On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 11:18 AM, Rob Beezer <goo...@beezer.cotse.net>wrote:
> > On Aug 23, 4:15 am, John Cremona <john.crem...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Now gmail > > automatically hides quoted text, replacing it by a tiny link "show > > quoted text". > > I read sage-devel and sage-support via the web and as John has > mentioned for gmail, on the web the quoted-text also gets compressed > into a single, expandable line. So "excessive quoting" isn't a big > annoyance, and if you need to see what is being quoted, it's not hard > to toggle it on and back off again. I find the email versions of the > posts extremely hard to follow though when viewed in an email client > (Thunderbird in my case). I find most email extremely hard to follow when not viewed via gmail. I probably wouldn't bother much with email anymore if it weren't for gmail, which makes reading and dealing with email vastly easier (in my opinion) than in any other program I have used. (I even once spent a week once writing my own email client in Python by the way, since every email client I could find wasn't easy enough for me, before I switched to gmail.) Gmail as I use it rocks (I use adblock to get rid of all ads). I of course wish there were a full open source local version... > However, it seems that when I edit a reply on the web (as I did above, > and as John did in his post) this expandable quoting feature gets > broken. So if I was as passionate as Nick, I could argue that those > who edit their replies are actually making reading harder on the web > (but I don't necessarily really believe that). By the way, there are two gmail reply modes, "Plain text" and "Rich formatting" . You probably have yours set to "Plain text" and John has his set to "Rich formatting". If you set to rich formating, editing replies doesn't break things. > So for the high-traffic groups (sage-devel, sage-support) I don't get > any email and I just regularly pop into the group on the web to look > at what interests me and the "user experience" is OK no matter how > quoting is handled by posters. For the low-traffic groups (e.g. sage- > edu, sage-release) I have emails sent and then filtered into mailboxes > so I know when there is activity, and then I usually go read these on > the web rather than look at the email versions. That sounds pretty sensible to me. Nick said: > I'm a few uncut-quote-plus-one-line-replies away from no longer > reading sage-devel. The signal to noise ratio has plummeted; several > important developers no longer read; many more rarely contribute. One > personal reason is the poor netiquette on list: compared to other > lists I browse, this one is difficult to read. So this helps because > I am making a personal effort to improve my personal experience here. > Now, it may be that my expectations are out of line with this list. > In that case, I will leave -- as I am more or less ready to do without > causing a fuss. But why not cause a fuss and perhaps have a more > enjoyable mailing list, one that changes to potentially benefit a > community instead of just me? sage-devel has actually steadily grown in subscribers *and* traffic a lot. When you (=Nick) subscribed there were probably often less than 400 messages per month. Last month there were 1482 messages just in sage-devel<http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel/search?scoring=d&filter=0&enc_author=8PwltxAAAAAj-aFdRPpjCOyOngcbHsYT&as_drrb=b&as_mind=1&as_minm=7&as_miny=2009&as_maxd=31&as_maxm=7&as_maxy=2009>! That's more messages than in any month before. Moreover, there are now 1008 subscribers just to sage-devel. For comparison, the linux-kernel mailing list, which is probably the world's highest-traffic mailing list for a single open source project, had 11941 messages last month, which is only 8 times as much as in sage-devel. When you write above: "several important developers no longer read; many more rarely contribute." I have noticed the same thing, e.g., Robert Miller doesn't read sage-devel unless I forward him a message. But I diverge from you, since I do not think this is a bad thing. On the one hand many people we know and who are important developers aren't involved in the sage-devel list; on the other hand, the sage-devel list is actually vastly more active than it has ever been before. You imply that this is a result of bad netiquette, but I don't think that is right. The Sage project has had a lot of different people involved with it over the last few years (there are 253 trac accounts!), and usually people get involved in the context of adding some functionality they need so they can get on with their lives. Often new developers get very excited and active on sage-devel, then once they find their place, disappear from that list but still write tons of useful code. I think the problem you point out: "several important developers no longer read; many more rarely contribute." is simply part of a natural cycle. I think the whole point of the sage-devel list should be that it is the *one* list in the Sage project that is "very high volume". In fact, the official description of the list is: "This email list is for discussion of Sage development issues. This list usually has heavy traffic." I think the many other specialized lists, such as sage-nt, should typically be lower volume and be where discussion is more careful. I think the top priority constraint put on discussions on sage-devel is that they should be civil. No flames please. I personally read all the messages in every single one of the sage-* (and cython-*) mailing lists via gmail, since I feel that is my responsibility as Sage project director. I don't think it is anybody else's responsibility. -- William <http://groups.google.com/group/kernelarchive/browse_frm/month/2009-07> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
