Migrate to Mailing Lists to Modern Forum Software

[Andrew Dinn]

On 28/12/2020 01:58, Netroby wrote:
> Don't be afraid of new technology.
> Github discussion send thread, post via email also.

Please don't jump to mischaracterise people's legitimate objections. 
Assuming that Mario's concerns arise out of fear rather than experience 
comes across as insensitive and patronising.

> It's just a mail list (if you like mail lists). and also provided user
> an mail list archives web UI

That's just not so. github threads are very different to a mail list, 
most significantly in the way they are linearized by being presented and 
continued (by some or, frequently, all parties to a discussion) in a 
single chain of comments in one browser window. That has a subtle but 
deeply significant effect on the nature of the discourse, forcing long 
and complex discussion (ones that regularly, albeit infrequently, happen 
in this project and often matter the most) into a distorted and 
hard-to-follow/extend flow. It also has an effect on one's ability to 
reconstruct a dialogue after the event, which is very important to the 
project, this being the record of our decision-making process.

I don't believe the ability to use email interoperably with github makes 
up for that shortfall. I don't make that claim lightly or without 
experience, having regularly used github as the project lead on Byteman 
for almost 10 years now, as a contributor to the GraalVM project for 
over 4 years and as a reviewer for OpenJDK since we switched to github. 
It is especially the last experience where the reliance on github 
discussions bites most. Complex reviews require a great deal of detailed 
negotiation and I have been very aware of the limitations github has 
created in that regard. Reviewers have sometimes managed to negotiate 
reviews via email only (or mostly), avoiding some of the problems the 
github web UI creates. However, in many cases the mix of some 
communications sent via github and others sent via email has jumbled up 
independnt elements of a discussion and made it harder to respond to and 
follow-up different concerns.

> All the threads and posts you can see there and your mailbox.

See above.

> Not quite more big changes. don't be afraid.
> You lost nothing.
> everything is working just fine.

Well, respectfully, it's not working just fine. It's working, yes, but 
only because we can escape to email when we really need to (and even 
then not as well as it should). I am happy to acknowledge that we gained 
some great things when we moved to github (thanks to the worthy efforts 
of the Skara team!) but my experience is that we also ceded significant 
quality in our discussion to what you present as 'mere matters of format'.

And like I said, please cut the crap about emotional responses.

regards,


Andrew Dinn
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Red Hat Distinguished Engineer
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