Migrate to Mailing Lists to Modern Forum Software

[Mario Torre]

Hi Florian,

Yes, Gmail interface linearise threads but still keep a correct order of
reference for the messages. If you reply to one comment earlier in the
discussion you still see your comment in context. Also when using an
external reader the thread is of the messages are preserved so you still
see the discussion correctly threaded. Slack and GitHub discussions are
linear by design and all the discussion appears compacted in one single
thread no matter where you read it from.

Cheers,
Mario

On Mon 28. Dec 2020 at 11:47, Florian Weimer <fw at deneb.enyo.de> wrote:

> * Andrew Dinn:
>
> > 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.
>
> On the other hand, few people seem to use (or know of the existence
> of) threaded email readers.  For example, I believe the Gmail web
> frontend is not thread-based.  Gmail's duplicate suppression (which
> can't be switched off) and Mailman's version of it (which is at least
> configurable, but often switched on by default) tend to break
> threading because of missing messages.
>
> I think that's rather unfortunate because as you write, email
> threading is such a useful tool.  But if only a small fraction of
> readers actually use it, it's not a strong argument for email as a
> communication channel.
>
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