strikes the ideal middle ground between some control over formatting but > not needlessly messing with font sizes etc. > > I can understand if the Swift team is hesitant to switch to a forum. If > you have a working mailing list infrastructure everybody at the company is > used to, migrating to a forum is a pretty big undertaking and potential > disruption to the workflow. I'm not certain conversations will be much > easier to follow in a forum. > > I found it very uncomfortable to read the mailing lists in my normal mail > client because I want a totally different UI for the two tasks of reading > swift-evolution vs. reading my regular mail. But this can be solved pretty > easily by using a separate mail client only for the lists. I actually ended > up reading the lists in Thunderbird via NNTP on news.gmane.org. Since > Gmane is currently reorganizing and not adding new lists, this means I > can't do this for new lists like swift-server-dev, but other than that it > works well. The biggest downside is that I am limited to one device because > read status isn’t synced across devices. > > [1]: > https://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2011-October/072379.html > _______________________________________________ > swift-evolution mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution > > > _______________________________________________ > swift-evolution mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution >
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