Stefan Teleman via llvm-dev
2019-Nov-18 17:04 UTC
[llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's discussions
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
David Chisnall via llvm-dev
2019-Nov-18 17:18 UTC
[llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's discussions
On 18/11/2019 17:04, Stefan Teleman via llvm-dev wrote:> In other words, the friction coefficient is directly proportional to > the verbosity of the mailing list.No, that is not what I said. To get a one-off question answered on a mailing list, I have to: 0. Find the correct mailing list, which is not right next to the code. 1. Sign up. 2. Set up a filter for the mail that I don't care about. 3. Go and find the responses (hopefully my mail client does a good job of threading discussions - that varies a lot and most mobile ones are pretty bad) 4. Unsubscribe once my question is answered. How many mailing lists are you subscribed to? How many open source libraries do you use in day-to-day development? For me, at least, the first is <10% of the second and I don't think I'm particularly unrepresentative there. Compare this to a similar flow with something like GitHub issues. I already have a GitHub account and it isn't tied to a single project. If a project encourages questions via their issues tracker (a lot do, and have a 'question' tag for them, so they build up a body of questions that are easy to search), then I just write the question with no login and get a notification via email or one of a handful of other mechanims if anyone replies. The second of these is a far lower investment of my time, but if that interaction goes well then it's the kind of thing that helps build a longer-term relationship with a project. I don't know if Discord or GitHub issues are the correct things, but I'd recommend at least the following requirements: - An easily searchable archive of past questions, ideally integrated with the UI for asking questions so that people asking a question get prompted with prior responses. - No requirement to create an account, or at least the ability to log in with an account that most people already have (e.g. a GitHub account). - An embedded notification mechanism if it takes a while for a response (e.g. emails for when threads that you're watching are notified). David
Rob Conde via llvm-dev
2019-Nov-18 17:25 UTC
[llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's discussions
Some thoughts: * I think there's a psychological difference of a mailing list vs. slack/discord. Slack/discord maybe feels like being in a group of your friends and asking a casual question. A mailing list feels like being in a class and raising your hand to interrupt for a question. * An email is going to go to everyone on the list. The slack/discord message is only going to go to who is in the channel at the moment (not technically...but usually I don't read the history of everything I missed when not in a channel). * It's a positive for a mailing list that you spend the time thinking about what you're going to say as mentioned before...but it also adds a burden for the poster. Some peoples learning style is to talk-it-through, and because the expectation for a mailing list is that you're going to put a lot of thought into your question, it discourages that. * Having a (more or less) immediate back-and-forth on a slack/discord type medium has an entirely different "vibe" than a mailing list. Ultimately, both styles of communication are valuable...especially if they both have searchable histories. Rob ________________________________ From: llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org> on behalf of Stefan Teleman via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> Sent: Monday, November 18, 2019 12:04 PM To: LLVM Dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> Subject: Re: [llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's discussions 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 _______________________________________________ LLVM Developers mailing list llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20191118/23a4e3dd/attachment.html>
Hans Wennborg via llvm-dev
2019-Nov-18 17:33 UTC
[llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's discussions
On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 6:18 PM David Chisnall via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:> > On 18/11/2019 17:04, Stefan Teleman via llvm-dev wrote: > > In other words, the friction coefficient is directly proportional to > > the verbosity of the mailing list. > > > No, that is not what I said. To get a one-off question answered on a > mailing list, I have to: > > 0. Find the correct mailing list, which is not right next to the code. > 1. Sign up. > 2. Set up a filter for the mail that I don't care about. > 3. Go and find the responses (hopefully my mail client does a good job > of threading discussions - that varies a lot and most mobile ones are > pretty bad) > 4. Unsubscribe once my question is answered.With a great-working mailing list, it could just be 1. Find the right list 2. Send email to it 3. Receive responses by email. I guess it doesn't work like that today, but for me this would be the ideal.> > How many mailing lists are you subscribed to? How many open source > libraries do you use in day-to-day development? For me, at least, the > first is <10% of the second and I don't think I'm particularly > unrepresentative there. > > Compare this to a similar flow with something like GitHub issues. I > already have a GitHub account and it isn't tied to a single project. If > a project encourages questions via their issues tracker (a lot do, and > have a 'question' tag for them, so they build up a body of questions > that are easy to search), then I just write the question with no login > and get a notification via email or one of a handful of other mechanims > if anyone replies. > > The second of these is a far lower investment of my time, but if that > interaction goes well then it's the kind of thing that helps build a > longer-term relationship with a project. I don't know if Discord or > GitHub issues are the correct things, but I'd recommend at least the > following requirements: > > - An easily searchable archive of past questions, ideally integrated > with the UI for asking questions so that people asking a question get > prompted with prior responses. > > - No requirement to create an account, or at least the ability to log > in with an account that most people already have (e.g. a GitHub account). > > - An embedded notification mechanism if it takes a while for a > response (e.g. emails for when threads that you're watching are notified). > > David > > _______________________________________________ > LLVM Developers mailing list > llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org > https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
Jonathan Anderson via llvm-dev
2019-Nov-18 17:34 UTC
[llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's discussions
On Nov 18, 2019, at 13:48 , David Chisnall via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:> > […] I don't know if Discord or GitHub issues are the correct things, but I'd recommend at least the following requirements: > > - An easily searchable archive of past questions, ideally integrated with the UI for asking questions so that people asking a question get prompted with prior responses. > > - No requirement to create an account, or at least the ability to log in with an account that most people already have (e.g. a GitHub account). > > - An embedded notification mechanism if it takes a while for a response (e.g. emails for when threads that you're watching are notified).That sounds a lot like Stack Overflow… maybe you want a Q&A site like that to live alongside the medium for back-and-forth discussion (whatever that may be)? Jon -- Assistant Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering Memorial University http://www.engr.mun.ca/~anderson -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20191118/34cc6501/attachment.html> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 3954 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20191118/34cc6501/attachment.bin>
Stefan Teleman via llvm-dev
2019-Nov-18 17:35 UTC
[llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's discussions
On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 12:18 PM David Chisnall via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:> > On 18/11/2019 17:04, Stefan Teleman via llvm-dev wrote: > > In other words, the friction coefficient is directly proportional to > > the verbosity of the mailing list. > > > No, that is not what I said. To get a one-off question answered on a > mailing list, I have to: > > 0. Find the correct mailing list, which is not right next to the code. > 1. Sign up. > 2. Set up a filter for the mail that I don't care about. > 3. Go and find the responses (hopefully my mail client does a good job > of threading discussions - that varies a lot and most mobile ones are > pretty bad) > 4. Unsubscribe once my question is answered.Hmmmm. Really? So, every time you want to ask a question on llvm-dev or cfe-dev, you: 0. Find the appropriate mailing list. 1. Sign up for it. 2. Wait for the subscription confirmation email. 3. Set up a filter. 4. Search for existing answers to your question. 5. If [4] not found, ask your question. 6. Unsubscribe from the mailing list. Really? You are a pretty active contributor to llvm-dev and I find it difficult to believe that, every single time you posted something to llvm-dev, you went through this entire subscribe-search-post-unsubscribe ritual described above. I can tell you that I don't do that. I am subscribed to llvm-dev and cfe-dev -- insofar as LLVM is concerned. Yes, these mailing lists are verbose. Yes, at any given point in time, a majority of the questions or answers posted on these lists aren't directly related to my LLVM or clang interests of the moment. So, those posts that aren't interesting to me, I delete them. The ones that are interesting to me, I flag them with different labels in GMail. Twice a year I do a bulk delete of all the emails from either of these mailing lists based on a "before" filter. Yes, it's work. It's work that I signed up for when I subscribed to these mailing lists. I don't find it particularly onerous or exhausting. -- Stefan Teleman stefan.teleman at gmail.com
Mehdi AMINI via llvm-dev
2019-Nov-18 18:00 UTC
[llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's discussions
On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 9:25 AM Rob Conde via llvm-dev < llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:> Some thoughts: > > - I think there's a psychological difference of a mailing list vs. > slack/discord. Slack/discord maybe feels like being in a group of your > friends and asking a casual question. A mailing list feels like being in a > class and raising your hand to interrupt for a question. > - An email is going to go to everyone on the list. The slack/discord > message is only going to go to who is in the channel at the moment (not > technically...but usually I don't read the history of everything I missed > when not in a channel). > - It's a positive for a mailing list that you spend the time thinking > about what you're going to say as mentioned before...but it also adds a > burden for the poster. Some peoples learning style is to talk-it-through, > and because the expectation for a mailing list is that you're going to put > a lot of thought into your question, it discourages that. > - Having a (more or less) immediate back-and-forth on a slack/discord > type medium has an entirely different "vibe" than a mailing list. > >It was maybe a mistake to couple the two topics (IRC/email vs discord/discourse) in the same thread, because I'm confused by the comparison of discord vs mailing-lists. My understanding is that Slack/discord is intended to replace our IRC channel and *not* the mailing-lists. Separately there is also *Discourse* which is a better replacement for the mailing-lists: this is closer to an online forum. Discourse also has a "mailing-list" mode where you can receive *everything* through email and answer by email (it gets posted to the thread in discourse). I don't have a strong opinion on Discord, but am very much in favor of Discourse: not only it plays "OK" with email but it allows to have subcategories, to move thread around, to subscribe to particular categories (or a specific thread) to get notifications and mute others. Creating a new category on Discourse is also much less process-oriented than creating a mailing-list (sometimes the tool can make something very smooth/usable: just like git made working with branches natural). It also allows to have every subproject share a common "community" space that does not really exist today: this thread is a good example: it lives on llvm-dev@ and does not include the mailing-lists of the other sub-projects. So llvm-dev@ is mixing technical content with the community management? Someone working on LLDB *has to* follow closely llvm-dev and filter out the 95% technical content to get the 5% they want? Of course we could create more and more mailing-list: but we never did (discoverability isn't great, managing subscription is annoying, and creating a mailing-list isn't a "light-weight process). Best, -- Mehdi> Ultimately, both styles of communication are valuable...especially if they > both have searchable histories. > > Rob > ------------------------------ > *From:* llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org> on behalf of Stefan > Teleman via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> > *Sent:* Monday, November 18, 2019 12:04 PM > *To:* LLVM Dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> > *Subject:* Re: [llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for > LLVM's discussions > > 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 > _______________________________________________ > LLVM Developers mailing list > llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org > https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev > _______________________________________________ > LLVM Developers mailing list > llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org > https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev >On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 9:25 AM Rob Conde via llvm-dev < llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:> Some thoughts: > > - I think there's a psychological difference of a mailing list vs. > slack/discord. Slack/discord maybe feels like being in a group of your > friends and asking a casual question. A mailing list feels like being in a > class and raising your hand to interrupt for a question. > - An email is going to go to everyone on the list. The slack/discord > message is only going to go to who is in the channel at the moment (not > technically...but usually I don't read the history of everything I missed > when not in a channel). > - It's a positive for a mailing list that you spend the time thinking > about what you're going to say as mentioned before...but it also adds a > burden for the poster. Some peoples learning style is to talk-it-through, > and because the expectation for a mailing list is that you're going to put > a lot of thought into your question, it discourages that. > - Having a (more or less) immediate back-and-forth on a slack/discord > type medium has an entirely different "vibe" than a mailing list. > > Ultimately, both styles of communication are valuable...especially if they > both have searchable histories. > > Rob > ------------------------------ > *From:* llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org> on behalf of Stefan > Teleman via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> > *Sent:* Monday, November 18, 2019 12:04 PM > *To:* LLVM Dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> > *Subject:* Re: [llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for > LLVM's discussions > > 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 > _______________________________________________ > LLVM Developers mailing list > llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org > https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev > _______________________________________________ > LLVM Developers mailing list > llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org > https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev >-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20191118/36e5d9dd/attachment.html>