llvm dev - Nov 2019 - RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's discussions

>
> |  mailing lists for longer-form discussions are unfamiliar, difficult,
> and often intimidating for newcomers
>
> Um… what?  While I know (via my own children) that folks nowadays use
> multiple avenues of communication, it’s **really** hard to imagine email
> as a **mechanism** being unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating.  Moving to a
> new mechanism wouldn’t alter the fact of the very large number of strangers
> participating, which to my mind would be the
> unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating part.
> --paulr

In my (18) personal opinion, I feel that email is a somewhat difficult
mechanism of communicating, simply because email requires a different and
often complex style of formulating an email and etiquette compared to the
instant messaging style of being able to send a few worded messages due to
the low cost of sending messages and editing messages. The person writing
an email would have to make sure that whatever they send is correct the
first time since there is no editing of send messages and the only way to
keep a history through email is by either the subject or what is quoted.

A few benefit of using Discord or other new mechanisms that I prefer to
have over just emailing list are code formatting, being able to group
people together (devs of x, list moderators, etc), and the ability to
casually talk about stuff other than just meta or code related issues.
Being able to communicate with other developers casually helps reinforce
that the other devs are also human and not just a bunch of coders behind a
computer screen that might judge you for every word you might say.


On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 8:49 AM Robinson, Paul via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> |  mailing lists for longer-form discussions are unfamiliar, difficult,
> and often intimidating for newcomers
>
>
>
> Um… what?  While I know (via my own children) that folks nowadays use
> multiple avenues of communication, it’s **really** hard to imagine email
> as a **mechanism** being unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating.  Moving to a
> new mechanism wouldn’t alter the fact of the very large number of strangers
> participating, which to my mind would be the
> unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating part.
>
> --paulr
>
>
>
> *From:* llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org> *On Behalf Of
*Chandler
> Carruth via llvm-dev
> *Sent:* Monday, November 18, 2019 2:48 AM
> *To:* llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>
> *Subject:* [llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for
LLVM's
> discussions
>
>
>
> Hello everyone,
>
>
> *Short version: *I've set up an LLVM Discord server for real time chat
> (similar to IRC) and an LLVM Discourse server for forums (similar to email
> lists):
> https://discord.gg/xS7Z362
> https://llvm.discourse.group/
>
> Please join and use these new services. They are only partially set up and
> still very new, so don't hesitate to improve them and/or reach out to
this
> thread with any issues you see or things you want to fix. Also, both
> services have dedicated feedback channels.
>
> Do feel free to use Discourse for technical discussions, although try not
> to create duplicate discussions (any more than you would between the lists
> and Bugzilla) and make sure the people you're having the discussion
with
> are fine using Discourse instead of the email list. In case Discourse
> doesn't work out, we'll collect and archive everything so it
isn't lost.
>
>
> *Longer version & more details: *During this year's Women in
Compilers
> and Tools meeting, folks expressed very clearly that our communication
> systems cause a non-trivial amount of friction for new people trying to
> find out about, learn, or contribute to LLVM. Both IRC for chatting and
> mailing lists for longer-form discussions are unfamiliar, difficult, and
> often intimidating for newcomers. While I have long been a fan and
> resistant to change in these areas, the feedback from folks at WiCT was
> compelling and important for us as a community to address. Even if it means
> I have to let go of my precious IRC. ;]
>
> We talked to a bunch of people and looked at the options out there and the
> most promising ones were Discord for chatting and Discourse for longer-form
> discussions. Meike and I have set up both an initial Discord and Discourse
> server. You can find them here:
> https://discord.gg/xS7Z362
>
> https://llvm.discourse.group/
>
>
> There is still a lot of work to be done. Notably, it'd be great for
folks
> to clean up and improve the summaries for each of the groups in Discourse,
> and I'll be asking various people to help moderate on both Discourse
and
> Discord. If you'd like to help out with a specific set of improvements
to
> these, don't hesitate to reach out to me or Meike and we can get you
set
> up. Some specific things we're already working on:
>
>    - Getting Discord verified with a nice URL.
>    - Archives of mailing lists on Discourse so you can search in one
>    place, etc.
>
>
>    - See the plan here:
>      
https://llvm.discourse.group/t/mirroring-and-archiving-llvm-mailing-lists-on-discourse/61
>
>
>    - Moving Discourse to forums.llvm.org.
>    - Documenting the best way to move to Discourse while preserving a
>    similarly email-focused workflow.
>
>
> We're just adding these for now, but I'd like people to seriously
try
> using them. While IRC has served us fairly well, I think it is one of the
> bigger barriers to entry. Our email lists are more effective, but also have
> had serious infrastructure challenges over the years: a constant flow of
> spam, bouncing for several major email providers, etc. Discourse has very
> powerful email-based workflows available and I think we should seriously
> consider moving to Discourse long-term instead of the email lists.
>
> I also want to say thanks to all the folks at the WiCT workshop for giving
> me and others feedback. I was pretty set in my ways around these kind of
> things, but hearing the kinds of challenges this has posed to people less
> established in the community was a real eye opener. It takes a lot to speak
> up like this, and I really appreciate it. I hope this also helps start to
> address these long-standing issues. Also a huge thanks to Tanya for
> organizing the WICT workshop and Meike for helping drive this message home
> to me and doing a bunch of the work getting these things set up. I
wouldn't
> have been able to do it without her help, especially around Discord bots.
>
> -Chandler
> _______________________________________________
> LLVM Developers mailing list
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
> https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
>
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Hi Christopher,

Yes, email takes longer to put together.  I find this a good thing.  It forces
me to think harder about what I’m saying, and even in the course of re-drafting
this message I have changed my mind several times.  There’s no value to putting
you through my internal debates.  Anything that encourages more thoughtfulness
of posts is a good thing.

“Editing of sent messages” sounds like a path to Orwellian revisionism and not a
healthy thing.  (The last time I did it was when my Slack client unexpectedly
seized focus and posted part of my password.)  Why is this better than thinking
more carefully about what to say in the first place?  In a chat-like forum the
give-and-take lets me fix things without rewriting history.  In email I’m more
careful but I can still correct myself as needed.

I also don’t like communicating with selected sub-groups because it fragments
communication and history.  A number of times, people have contacted me
privately, and in many cases it isn’t genuinely private so I redirect the
conversation to the lists.  I *want* to see what’s going on all over the
project, because I have no idea what might be relevant to my work.  As it
happens I am a long-time member of what we jokingly refer to as the “debug-info
cabal” but we don’t have private discussions that exclude everyone else.  That’s
bad for the health of the community.
This is different from having a web forum with sub-forums identified by broad
topic, which are still open to everyone; that’s a reasonable way to organize
things.

Regarding people judging what you say… In a technical forum, the work product
should be what matters, and I’ve found addressing comments to the work product
rather than the person makes a huge difference.  (FTR it took me two tries to
rewrite this post that way. I hope the result is essentially non-judgmental.)
--paulr

From: Christopher Degawa <ccom at randomderp.com>
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2019 9:12 AM
To: Robinson, Paul <paul.robinson at sony.com>
Cc: Chandler Carruth <chandlerc at gmail.com>; llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
Subject: Re: [llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's
discussions

|  mailing lists for longer-form discussions are unfamiliar, difficult, and
often intimidating for newcomers

Um… what?  While I know (via my own children) that folks nowadays use multiple
avenues of communication, it’s *really* hard to imagine email as a *mechanism*
being unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating.  Moving to a new mechanism wouldn’t
alter the fact of the very large number of strangers participating, which to my
mind would be the unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating part.
--paulr

In my (18) personal opinion, I feel that email is a somewhat difficult mechanism
of communicating, simply because email requires a different and often complex
style of formulating an email and etiquette compared to the instant messaging
style of being able to send a few worded messages due to the low cost of sending
messages and editing messages. The person writing an email would have to make
sure that whatever they send is correct the first time since there is no editing
of send messages and the only way to keep a history through email is by either
the subject or what is quoted.

A few benefit of using Discord or other new mechanisms that I prefer to have
over just emailing list are code formatting, being able to group people together
(devs of x, list moderators, etc), and the ability to casually talk about stuff
other than just meta or code related issues. Being able to communicate with
other developers casually helps reinforce that the other devs are also human and
not just a bunch of coders behind a computer screen that might judge you for
every word you might say.

On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 8:49 AM Robinson, Paul via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at
lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
|  mailing lists for longer-form discussions are unfamiliar, difficult, and
often intimidating for newcomers

Um… what?  While I know (via my own children) that folks nowadays use multiple
avenues of communication, it’s *really* hard to imagine email as a *mechanism*
being unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating.  Moving to a new mechanism wouldn’t
alter the fact of the very large number of strangers participating, which to my
mind would be the unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating part.
--paulr

From: llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev-bounces
at lists.llvm.org>> On Behalf Of Chandler Carruth via llvm-dev
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2019 2:48 AM
To: llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev at
lists.llvm.org>>
Subject: [llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's
discussions

Hello everyone,

Short version:
I've set up an LLVM Discord server for real time chat (similar to IRC) and
an LLVM Discourse server for forums (similar to email lists):
https://discord.gg/xS7Z362
https://llvm.discourse.group/

Please join and use these new services. They are only partially set up and still
very new, so don't hesitate to improve them and/or reach out to this thread
with any issues you see or things you want to fix. Also, both services have
dedicated feedback channels.

Do feel free to use Discourse for technical discussions, although try not to
create duplicate discussions (any more than you would between the lists and
Bugzilla) and make sure the people you're having the discussion with are
fine using Discourse instead of the email list. In case Discourse doesn't
work out, we'll collect and archive everything so it isn't lost.

Longer version & more details:
During this year's Women in Compilers and Tools meeting, folks expressed
very clearly that our communication systems cause a non-trivial amount of
friction for new people trying to find out about, learn, or contribute to LLVM.
Both IRC for chatting and mailing lists for longer-form discussions are
unfamiliar, difficult, and often intimidating for newcomers. While I have long
been a fan and resistant to change in these areas, the feedback from folks at
WiCT was compelling and important for us as a community to address. Even if it
means I have to let go of my precious IRC. ;]

We talked to a bunch of people and looked at the options out there and the most
promising ones were Discord for chatting and Discourse for longer-form
discussions. Meike and I have set up both an initial Discord and Discourse
server. You can find them here:
https://discord.gg/xS7Z362
https://llvm.discourse.group/

There is still a lot of work to be done. Notably, it'd be great for folks to
clean up and improve the summaries for each of the groups in Discourse, and
I'll be asking various people to help moderate on both Discourse and
Discord. If you'd like to help out with a specific set of improvements to
these, don't hesitate to reach out to me or Meike and we can get you set up.
Some specific things we're already working on:

  *   Getting Discord verified with a nice URL.
  *   Archives of mailing lists on Discourse so you can search in one place,
etc.

     *   See the plan here:
https://llvm.discourse.group/t/mirroring-and-archiving-llvm-mailing-lists-on-discourse/61

  *   Moving Discourse to forums.llvm.org<http://forums.llvm.org>.
  *   Documenting the best way to move to Discourse while preserving a similarly
email-focused workflow.

We're just adding these for now, but I'd like people to seriously try
using them. While IRC has served us fairly well, I think it is one of the bigger
barriers to entry. Our email lists are more effective, but also have had serious
infrastructure challenges over the years: a constant flow of spam, bouncing for
several major email providers, etc. Discourse has very powerful email-based
workflows available and I think we should seriously consider moving to Discourse
long-term instead of the email lists.

I also want to say thanks to all the folks at the WiCT workshop for giving me
and others feedback. I was pretty set in my ways around these kind of things,
but hearing the kinds of challenges this has posed to people less established in
the community was a real eye opener. It takes a lot to speak up like this, and I
really appreciate it. I hope this also helps start to address these
long-standing issues. Also a huge thanks to Tanya for organizing the WICT
workshop and Meike for helping drive this message home to me and doing a bunch
of the work getting these things set up. I wouldn't have been able to do it
without her help, especially around Discord bots.

-Chandler
_______________________________________________
LLVM Developers mailing list
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>
https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
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Hi Paulr,

I wholly agree with your points.
I do find the necessity of meandering over what to type and whatnot to be
beneficial to both the sender and the receiver to try to make sure what is
being typed is meaningful and useful and this method is in line with what
students are often taught when making a rough draft before submitting the
final, that being said, doing so may be difficult to do for some and a few
might just opt to never participate and delete any draft they might be
composing.

That being said, I'm not against having a mailing-list since one benefit of
using email versus IM is that people generally are not expected to respond
to an email immediately and it's much easier to peruse the history of a
mailing-list (Online archives being available and being able to google
search a keyword being a main contributor). Plus the responder could easily
stew over a response since after all, there is no "read" receipt nor
expectation on the convince of emailing.

“Editing of sent messages” sounds like a path to Orwellian revisionism
and
> not a healthy thing
This is similar to the whole debate on git history, whether or not to fix
up any mistaks etc before merging or keep the original history and send a
new *mistakes commits etc.
I believe that during the review (reading) it's better to keep as is, (
With the "Fix typo" messages) and rebase/squash commits into logical
messages if possible  at the end right before merging.
However, I do believe that edits that change the whole message to be bad
and should be discouraged, however, edits that improve the meaning should
be beneficial.

When I mean "group people together", I mean more like being able to
address
an open question to people who may be more familiar with a certain section
of code, for example, if I wanted to address the developers who are more
familiar with the code for clang, I would need to either look at the git
blame or history of the clang subfolder to find which devs I might be able
to ask the question to or look at the list of llvm mailing list and wonder
which cfe list I need to subscribe to ask my question. Comparatively, being
able to ask @clang-dev or look into the #clang channel is much easier than
going through the whole debacle of wondering which mailing list to ask.

Aside: One problem I find myself in constantly is wondering if my emails
are too long when trying to reply to another email. In another aside, at
the time of writing this, I'm also considering to not even hit send and
just press the trash button.


On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 10:59 AM Robinson, Paul <paul.robinson at
sony.com>
wrote:
> Hi Christopher,
>
>
>
> Yes, email takes longer to put together.  I find this a good thing.  It
> forces me to think harder about what I’m saying, and even in the course of
> re-drafting this message I have changed my mind several times.  There’s no
> value to putting you through my internal debates.  Anything that encourages
> more thoughtfulness of posts is a good thing.
>
>
>
> “Editing of sent messages” sounds like a path to Orwellian revisionism and
> not a healthy thing.  (The last time I did it was when my Slack client
> unexpectedly seized focus and posted part of my password.)  Why is this
> better than thinking more carefully about what to say in the first place?
> In a chat-like forum the give-and-take lets me fix things without rewriting
> history.  In email I’m more careful but I can still correct myself as
> needed.
>
>
>
> I also don’t like communicating with selected sub-groups because it
> fragments communication and history.  A number of times, people have
> contacted me privately, and in many cases it isn’t genuinely private so I
> redirect the conversation to the lists.  I **want** to see what’s going
> on all over the project, because I have no idea what might be relevant to
> my work.  As it happens I am a long-time member of what we jokingly refer
> to as the “debug-info cabal” but we don’t have private discussions that
> exclude everyone else.  That’s bad for the health of the community.
>
> This is different from having a web forum with sub-forums identified by
> broad topic, which are still open to everyone; that’s a reasonable way to
> organize things.
>
>
>
> Regarding people judging what you say… In a technical forum, the work
> product should be what matters, and I’ve found addressing comments to the
> work product rather than the person makes a huge difference.  (FTR it took
> me two tries to rewrite this post that way. I hope the result is
> essentially non-judgmental.)
>
> --paulr
>
>
>
> *From:* Christopher Degawa <ccom at randomderp.com>
> *Sent:* Monday, November 18, 2019 9:12 AM
> *To:* Robinson, Paul <paul.robinson at sony.com>
> *Cc:* Chandler Carruth <chandlerc at gmail.com>; llvm-dev at
lists.llvm.org
> *Subject:* Re: [llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for
> LLVM's discussions
>
>
>
> |  mailing lists for longer-form discussions are unfamiliar, difficult,
> and often intimidating for newcomers
>
> Um… what?  While I know (via my own children) that folks nowadays use
> multiple avenues of communication, it’s **really** hard to imagine email
> as a **mechanism** being unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating.  Moving to a
> new mechanism wouldn’t alter the fact of the very large number of strangers
> participating, which to my mind would be the
> unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating part.
> --paulr
>
>
>
> In my (18) personal opinion, I feel that email is a somewhat difficult
> mechanism of communicating, simply because email requires a different and
> often complex style of formulating an email and etiquette compared to the
> instant messaging style of being able to send a few worded messages due to
> the low cost of sending messages and editing messages. The person writing
> an email would have to make sure that whatever they send is correct the
> first time since there is no editing of send messages and the only way to
> keep a history through email is by either the subject or what is quoted.
>
>
> A few benefit of using Discord or other new mechanisms that I prefer to
> have over just emailing list are code formatting, being able to group
> people together (devs of x, list moderators, etc), and the ability to
> casually talk about stuff other than just meta or code related issues.
> Being able to communicate with other developers casually helps reinforce
> that the other devs are also human and not just a bunch of coders behind a
> computer screen that might judge you for every word you might say.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 8:49 AM Robinson, Paul via llvm-dev <
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
> |  mailing lists for longer-form discussions are unfamiliar, difficult,
> and often intimidating for newcomers
>
>
>
> Um… what?  While I know (via my own children) that folks nowadays use
> multiple avenues of communication, it’s **really** hard to imagine email
> as a **mechanism** being unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating.  Moving to a
> new mechanism wouldn’t alter the fact of the very large number of strangers
> participating, which to my mind would be the
> unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating part.
>
> --paulr
>
>
>
> *From:* llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org> *On Behalf Of
*Chandler
> Carruth via llvm-dev
> *Sent:* Monday, November 18, 2019 2:48 AM
> *To:* llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>
> *Subject:* [llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for
LLVM's
> discussions
>
>
>
> Hello everyone,
>
>
> *Short version: *I've set up an LLVM Discord server for real time chat
> (similar to IRC) and an LLVM Discourse server for forums (similar to email
> lists):
> https://discord.gg/xS7Z362
> https://llvm.discourse.group/
>
> Please join and use these new services. They are only partially set up and
> still very new, so don't hesitate to improve them and/or reach out to
this
> thread with any issues you see or things you want to fix. Also, both
> services have dedicated feedback channels.
>
> Do feel free to use Discourse for technical discussions, although try not
> to create duplicate discussions (any more than you would between the lists
> and Bugzilla) and make sure the people you're having the discussion
with
> are fine using Discourse instead of the email list. In case Discourse
> doesn't work out, we'll collect and archive everything so it
isn't lost.
>
>
> *Longer version & more details: *During this year's Women in
Compilers
> and Tools meeting, folks expressed very clearly that our communication
> systems cause a non-trivial amount of friction for new people trying to
> find out about, learn, or contribute to LLVM. Both IRC for chatting and
> mailing lists for longer-form discussions are unfamiliar, difficult, and
> often intimidating for newcomers. While I have long been a fan and
> resistant to change in these areas, the feedback from folks at WiCT was
> compelling and important for us as a community to address. Even if it means
> I have to let go of my precious IRC. ;]
>
> We talked to a bunch of people and looked at the options out there and the
> most promising ones were Discord for chatting and Discourse for longer-form
> discussions. Meike and I have set up both an initial Discord and Discourse
> server. You can find them here:
> https://discord.gg/xS7Z362
>
> https://llvm.discourse.group/
>
>
> There is still a lot of work to be done. Notably, it'd be great for
folks
> to clean up and improve the summaries for each of the groups in Discourse,
> and I'll be asking various people to help moderate on both Discourse
and
> Discord. If you'd like to help out with a specific set of improvements
to
> these, don't hesitate to reach out to me or Meike and we can get you
set
> up. Some specific things we're already working on:
>
>    - Getting Discord verified with a nice URL.
>    - Archives of mailing lists on Discourse so you can search in one
>    place, etc.
>
>
>    - See the plan here:
>      
https://llvm.discourse.group/t/mirroring-and-archiving-llvm-mailing-lists-on-discourse/61
>
>
>    - Moving Discourse to forums.llvm.org.
>    - Documenting the best way to move to Discourse while preserving a
>    similarly email-focused workflow.
>
>
> We're just adding these for now, but I'd like people to seriously
try
> using them. While IRC has served us fairly well, I think it is one of the
> bigger barriers to entry. Our email lists are more effective, but also have
> had serious infrastructure challenges over the years: a constant flow of
> spam, bouncing for several major email providers, etc. Discourse has very
> powerful email-based workflows available and I think we should seriously
> consider moving to Discourse long-term instead of the email lists.
>
> I also want to say thanks to all the folks at the WiCT workshop for giving
> me and others feedback. I was pretty set in my ways around these kind of
> things, but hearing the kinds of challenges this has posed to people less
> established in the community was a real eye opener. It takes a lot to speak
> up like this, and I really appreciate it. I hope this also helps start to
> address these long-standing issues. Also a huge thanks to Tanya for
> organizing the WICT workshop and Meike for helping drive this message home
> to me and doing a bunch of the work getting these things set up. I
wouldn't
> have been able to do it without her help, especially around Discord bots.
>
> -Chandler
>
> _______________________________________________
> LLVM Developers mailing list
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
> https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
>
>
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