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

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.
FWIW, I agree with Paul.

I can't recall an instance when I had difficulty using, or was
intimidated by, email, for saying something on a mailing list.

I am very unclear as to what problem this Discourse thing is supposed
to solve. Being welcoming, or off-putting, has nothing to do with the
form of the communications medium IMO. It has much more to do with the
contents and style of the communication.

-- 
Stefan Teleman
stefan.teleman at gmail.com

On 18/11/2019 16:39, Stefan Teleman via llvm-dev wrote:
> I can't recall an instance when I had difficulty using, or was
> intimidated by, email, for saying something on a mailing list.
Subscribing to a mailing list, particularly one as high-traffic as 
LLVM-Dev, is a high friction activity.  I was contributing to LLVM for 
several years before I subscribed to llvm-dev, because I didn't want to 
deal with the traffic volume (filtering is a lot better now, but having 
to set up a mail filter adds another step for subscribing).  The only 
open source projects that I interact with via mailing lists are ones 
where I am already an contributor.

IRC isn't great, but the web UI makes it a bit better.  In particular, 
it is very low friction: no creating an account, no need to have a 
password, just enter a one-shot username and log in.  It has two problems:

1. The web UI quickly fills up with control messages.  I don't care when 
people have logged on and off most of the time, especially if they were 
idle for 2 hours before they went away.

2. It has no persistence, so you can't ask a question, go away, and come 
back to find the answer.

David

On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 11:55 AM David Chisnall via llvm-dev
<llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
> On 18/11/2019 16:39, Stefan Teleman via llvm-dev wrote:
> > I can't recall an instance when I had difficulty using, or was
> > intimidated by, email, for saying something on a mailing list.
>
> Subscribing to a mailing list, particularly one as high-traffic as
> LLVM-Dev, is a high friction activity.  I was contributing to LLVM for
> several years before I subscribed to llvm-dev, because I didn't want to
> deal with the traffic volume (filtering is a lot better now, but having
> to set up a mail filter adds another step for subscribing).  The only
> open source projects that I interact with via mailing lists are ones
> where I am already an contributor.
In other words, the friction coefficient is directly proportional to
the verbosity of the mailing list.

llvm-dev is very verbose. I.e. high "friction" coefficient. So are
cfe-dev and llvm-commits. O-Well. That's how they are.

I don't quite see how some sort of pretty Web UI will reduce the
friction coefficient. It might introduce a new, "annoyance"
coefficient, because of the added noise of pretty formatting, emojis,
color quoting, and all kinds of other extraneous - and unnecessary -
decorations that have very little to do with the information being
conveyed.

-- 
Stefan Teleman
stefan.teleman at gmail.com