On Monday 03 February 2014 13:24:27 Noy wrote:
> Most developers are on the ML. It still remains the main development
> communication path. Just last week loony cyborg wanted the project to buy
> some piece of software. I wasn't too sure how to answer him so what did I
> suggest? Go to the ML. There wasn't much response, but its still elicited
> some response.
As far as I remember, all response took place in a private, *non-logged*
channel on IRC, which makes sense given that the subject has financial
implications for Wesnoth Inc, and administrative implications for the
Wesnoth.org administrators. But as far as I can tell from looking at my email
client and gna's ML archive, there weren't any responses on this mailing list,
and connecting an email to contemporaneous IRC conversations is decidedly non-
trivial for outsiders.
> In my mind, the biggest problem with your proposal is the actual transition.
> You're going to have to convince everybody to use the forum.
We have had to convince everybody to do things before, and still have to do
regularly. There doesn't have to be a forced transition from one channel to
another (see below).
> The forum would only increase the useless noise level in serious development
> threads, for the most part with people who have very little invested in the
> actual development of the program.
As far as I know, the Developers' Discussion forum was restricted to Forum
Regulars precisely to avoid situations like these. Anyone with a title who
steps out of line can be demoted, jailed, or temporarily or permanently banned
at the forum staff's discretion; Forum Regulars are in no way exempt from
this. Of course, the group is barely maintained nowadays precisely because
there is pretty much no interest from the development team in using
Developers' Discussion, so both the forum and the group have been rendered
virtually useless by abandonment.
> Just imagine trying to have the iPhone discussion several years back but
> with far more rancour and accusations: it would be impossible to get a
> useful debate out of that forums.
You appear to have overlooked the part where I pointed at this, the Culture of
Discussion thread, and the asheviere status thread(s) as specifically best
suited for the mailing list. It would be senseless of my part to suggest that
kind of discussion to take place in an open medium. That's also why
Moderators' Forum, our non-logged IRC channels, and private bug tracker
entries exist -- for everything that cannot be discussed in the open due to
privacy, security, or noise concerns.
> Finally, it also removes a lot of former developers and interested parties
> from pertinent discussions. Many of the older devs might not be active IRC
> participants, but they do read emails because they are supposed to be an
> digest of views. Lets say that someone wants to undertake a change in the
> UI. There are several former developers who I know still read the ML and can
> add their perspective, as they have in the past. Many are not going to
> migrate over to the forums, so you've just removed them from the ongoing
> development discussion. That's an exceptionally bad outcome in my mind.
Fair point, but I really wish at least those people had provided some kind of
feedback to certain threads [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] in the past to
make the ML more useful.
1: https://mail.gna.org/public/wesnoth-dev/2014-01/msg00004.html
2: https://mail.gna.org/public/wesnoth-dev/2014-01/msg00009.html
3: https://mail.gna.org/public/wesnoth-dev/2014-01/msg00014.html
4: https://mail.gna.org/public/wesnoth-dev/2013-12/msg00002.html
(This one was resolved on IRC *weeks* later. Again, how is an outsider
supposed to know that?)
5: https://mail.gna.org/public/wesnoth-dev/2013-11/msg00012.html
6: https://mail.gna.org/public/wesnoth-dev/2013-08/msg00003.html
7: https://mail.gna.org/public/wesnoth-dev/2012-12/msg00002.html
8: https://mail.gna.org/public/wesnoth-dev/2012-01/msg00015.html
There is nothing more frustrating for me than to post a thread to the ML, wait
weeks for an answer that never arrives, and then either:
1) Abandon the subject entirely because of perceived lack of interest from my
peers; or
2) Go and make a bad decision on my own without anyone to shout at me before
the changes land in master.
Comments that other people (cf Ivanovic's email) may perceive as noise at
least tell me that there is interest and that my time and energy are being
well-spent, that my work is appreciated (or hated by immature trolls, that
also works) and that Wesnoth is moving forwards as a result.
> So that should not be the approach we take. I think what we should try to do
> is to try to better use the ML [...]
So that would address that concern, but it would still perpetuate the current
state of communicational isolation from the userbase -- the userbase from
which we are supposed to get more developers to replace us as time passes by.
(Unless you expect everyone present now to still have time for Wesnoth two
years from now.)
Of course, that may also be solved by proper promotion of the mailing list. As
I said before, finding information on how to contribute to Wesnoth isn't a
one-click task at the moment. If we are to improve the wiki structure to solve
that, then we could also go and state in big bold letters that the only
official channels for development discussions are IRC and the mailing list,
and close down the Developers' Discussion forum permanently to avoid confusion
from new developers and starting contributors.
--
Regards
Ignacio R. Morelle <shadowm>
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