llvm dev - Jun 2021 - [cfe-dev] Mailing List Status Update

On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 12:53 PM Chris Lattner via cfe-dev <
cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> On Jun 9, 2021, at 10:50 AM, Philip Reames via llvm-dev <
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
> Specific to the dev lists, I'm very hesitant about moving from mailing
> lists to discourse.  Why?
>
> Well, the first and most basic is I'm worried about having core
> infrastructure out of our own control.  For all their problems, mailing
> lists are widely supported, there are many vendors/contractors available.
> For discourse, as far as I can tell, there's one vendor.  It's very
much a
> take it or leave it situation.  The ability to preserve discussion archives
> through a transition away from discourse someday concerns me.  I regularly
> and routinely need to dig back through llvm-dev threads which are years
> old.  I've also recently had some severely negative customer
experiences
> with other tools (most recently discord), and the thought of having my
> employability and ability to contribute to open source tied to my ability
> to get a response from customer service teams at some third party vendor I
> have no leverage with, bluntly, scares me.
>
> Second, I feel that we've overstated the difficulty of maintaining
mailing
> lists.  I have to acknowledge that I have little first hand experience
> administering mailman, so maybe I'm way off here.
>
> Hi Philip,
>
> First, despite the similar names, Discord is very different than
> Discourse.  Here I’m only commenting about Discourse, I have no opinion
> about Discord.
>
>
> In this case, I think we need to highly weight the opinions of the people
> actively mainlining the existing systems.  It has become clear that the
> priority isn’t “control our own lists”, it is “make sure they stay up” and
> “get LLVM people out of maintaining them”.
>
> The ongoing load of maintaining these lists (including moderation) and of
> dealing with the security issues that keep coming up are carried by several
> individuals, not by the entire community.  I’m concerned about those
> individuals, but I’m also more broadly concerned about *any* individuals
> being solely responsible for LLVM infra.  Effectively every case we’ve had
> where an individual has driving LLVM infra turns out to be a problem.  LLVM
> as a project isn’t good at running web scale infra, but we highly depend on
> it.
>
> It seems clear to me that we should outsource this to a proven vendor.
> Your concerns about discourse seem very similar to the discussion about
> moving to Github (being a single vendor who was once much smaller than
> Microsoft).  I think your concerns are best addressed by having the IWG
> propose an answer to “what is our plan if Discourse-the-company goes
> sideways?"
>
Might also be worth some details on: "Why is Discourse more suitable than a
hosted mailman solution?" - if the main goal is to get LLVM individual
contributors out of maintaining infrastructure, moving to a hosted version
of the current solution seems lower friction/feature creep/etc? (though I
realize moving between solutions is expensive, and it may be worthwhile
gaining other benefits that Discourse may provide while we address the
original/motivating issue of maintenance)
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On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 12:58:22PM -0700, David Blaikie via cfe-dev
wrote:
>>    On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 12:53 PM Chris Lattner via cfe-dev
>>    <[1]cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>> 
>>    Hi Philip,
>>    First, despite the similar names, Discord is very different than
>>    Discourse.�  Here I�m only commenting about Discourse, I have no
>>    opinion about Discord.
>>    In this case, I think we need to highly weight the opinions of the
>>    people actively mainlining the existing systems.�  It has become
clear
>>    that the priority isn�t �control our own lists�, it is �make sure
they
>>    stay up� and �get LLVM people out of maintaining them�.
>>    The ongoing load of maintaining these lists (including moderation)
and
>>    of dealing with the security issues that keep coming up are carried
by
>>    several individuals, not by the entire community.�  I�m concerned
about
>>    those individuals, but I�m also more broadly concerned about *any*
>>    individuals being solely responsible for LLVM infra.�  Effectively
>>    every case we�ve had where an individual has driving LLVM infra
turns
>>    out to be a problem.�  LLVM as a project isn�t good at running web
>>    scale infra, but we highly depend on it.
>>    It seems clear to me that we should outsource this to a proven
>>    vendor.�  Your concerns about discourse seem very similar to the
>>    discussion about moving to Github (being a single vendor who was
once
>>    much smaller than Microsoft).�  I think your concerns are best
>>    addressed by having the IWG propose an answer to �what is our plan
if
>>    Discourse-the-company goes sideways?"
>    Might also be worth some details on: "Why is Discourse more
suitable
>    than a hosted mailman solution?" - if the main goal is to get LLVM
>    individual contributors out of maintaining infrastructure, moving to a
>    hosted version of the current solution seems lower friction/feature
>    creep/etc? (though I realize moving between solutions is expensive, and
>    it may be worthwhile gaining other benefits that Discourse may provide
>    while we address the original/motivating issue of maintenance)�
I notice that Discord gets maybe 50-100 messages a day, IRC perhaps a
little less, but Discourse gets almost none. It's a very low daily number.
The mailing lists that I'm on (just clang and llvm) get 500+ messages a
day. 

Are we really going to replace email with Discourse when we can see that
almost nobody likes using Discourse?

-- 
Kevin P. Neal                                http://www.pobox.com/~kpn/

"Nonbelievers found it difficult to defend their position in \ 
    the presense of a working computer." -- a DEC Jensen paper

On Jun 21, 2021, at 12:58 PM, David Blaikie <dblaikie at gmail.com>
wrote:
> 
> vendor who was once much smaller than Microsoft).  I think your concerns
are best addressed by having the IWG propose an answer to “what is our plan if
Discourse-the-company goes sideways?"
> 
> Might also be worth some details on: "Why is Discourse more suitable
than a hosted mailman solution?" - if the main goal is to get LLVM
individual contributors out of maintaining infrastructure, moving to a hosted
version of the current solution seems lower friction/feature creep/etc? (though
I realize moving between solutions is expensive, and it may be worthwhile
gaining other benefits that Discourse may provide while we address the
original/motivating issue of maintenance)
I believe that John McCall covered some of this upthread - moderation and post
removal are important things we need to be able to have in our arsenal as a
community.

-Chris
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