> On Feb 2, 2017, at 6:37 PM, Xiaodi Wu <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 8:03 PM, Ted kremenek via swift-evolution >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >>> On Feb 2, 2017, at 5:35 PM, Karl Wagner via swift-evolution >>> <[email protected]> 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?
These are really interesting points. From my perspective, I'm not quite so concerned about this because of how I have witnessed the evolution process working in practice. Everyone's message is not treated equally — instead they are evaluated based on the quality of their substance. When arguments for or against evolution proposals get evaluated — and eventually arbitrated into a decision — it is rarely a strict popularity contest for an idea, but rather a balancing of the arguments made. Essentially your comment about "thoughtful critiques", which ultimately I think provides the most meaningful guidance towards reaching decisions on language changes. That's not to say that a ton of +1's on an argument doesn't have signal — but I'd never like to see that become a direct "vote".
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