On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 6:37 PM, Xiaodi Wu via swift-evolution < swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 8:03 PM, Ted kremenek via swift-evolution < > swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote: > >> >> >> On Feb 2, 2017, at 5:35 PM, Karl Wagner via swift-evolution < >> swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote: >> >> It's at least worth a beta test. >> >> >> There are real concerns to work out here — just moving to the forum >> blindly would be bad if it is highly disruptive to the community having >> important discussions. I DO think a forum is likely the way to go, but I >> also am not dismissive that individuals who are highly active on >> swift-evolution that prefer an email workflow will not have their own >> participation significantly compromised by just moving to a forum in a >> cavalier way. >> >> What I have enjoyed seeing from this thread is a healthy discussion about >> tradeoffs of both approaches and an identification of concerns of moving >> away from the mailing lists. Some responses to those concerns have been >> "Discourse can handle that", which to me is part of the evaluation of the >> tradeoffs. I am also really happy that Nate setup the mock Discourse setup >> so we *could* evaluate thing like the email bridge. For example, >> experimenting of whether or not a rich HTML email works versus plain text >> emails for inline responses (which turns out to have problems), etc. >> That's all super useful for actually evaluating moving to Discourse, so in >> my mind we are actually trying things out and identifying problem points. >> >> The other thing I'm considering is the practical logistics of getting >> this set up and maintained (from an infrastructure perspective). That's >> not something that needs to be discussed on this thread — I'd rather the >> thread focus on whether a forum is the right thing for the community. But >> it is still something that is being considered in tandem to this >> discussion, which obviously needs to be figured out before we just jump to >> using Discourse (if that is what we end up doing). >> > > On the topic of whether a forum is the right thing for the community, I > figure I should throw another point into the conversation. Forums are often > designed around a rewards system to encourage participation in approved > ways, and to encourage it frequently. People who write popular posts get > more likes, or stars, or dingbats, and voting is encouraged from the > community to surface the most liked/starred/dingbatted. Just earlier in > this thread, there were explicit calls for any adopted platform to have > liking/unliking features. > > In a mailing list format, everyone is free to start a new thread. Whether > you invented the language or started learning it yesterday, if you have a > new idea, it comes into everyone's inbox in exactly the same way. No one's > user name has extra flares or trophies or whatever reminding you of their > status. Yes, it's true that there have been a proliferation of +1's lately. > It is also true that not too long ago community members reminded each other > not to do that. The mantra, if I recall, was that it wasn't about > soliciting upvotes or downvotes, but rather about posting thoughtful > critiques, new takes on the the idea, alternative designs, etc. > > So I guess I'd sum up the point as this: in the current setup, everyone's > message is treated equally (unless it exceeds the max email size limit, > ugh); in a forum, everyone's likes are treated equally. Are we unsatisfied > with the current community ethos? Do we want the evolution process to be > about what ideas garnered the most votes and whose thoughts are most > popular? > FWIW, I think this point is moot when it comes to Discourse — the max allowed "likes" per day is adjustable, which I believe includes turning it to 0 / off. If it's determined to be harmful to "community ethos" the admins would be free to disable it.
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