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

On Tue, Jun 29, 2021 at 2:55 AM Serge Guelton via cfe-dev <
cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 24, 2021 at 1:19 PM Aaron Ballman via cfe-dev <
> cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
>> I think this could be a demonstration that the culture of the
>> community is being impacted by the fracturing. When people come to
>> IRC, moderators and other users will point out that discord and the
>> mailing lists are places where someone can also attempt to get an
>> answer if they don't find it on IRC. (Telling users to ask on the
>> mailing lists if no one has an answer on IRC has been the status quo
>> since I joined the community, so this isn't a new practice.) Users
>> respond by saying thanks and often following that advice. It sounds
>> like on Discord, users who don't find an answer to their question
>> maybe aren't being told about the other options? If so, this is a
>> demonstration of *why* I'm concerned about further fracturing the
>> community.
>>
>>
> I can only second Aaron's opinion. Discord has been a sad move in terms
of
> community fracturing and I'd rather not have that happen again.
>
To me the fracturing on the IRC side is that we didn't just close the IRC
channel and move over the IRC. The fragmentation came from the non-decision
that led to Discord and IRC co-existing: I don't see immediately how
migrating the llvm-dev@ to the Discourse forums would repeat this.

On the topic of "fragmentation", I would argue that is to me a great
advantage to these new tools instead: the mailing list aren't as easily
discoverable, and they live on their own isolated "islands" (Just like
it
would be on IRC if we had all these different IRC channels).
Discord/Discourse moves the paradigm from separate IRC channels/mailing
lists to a single "instance" where topics fit into categories: this
provides a unified view of all the llvm-project. At the moment any time
there is a mailing-list cross-post, I get bounced because I'm not
subscribed to OpenMP, LLDB, ... mailing-lists. Similarly, poking at what's
happening in one of these other mailing lists requires navigating the
online list archive, which has quite an impedance mismatch with the
expected way of interacting with the list (email...). I also can't answer a
topic on the CFE mailing-list that I would see in the archive if I wasn't
subscribed to the list in the first place, so in practice I'm unlikely to
participate in these projects occasionally. You would think that email
makes it easy to CC me on an existing thread, but not being subscribed, I
still can't participate in the mailing-list thread.
This is all another angle on the existing "fragmentation" in the
community
created by the tools (IRC and mailing-list) that aren't designed for
managing what we have: a community composed of many subcommunities.

Finally, one last advantage of Discourse/Discord over mailing-lists/IRC is
the "agility" through evolution: it is trivial to add or reorganize
categories in face of a change in the community or sub-projects. Any new
category is directly integrated in the platform and immediately visible (I
discovered new channels on Discord over the last year as they got added, I
could easily skim through them and participate as needed, get pinged on
some specific topics, etc.). theu are suitable to manage the entire
llvm-project community instead of the existing silos.
Even the fact that llvm-dev@ is the place to organize the entire project is
still a historical artifact that mixes the llvm core development with the
plurality of the projects.

Best,

-- 
Mehdi
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On Tue, 29 Jun 2021 at 17:47, Mehdi AMINI <joker.eph at gmail.com> wrote:
> To me the fracturing on the IRC side is that we didn't just close the
IRC
> channel and move over the IRC. The fragmentation came from the non-decision
> that led to Discord and IRC co-existing: I don't see immediately how
> migrating the llvm-dev@ to the Discourse forums would repeat this.
>
Exactly, is the proposal a move or an addition?
 * If the proposal is to move, this will "solve" the fragmentation
problem
(there's only one) but would create a massive alienation problem (enough
people in the community would be really angry).
 * If the proposal is to add a new one, then we'll have the same problem as
IRC vs. Discord and fragment the community, which would continue working on
their own, but disconnected.

On the topic of "fragmentation", I would argue that is to me a
great
> advantage to these new tools instead: the mailing list aren't as easily
> discoverable, and they live on their own isolated "islands" (Just
like it
> would be on IRC if we had all these different IRC channels).
>
I don't think there's any feature in the new tools that would
"fix"
fragmentation because enough people in the list would just not use it,
however wonderful it is to some people.

Discord/Discourse moves the paradigm from separate IRC
channels/mailing
> lists to a single "instance" where topics fit into categories:
this
> provides a unified view of all the llvm-project. At the moment any time
> there is a mailing-list cross-post, I get bounced because I'm not
> subscribed to OpenMP, LLDB, ... mailing-lists. Similarly, poking at
what's
> happening in one of these other mailing lists requires navigating the
> online list archive, which has quite an impedance mismatch with the
> expected way of interacting with the list (email...). I also can't
answer a
> topic on the CFE mailing-list that I would see in the archive if I
wasn't
> subscribed to the list in the first place, so in practice I'm unlikely
to
> participate in these projects occasionally. You would think that email
> makes it easy to CC me on an existing thread, but not being subscribed, I
> still can't participate in the mailing-list thread.
> This is all another angle on the existing "fragmentation" in the
community
> created by the tools (IRC and mailing-list) that aren't designed for
> managing what we have: a community composed of many subcommunities.
>
I challenge this. Not because I love mailman (I really don't), but because
mailman has a lot of features for sub-communities for decades.

I'm not saying it's easy to setup or intuitive to users who had no
contact
with mailing lists before, but they exist and other communities use them.

I've seen enough back and forth in all the threads on this subject to
realise the "impedance mismatch" is more of a generational thing
(people
who dig new tooling vs. people who find it hard to change their ways), than
it is a technical thing.

Finally, one last advantage of Discourse/Discord over mailing-lists/IRC
is
> the "agility" through evolution: it is trivial to add or
reorganize
> categories in face of a change in the community or sub-projects. Any new
> category is directly integrated in the platform and immediately visible (I
> discovered new channels on Discord over the last year as they got added, I
> could easily skim through them and participate as needed, get pinged on
> some specific topics, etc.). theu are suitable to manage the entire
> llvm-project community instead of the existing silos.
>
I'm not an expert in mailman but I believe this can be done, too, with
mailing lists. There a lot of options for sub-lists, aggregation lists,
cloning settings that can be done to make that work.

Even the fact that llvm-dev@ is the place to organize the entire project
is
> still a historical artifact that mixes the llvm core development with the
> plurality of the projects.
>
Absolutely, but that says more about our ability to manage mailman (and
other infra) than our desire to have organised communications channels.
We're compiler engineers after all.

So, this is not about which tool is better, but how to we optimise
communication. And whatever the real answer ends up being, replacing one
tool with another definitely isn't it.

For context, I was born with a brain that doesn't adapt well to
environmental changes, especially if they're not central to what I do.
Communication is affected the most.

After more than a decade working with LLVM, I've come to know enough people
like me in our community that a change in the communication style would be
considered radical.

Some of them are already gone because of similar past changes, and I think
some people were happy to see them go because of that impedance mismatch.
"They don't think like I do, so they're better gone".

So, while I welcome new participants to the project, I'd really like to not
have to choose between them and the people I know can still deliver radical
changes to the project and have done so repeatedly.

My proposal: instead of discussing which tool is "better", why not
discuss
how can we move to a new tool without breaking the communication model that
people (like me) would find too radical to change?

If the tool you propose can't do that, let's find a new tool. Let's
work
with that tool to improve it. Let's do something.

Anton K. is doing a remarkable and thankless job at trying to get a better
git repo and issue tracker, despite ferocious impediments. His aim is to
keep the status quo as much as possible while moving on to better tools. It
takes a long time.

I think we should follow his lead in this discussion, and try not to force
people to pick sides. THAT is what creates fragmentation.

cheers,
--renato
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On 6/29/21 11:47 AM, Mehdi AMINI via cfe-dev wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 29, 2021 at 2:55 AM Serge Guelton via cfe-dev <
> cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 24, 2021 at 1:19 PM Aaron Ballman via cfe-dev <
>> cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>>
>>> I think this could be a demonstration that the culture of the
>>> community is being impacted by the fracturing. When people come to
>>> IRC, moderators and other users will point out that discord and the
>>> mailing lists are places where someone can also attempt to get an
>>> answer if they don't find it on IRC. (Telling users to ask on
the
>>> mailing lists if no one has an answer on IRC has been the status
quo
>>> since I joined the community, so this isn't a new practice.)
Users
>>> respond by saying thanks and often following that advice. It sounds
>>> like on Discord, users who don't find an answer to their
question
>>> maybe aren't being told about the other options? If so, this is
a
>>> demonstration of *why* I'm concerned about further fracturing
the
>>> community.
>>>
>>>
>> I can only second Aaron's opinion. Discord has been a sad move in
terms of
>> community fracturing and I'd rather not have that happen again.
>>
> To me the fracturing on the IRC side is that we didn't just close the
IRC
> channel and move over the IRC. The fragmentation came from the non-decision
> that led to Discord and IRC co-existing: I don't see immediately how
> migrating the llvm-dev@ to the Discourse forums would repeat this.
I tried Discourse*, it doesn't work for me. I guess that just means
I'm out of luck due to the non-decision to open up a Discourse if this
means we close IRC eventually.

* Whenever I checked a lot of questions (in channels) I usually would
reply to on IRC or the mailing lists were just unanswered. To me
it seemed there were N channels opened without having a community that is
responsive in those areas (similarly in  Discord though). Certainly a
subjective observation so I don't want to make the impression that is a
fact or generally true, just what I felt when I used the two "new"
systems.

~ Johannes

P.S. Apologies for continuing this topic change wrt. Discourse.

> On the topic of "fragmentation", I would argue that is to me a
great
> advantage to these new tools instead: the mailing list aren't as easily
> discoverable, and they live on their own isolated "islands" (Just
like it
> would be on IRC if we had all these different IRC channels).
> Discord/Discourse moves the paradigm from separate IRC channels/mailing
> lists to a single "instance" where topics fit into categories:
this
> provides a unified view of all the llvm-project. At the moment any time
> there is a mailing-list cross-post, I get bounced because I'm not
> subscribed to OpenMP, LLDB, ... mailing-lists. Similarly, poking at
what's
> happening in one of these other mailing lists requires navigating the
> online list archive, which has quite an impedance mismatch with the
> expected way of interacting with the list (email...). I also can't
answer a
> topic on the CFE mailing-list that I would see in the archive if I
wasn't
> subscribed to the list in the first place, so in practice I'm unlikely
to
> participate in these projects occasionally. You would think that email
> makes it easy to CC me on an existing thread, but not being subscribed, I
> still can't participate in the mailing-list thread.
> This is all another angle on the existing "fragmentation" in the
community
> created by the tools (IRC and mailing-list) that aren't designed for
> managing what we have: a community composed of many subcommunities.
>
> Finally, one last advantage of Discourse/Discord over mailing-lists/IRC is
> the "agility" through evolution: it is trivial to add or
reorganize
> categories in face of a change in the community or sub-projects. Any new
> category is directly integrated in the platform and immediately visible (I
> discovered new channels on Discord over the last year as they got added, I
> could easily skim through them and participate as needed, get pinged on
> some specific topics, etc.). theu are suitable to manage the entire
> llvm-project community instead of the existing silos.
> Even the fact that llvm-dev@ is the place to organize the entire project is
> still a historical artifact that mixes the llvm core development with the
> plurality of the projects.
>
> Best,
>
>
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