Tobias Hieta via llvm-dev
2021-Jun-23 12:59 UTC
[llvm-dev] [cfe-dev] Mailing List Status Update
Hello, As a newer member of the LLVM community, I certainly would appreciate using Discourse over mailing lists. I find the mailing list intimidating and hard to format code and discussions well. It just feels like a relic - to me. But I wanted to touch on a point below as well:> We went through many of these same discussions a while ago about > moving away from IRC and email at the same time. There was no > community consensus during that discussion, but for various reasons > the end result was a fracturing of the community (some people went to > Discord, some people stayed on IRC, and now both communities have to > tell members "if you don't get an answer here, try on the other > service or the mailing lists"). IMO, this left us with a community > that's less approachable because new people are never really certain > if they're asking their questions "in the right place", especially > when a failure to get an answer to their question requires them to try > again on a different service. I am worried that a switch from email on > the -dev mailing lists to using Discourse will result in a similar > fracturing, as discussions will still be possible via email on > -commits. To me personally, the possibility of further fracturing the > community is a concern I think we need to take very seriously.I am very active in the Discord and try my best to help people and while I often refer people to post to the mailing list if they can't find an answer, I have never and never seen anyone direct new people to the IRC channel. One thing I haven't seen in this discussion is the fact that Discord and Discourse is way more approachable for people who haven't used IRC and email their whole life. I understand there must be a balance between keeping current contributors happy and attracting new ones. But keeping discussions in the mail-list over discourse would (In MY opinion) favor current/older contributors way higher than newer ones. Thanks, Tobias
Renato Golin via llvm-dev
2021-Jun-23 15:59 UTC
[llvm-dev] [cfe-dev] Mailing List Status Update
On Wed, 23 Jun 2021 at 13:59, Tobias Hieta via llvm-dev < llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:> I am very active in the Discord and try my best to help people and > while I often refer people to post to the mailing list if they can't > find an answer, I have never and never seen anyone direct new people > to the IRC channel. >Well, it's not surprising that people who use Discord don't propose the use of IRC (and vice versa), but this doesn't make the community less fractured. One thing I haven't seen in this discussion is the fact that Discord> and Discourse is way more approachable for people who haven't used IRC > and email their whole life. I understand there must be a balance > between keeping current contributors happy and attracting new ones. > But keeping discussions in the mail-list over discourse would (In MY > opinion) favor current/older contributors way higher than newer ones. >Attracting new people is very important for open source projects. Older people (like me) tend to be a lot less passionate about changes. But this is not a goal per se, just a constraint on other goals. The main objective of the list is to discuss the project, long and hard issues, and both old and new people can use mailing lists with pretty much any mail client out there. If the argument to move to Discourse is because it's better for long and hard discussions for the majority of the community, then that's a clear signal. If it's just because it's where all the cool kids are these days, then I think we're looking for the wrong goals. 5 years ago, all cool kids (*) were using Slack, now they're using Discourse / Discord, who knows where they'll all be in 5 years time? I don't think popularity should be a factor in choosing a new tool, or we'll be eternally chasing doomed platforms. cheers, -renato PS (*): My definition of "cool kids" may be different than yours, Slack probably was never "cool" for the masses... But we're hopefully not considering Instagram any time soon. :D -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20210623/231cfe91/attachment.html>