Josh Boyer wrote:
> Ah. May or may not. That gives me hope at least.
Well, considering that we have hundreds of existing contributors, who all
may or may not be willing to adapt to a platform that is clearly not
designed for them (Discourse is very strongly newbie-centric, see the
"achievements" and all the other hand-holding), I think it is safe to assume
that several important contributors WILL leave, tone down their
participation, and/or miss some important communication (leading to breakage
in the distribution, e.g., broken dependencies making it into Rawhide) if
Fedora makes the switch.
> I don't think it's a double standard. I think people that already
> know how Fedora development and contribution works are inherently in a
> better position to adapt to something new, whereas net-new
> contributors are unlikely to even start based on an email driven
> practice.
And as I already answered, I think this is completely backwards. If you want
to newly join a project, you learn their way to do things and adapt to it.
If, on the other hand, you are already involved in a project and have
workflows that work for you, any forced change to something perceived as a
regression will annoy you and make you want to leave.
> It's a barrier to entry problem. If we, as the experienced and capable
> contributor base, can adapt to something and lower the barrier to entry
> then it benefits us all.
Again, I do not see the communication platform as the main barrier to entry
for Fedora at all. Where is the evidence for that claim?
As I see it, the main roadblocks for new packagers are:
* accepting the FPCA,
* getting sponsored,
* learning the Packaging Guidelines, and
* getting their package(s) through review,
and that last point can be a roadblock even for existing packagers (because
we do not trust even experienced provenpackagers and/or packager sponsors to
review their own packages).
Those points are all there for a reason (the FPCA for legal coverage, the
sponsorship process so new contributors are mentored and their trustfulness
verified, the Packaging Guidelines to ensure a certain package quality for
our end users, and the review process to ensure that the Packaging
Guidelines are actually followed and as another check that nothing malicious
sneaks in), but they are the barrier to entry, not the communication
platform.
> To be clear, I do not like forums. Discourse is perhaps the best
> forum platform I've used, but that doesn't mean I like it.
I find Discourse to actually be one of the worst forum platforms I have
used, if not the worst. All the *BB ones out there are much better due to
using less (to no) AJAX and less annoying hand-holding.
> What I dislike more than forum software is knowing we're leaving people
> that could do great things and spread more awareness of Fedora simply
> because we've ossified on a communication platform that is hard to
> discover and consume.
Again, this assumes that this is what is holding back new contributors, for
which I have seen no evidence whatsoever.
Kevin Kofler
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