Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brian]

On Thu 07 May 2020 at 14:28:12 -0400, Daniel Barclay wrote:

> rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Wednesday, April 29, 2020 12:49:53 PM Daniel Barclay wrote:
> > > How do people not understand that the word "forum" does not exclude e-mail
> > > or even non-digital communication (that "forum" does not mean only a
> > > web-based forum)?
> > 
> > What word would you suggest be used for the things that people do call 
> > forums
> > but excluding email / maillists?
> 
> I don't know of a single-word name, but "web forum" or "web-based forum"
> at least clarifies that it's not e-mail or whatever, and saying
> "xyx forum" implies that "forum" means something else (something more 
> general).
> 
> 
> > I feel the need to distinguish those -- I like email for communication, I
> > don't like the web based things that are often called forums.
> 
> Definitely.

Debian/Ubuntu/Mint forums provide focussed and helpful advice to users.
Often better than the mailing list equivalents. They are are simply
another strand in the thread of providing help.

Ignoring them is naff.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brian]

On Thu 07 May 2020 at 14:23:06 -0400, Daniel Barclay wrote:

> Brian wrote:
> > On Wed 29 Apr 2020 at 12:20:37 -0400, Daniel Barclay wrote:
> > 
> > > Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > > > ...
> > > > The best thing about a wiki is that anyone can edit it[1]. Having to
> > > > check with others first would, in my opinion, just hinder contributions.
> > > > 
> > > > Reverts are much easier to do than edits ;)
> > > 
> > > How about tentative or provisional edits--changes that perhaps show up
> > > before being approved/confirmed by owners/experts/approvers, but are
> > > rendered as unconfirmed edits, so readers know their status?
> > > 
> > > (That way, new information can get to readers quickly (before 
> > > confirmation),
> > > and in case the new information is wrong, readers were alerted to that
> > > possibility (its higher probability).)
> > 
> > How about users creating pages or altering existing ones to reflect
> > what they consider to be in the best interests of the wiki?
> 
> By itself? What one random user considers to be in the best interest of the
> wiki might be wrong and might be something that a regular editor/approver of
> the page could catch and fix or delete.

We do not have "random" users. We have users, and they entitled to
participate in any aspect of the development of Debian.
 
> Combined with what I suggested?  Yes, that would be fine, but then isn't
> that what I just suggested?  What are you counter-suggesting or objecting
> to?

Who are these *regular* editors and approvers? I would suggest that
users just get stuck into the wiki if they have something to say.

> > I'm buggered
> > if I will await the contribution of some approver, who could, presumably,
> > could have improved the page with or without my intervention.
> 
> What awaiting are you talking about?  In my proposal, the only awaiting
> would be for being able to see the changed text without the special
> rendering/marking (indicating that it's a not-yet-vetted user-made change)
> rather then seeing the changed text rendered normally.

Who is doing this vetting?

-- 
Brian.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Daniel Barclay]

rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

On Wednesday, April 29, 2020 12:49:53 PM Daniel Barclay wrote:

How do people not understand that the word "forum" does not exclude e-mail
or even non-digital communication (that "forum" does not mean only a
web-based forum)?


What word would you suggest be used for the things that people do call forums
but excluding email / maillists?


I don't know of a single-word name, but "web forum" or "web-based forum"
at least clarifies that it's not e-mail or whatever, and saying
"xyx forum" implies that "forum" means something else (something more general).



I feel the need to distinguish those -- I like email for communication, I
don't like the web based things that are often called forums.


Definitely.



Daniel

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Daniel Barclay]

Brian wrote:

On Wed 29 Apr 2020 at 12:20:37 -0400, Daniel Barclay wrote:


Andrei POPESCU wrote:

...
The best thing about a wiki is that anyone can edit it[1]. Having to
check with others first would, in my opinion, just hinder contributions.

Reverts are much easier to do than edits ;)


How about tentative or provisional edits--changes that perhaps show up
before being approved/confirmed by owners/experts/approvers, but are
rendered as unconfirmed edits, so readers know their status?

(That way, new information can get to readers quickly (before confirmation),
and in case the new information is wrong, readers were alerted to that
possibility (its higher probability).)


How about users creating pages or altering existing ones to reflect
what they consider to be in the best interests of the wiki?


By itself? What one random user considers to be in the best interest of the
wiki might be wrong and might be something that a regular editor/approver of
the page could catch and fix or delete.

Combined with what I suggested?  Yes, that would be fine, but then isn't
that what I just suggested?  What are you counter-suggesting or objecting
to?



I'm buggered
if I will await the contribution of some approver, who could, presumably,
could have improved the page with or without my intervention.


What awaiting are you talking about?  In my proposal, the only awaiting
would be for being able to see the changed text without the special
rendering/marking (indicating that it's a not-yet-vetted user-made change)
rather then seeing the changed text rendered normally.


Daniel

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Mi, 29 apr 20, 15:07:45, Daniel Barclay wrote:
> Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > On Mi, 29 apr 20, 13:03:47, Daniel Barclay wrote:
> > > Nate Bargmann wrote:
> > > > This topic has been on LWN.net for the past several days and should be
> > > > free to view in the next day or two:  https://lwn.net/Articles/817668/
> > > 
> > > And subscribing is required even just to *see* the "Debian discusses 
> > > Discourse"
> > > discussions?
> > > 
> > > 
> > > That's, well, ... at least ironic.
> > 
> > How so?
> 
> Using Discourse, at least its web interface, would requiring logging in, and
> that discussion of using Discourse requires creating and account and logging
> in just to _read_ the discussion.

I must be irony-impaired, since I still don't get it...

One is a web application meant for discussion that necessarily requires 
subscribing for *posting* and the other is a "webzine" that makes 
content available for a week only to *paying* subscribers.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2020 29 Apr 12:05 -0500, Daniel Barclay wrote:
> Nate Bargmann wrote:
> > This topic has been on LWN.net for the past several days and should be
> > free to view in the next day or two:  https://lwn.net/Articles/817668/
> 
> And subscribing is required even just to *see* the "Debian discusses 
> Discourse"
> discussions?

It is now available to all without a subscription or an account.

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Web: https://www.n0nb.us
Projects: https://github.com/N0NB
GPG fingerprint: 82D6 4F6B 0E67 CD41 F689 BBA6 FB2C 5130 D55A 8819



signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[rhkramer]

Thanks!  (Yes, I would exclude Usenet as well (I mean, I like Usenet, just 
like email better.))

On Wednesday, April 29, 2020 05:55:15 PM Greg Wooledge wrote:
> Web forums.
> 
> Or Usenet, but I don't think you meant that.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Greg Wooledge]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 05:53:24PM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> What word would you suggest be used for the things that people do call forums 
> but excluding email / maillists?

Web forums.

Or Usenet, but I don't think you meant that.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[rhkramer]

On Wednesday, April 29, 2020 12:49:53 PM Daniel Barclay wrote:
> How do people not understand that the word "forum" does not exclude e-mail
> or even non-digital communication (that "forum" does not mean only a
> web-based forum)?

What word would you suggest be used for the things that people do call forums 
but excluding email / maillists?

I feel the need to distinguish those -- I like email for communication, I 
don't like the web based things that are often called forums.



> 
> (It's like thinking "turf" means "artificial turf"--as did some local
> newscasters who reported that some schools were changing their athletic
> fields from turf back to grass. Huh?)

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Nicolas George]

to...@tuxteam.de (12020-04-29):
> This would be Postel's principle -- and this gentleman was especially
> interested in Internet protocols... but I get the idea.

But to be realistic, Postel's principle, even if it was thought for
protocols rather than human relationships, is much more relevant for
human relationships than for protocols.

Indeed, for protocols, being liberal in what they accept has let crappy
implementation with idiotic variations to appear, and now we are stuck
having to support them until the end of time. Much better to have
protocols and implementations that are very strict. Indeed, modern
protocols are stricter than old ones.

Regards,

-- 
  Nicolas George


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brian]

On Wed 29 Apr 2020 at 13:03:47 -0400, Daniel Barclay wrote:

> Nate Bargmann wrote:
> > This topic has been on LWN.net for the past several days and should be
> > free to view in the next day or two:  https://lwn.net/Articles/817668/
> 
> And subscribing is required even just to *see* the "Debian discusses 
> Discourse"
> discussions?

Amazing. How dare they do this!

  > The page you have tried to view (Debian discusses Discourse)
  > is currently available to LWN subscribers only. Reader
  > subscriptions are a necessary way to fund the continued
  > existence of LWN and the quality of its content.

> That's, well, ... at least ironic.

No, it is not.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brian]

On Wed 29 Apr 2020 at 12:20:37 -0400, Daniel Barclay wrote:

> Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > ...
> > The best thing about a wiki is that anyone can edit it[1]. Having to
> > check with others first would, in my opinion, just hinder contributions.
> >
> > Reverts are much easier to do than edits ;)
> 
> How about tentative or provisional edits--changes that perhaps show up
> before being approved/confirmed by owners/experts/approvers, but are
> rendered as unconfirmed edits, so readers know their status?
> 
> (That way, new information can get to readers quickly (before confirmation),
> and in case the new information is wrong, readers were alerted to that
> possibility (its higher probability).)

How about users creating pages or altering existing ones to reflect
what they consider to be in the best interests of the wiki? I'm buggered
if I will await the contribution of some approver, who could, presumably,
could have improved the page with or without my intervention.

-- 
Brian

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[tomas]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 02:54:42PM -0400, The Wanderer wrote:

[...]

> A longstanding principle of good software design: "be conservative in
> what you emit, and liberal in what you consume". In some such set of
> words or another.

This would be Postel's principle -- and this gentleman was especially
interested in Internet protocols... but I get the idea.

I do subscribe to this principle, at least in general, but to be fair,
there are smart folks out there who do not.

Cheers
-- t


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Daniel Barclay]

Andrei POPESCU wrote:

On Mi, 29 apr 20, 13:03:47, Daniel Barclay wrote:

Nate Bargmann wrote:

This topic has been on LWN.net for the past several days and should be
free to view in the next day or two:  https://lwn.net/Articles/817668/


And subscribing is required even just to *see* the "Debian discusses Discourse"
discussions?


That's, well, ... at least ironic.


How so?


Using Discourse, at least its web interface, would requiring logging in, and
that discussion of using Discourse requires creating and account and logging
in just to _read_ the discussion.

Daniel

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[The Wanderer]

On 2020-04-29 at 14:10, Dan Ritter wrote:

> Daniel Barclay wrote:
> 
>> Sven Hartge wrote:
>>> ...
>>> 
>>> As Russ noted in 
>>> https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2020/04/msg00103.html in
>>> 3) "... more comfortable with forums than with email. [...]" ...
>> 
>> How do people not understand that the word "forum" does not exclude
>> e-mail or even non-digital communication (that "forum" does not
>> mean only a web-based forum)?
>> 
>> (It's like thinking "turf" means "artificial turf"--as did some
>> local newscasters who reported that some schools were changing
>> their athletic fields from turf back to grass. Huh?)
> 
> Yes, but you need to recognize that people morph words badly even as
> you refuse to warp their meanings yourself.

A longstanding principle of good software design: "be conservative in
what you emit, and liberal in what you consume". In some such set of
words or another.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Dan Ritter]

Daniel Barclay wrote: 
> Sven Hartge wrote:
> > ...
> > 
> > As Russ noted in
> > https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2020/04/msg00103.html in 3)
> > "... more comfortable with forums than with email. [...]"
> > ...
> 
> 
> How do people not understand that the word "forum" does not exclude e-mail
> or even non-digital communication (that "forum" does not mean only a
> web-based forum)?
> 
> (It's like thinking "turf" means "artificial turf"--as did some local
> newscasters who reported that some schools were changing their athletic
> fields from turf back to grass. Huh?)

Yes, but you need to recognize that people morph words badly
even as you refuse to warp their meanings yourself.

-dsr-

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Mi, 29 apr 20, 13:03:47, Daniel Barclay wrote:
> Nate Bargmann wrote:
> > This topic has been on LWN.net for the past several days and should be
> > free to view in the next day or two:  https://lwn.net/Articles/817668/
> 
> And subscribing is required even just to *see* the "Debian discusses 
> Discourse"
> discussions?
> 
> 
> That's, well, ... at least ironic.

How so?

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Daniel Barclay]

Nate Bargmann wrote:

This topic has been on LWN.net for the past several days and should be
free to view in the next day or two:  https://lwn.net/Articles/817668/


And subscribing is required even just to *see* the "Debian discusses Discourse"
discussions?


That's, well, ... at least ironic.

Daniel

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Daniel Barclay]

Sven Hartge wrote:

...

As Russ noted in
https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2020/04/msg00103.html in 3)
"... more comfortable with forums than with email. [...]"
...



How do people not understand that the word "forum" does not exclude e-mail
or even non-digital communication (that "forum" does not mean only a
web-based forum)?

(It's like thinking "turf" means "artificial turf"--as did some local
newscasters who reported that some schools were changing their athletic
fields from turf back to grass. Huh?)


Daniel

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Mi, 29 apr 20, 12:20:37, Daniel Barclay wrote:
> Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > ...
> > The best thing about a wiki is that anyone can edit it[1]. Having to
> > check with others first would, in my opinion, just hinder contributions.
> >
> > Reverts are much easier to do than edits ;)
> 
> How about tentative or provisional edits--changes that perhaps show up
> before being approved/confirmed by owners/experts/approvers, but are
> rendered as unconfirmed edits, so readers know their status?

The editor can of course mark/format/word such text as they see fit.

Maybe there already exist conventions/tags/whatever to mark a block of 
text as "pending verification/confirmation/approval".

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Daniel Barclay]

Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> ...
> The best thing about a wiki is that anyone can edit it[1]. Having to
> check with others first would, in my opinion, just hinder contributions.
>
> Reverts are much easier to do than edits ;)

How about tentative or provisional edits--changes that perhaps show up
before being approved/confirmed by owners/experts/approvers, but are
rendered as unconfirmed edits, so readers know their status?

(That way, new information can get to readers quickly (before confirmation),
and in case the new information is wrong, readers were alerted to that
possibility (its higher probability).)

Daniel

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 08:11:34PM +0100, Brian wrote:

I think MoinMoin does allow that, so those who want discussion can set
it up and sit back and talk.


A MoinMoin instance that I used to be involved with in the past had 
automatic Discussion links on all pages, possibly via a plugin.



The claimed overwhelming quality of the Arch Wiki pages, as promoted by
a number of users, has yet to be substantiated.


How would you go about proving that? It's surely enough that the Arch 
Wiki has a reputation for quality (evidenced by, as you put it, it being 
promoted by a number of users here, a non-Arch community), whereas the 
Debian Wiki does not.


--

Jonathan Dowland

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brian]

On Fri 24 Apr 2020 at 14:13:49 -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Friday, April 24, 2020 12:40:56 PM Brian wrote:
> > On Fri 24 Apr 2020 at 08:24:44 -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 10:59:50AM +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > > > On Jo, 23 apr 20, 18:43:25, Brian wrote:
> > > > > Does MoinMoin even allow for Discussion pages in an easy way?
> > > > 
> > > > It's easy to add. The FAQ in my signature has an example, probably just
> > > > copied from some other page.
> > > > 
> > > > http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser
> > > 
> > > The raw text on the page in question includes this table:
> > > ||~-Translation(s):
> > > ||English - [[it/FAQsFromDebianUser|Italiano]] -
> > > ||[[fr/FAQsFromDebianUser|Français]]-~|| > > ||right;border: 0px hidden"> (!) [[/Discussion|Discussion]]||
> > > 
> > > In other words, the page author(s) added the link to a "Discussion"
> > > subpage manually for this page only.  This would have to be done for
> > > each page where you would like people to contribute to a Discussion.
> > 
> > Indeed it would. But useful nevertheless, surely?
> 
> And, if MoinMoin allows templates to start new pages (some wikis do -- 
> Foswiki 
> / TWiki for instance), the template could contain the text / code to create a 
> link to a discussion page (and maybe create the discussion page, as well, 
> which in many wikis just requires that a link to even a non-existent page 
> will 
> create that page on clicking the link (Foswiki / TWiki again).

I think MoinMoin does allow that, so those who want discussion can set
it up and sit back and talk.

The claimed overwhelming quality of the Arch Wiki pages, as promoted by
a number of users, has yet to be substantiated.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[rhkramer]

On Friday, April 24, 2020 12:40:56 PM Brian wrote:
> On Fri 24 Apr 2020 at 08:24:44 -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 10:59:50AM +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > > On Jo, 23 apr 20, 18:43:25, Brian wrote:
> > > > Does MoinMoin even allow for Discussion pages in an easy way?
> > > 
> > > It's easy to add. The FAQ in my signature has an example, probably just
> > > copied from some other page.
> > > 
> > > http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser
> > 
> > The raw text on the page in question includes this table:
> > ||~-Translation(s):
> > ||English - [[it/FAQsFromDebianUser|Italiano]] -
> > ||[[fr/FAQsFromDebianUser|Français]]-~|| > ||right;border: 0px hidden"> (!) [[/Discussion|Discussion]]||
> > 
> > In other words, the page author(s) added the link to a "Discussion"
> > subpage manually for this page only.  This would have to be done for
> > each page where you would like people to contribute to a Discussion.
> 
> Indeed it would. But useful nevertheless, surely?

And, if MoinMoin allows templates to start new pages (some wikis do -- Foswiki 
/ TWiki for instance), the template could contain the text / code to create a 
link to a discussion page (and maybe create the discussion page, as well, 
which in many wikis just requires that a link to even a non-existent page will 
create that page on clicking the link (Foswiki / TWiki again).

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brian]

On Fri 24 Apr 2020 at 08:24:44 -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 10:59:50AM +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > On Jo, 23 apr 20, 18:43:25, Brian wrote:
> > > 
> > > Discourse would provide a single point of contact for wiki discussion.
> > > That's a step up on what we have at present and is (I assume) very easy
> > > to implement.
> > > 
> > > Does MoinMoin even allow for Discussion pages in an easy way?
> > 
> > It's easy to add. The FAQ in my signature has an example, probably just 
> > copied from some other page.
> 
> > http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser
> 
> The raw text on the page in question includes this table:
> 
> ||~-Translation(s): 
> English - [[it/FAQsFromDebianUser|Italiano]] - 
> [[fr/FAQsFromDebianUser|Français]]-~|| hidden"> (!) [[/Discussion|Discussion]]||
> 
> In other words, the page author(s) added the link to a "Discussion"
> subpage manually for this page only.  This would have to be done for
> each page where you would like people to contribute to a Discussion.

Indeed it would. But useful nevertheless, surely?

-- 
Brian.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Greg Wooledge]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2020 at 10:59:50AM +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Jo, 23 apr 20, 18:43:25, Brian wrote:
> > 
> > Discourse would provide a single point of contact for wiki discussion.
> > That's a step up on what we have at present and is (I assume) very easy
> > to implement.
> > 
> > Does MoinMoin even allow for Discussion pages in an easy way?
> 
> It's easy to add. The FAQ in my signature has an example, probably just 
> copied from some other page.

> http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

The raw text on the page in question includes this table:

||~-Translation(s): 
English - [[it/FAQsFromDebianUser|Italiano]] - 
[[fr/FAQsFromDebianUser|Français]]-~|| (!) [[/Discussion|Discussion]]||

In other words, the page author(s) added the link to a "Discussion"
subpage manually for this page only.  This would have to be done for
each page where you would like people to contribute to a Discussion.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Jo, 23 apr 20, 18:43:25, Brian wrote:
> 
> Discourse would provide a single point of contact for wiki discussion.
> That's a step up on what we have at present and is (I assume) very easy
> to implement.
> 
> Does MoinMoin even allow for Discussion pages in an easy way?

It's easy to add. The FAQ in my signature has an example, probably just 
copied from some other page.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Marco Möller]

On 23.04.20 21:24, deloptes wrote:
(...)

While there are good articles on the debian wiki, there are also bad once
and if you are not familiar with linux and debian, you never know what you
are dealing with. There are also many not well maintained or outdated (and
don't ask for examples please).

If you ask me, there should be someone close to the development in specific
area, who can sign of documents to be published online. Let the community
come with suggestions in the background and you adopt the changes you think
are meaningful. If you wish  be it something like a blog, but to the front
should come only high quality.

(...)
Exactly this!
I always double check with the Arch Wiki in order to find out if a 
Debian page might still be a valid reference. Not a professional but at 
least being a well informed Debian desktop user, and already having seen 
too many of technically outdated advise in the Debian documentation, its 
simply worth it.
Admittedly, I (by now) never volunteered to report a bug in the 
documentation or even write a patch, because I am afraid to introduce 
another mistake and then becoming bashed by the real experts, or even 
worse my mistakes staying uncovered and unfortunately then doing harm to 
other people searching for help.
If there would be some expert instance for proof reading my suggestions, 
then I would like to actively participate in improving the documentation.


Best wishes!
Marco.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[deloptes]

to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

> [citation needed]
> 
> Now irony aside: manipulation efforts are to be expected on high
> visibility sites like Wikipedia. I think that, given the constraints,
> it's doing a pretty good job nevertheless.
> 
> If you pick anything up on the internet, don't swallow it right away,
> says my doctor.
> 
> What's your source of wisdom? Facebook?

Nope - personal experience and I gave up on wikipedia 10+y ago.

But the story of "Felix" is worth following

If you read German:
https://kenfm.de/tagesdosis-26-2-2019-wikipedia-manipulationen-feliks-darf-nach-gerichtsurteil-wieder-mit-klarnamen-genannt-werden/

or search for "Markus Fiedler Felix Wikipedia"

I am confident that many topics are being edited without any factual
evidence by very "interesting" people, who seem to have the time to follow
all the topics of their interest. I won't go into detail, but I leave it to
your imagination. Also at universities it is not considered as a source -
with good reason I would add.

Consequently I came to the conclusion that freedom in sense of anarchy is
not possible and thus any structure based on it will not hold. Meritocracy
however proves successful. Imagine the linux kernel without Linuz - it
would never work. So it seems at the end there should be one to "sign of"
and "merge" the changes.

While there are good articles on the debian wiki, there are also bad once
and if you are not familiar with linux and debian, you never know what you
are dealing with. There are also many not well maintained or outdated (and
don't ask for examples please).

If you ask me, there should be someone close to the development in specific
area, who can sign of documents to be published online. Let the community
come with suggestions in the background and you adopt the changes you think
are meaningful. If you wish  be it something like a blog, but to the front
should come only high quality.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[David Wright]

On Thu 23 Apr 2020 at 08:29:46 (+0200), deloptes wrote:
> David Wright wrote:
> 
> > 1. Going from thinking to knowing. Even assuming they're well-informed,
> > it may be worth checking with other people running different systems
> > about what's wrong, and what the new text should say.
> > 
> > 2. Pages often need more than just piecemeal corrections: they may
> > need someone with a sense of ownership to restructure them, or even
> > to coordinate a rewrite when they lose focus.
> 
> totally agree with you. You see what happens to wikipedia. (I mean wikipedia
> can not be trusted. it was prooven that people falsify information or
> impose censorship).

It depends what sort of pages you're reading. I think it's fairly
obvious that there are going to be contentious topics that attract
those problems, and in some cases investigators have even tracked
the source of edits via IP addresses and suchlike. But that tends
not to be the sort of information I'm looking for on wikipedia.

> Best would be to have ownership and the community to decide what needs to be
> there, after which the owner of the document can edit.

On Thu 23 Apr 2020 at 14:56:36 (+0300), Andrei POPESCU wrote:

> The best thing about a wiki is that anyone can edit it[1]. Having to 
> check with others first would, in my opinion, just hinder contributions.
> [1] Unfortunately this can also mean that nobody is actually editing it.

I haven't said that they can't, but only that they can choose, on the
basis of their own knowledge, whether to edit the page directly or
else to suggest changes in the discussion area.

And I totally agree with Jonathan Dowland that the worst decision was
separating the discussion area from the page. I also think that the
page's History should be there too, not just in a time-sorted sidebar
of miscellaneous individual changes made across the entire Debian wiki
(and which evaporate after a few days or weeks).

> > 2. Pages often need more than just piecemeal corrections: they may
> > need someone with a sense of ownership to restructure them, or even
> > to coordinate a rewrite when they lose focus.
> 
> This looks very much like "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"[2] models.
> 
> In my opinion a wiki is much better suited for the bazaar model, the 
> cathedral model you seem to be advocating is better suited for more 
> formal documents (Debian Policy, Installation Guide, Release Notes, 
> etc.).

I'm not advocating the Cathedral model at all: I deliberately wrote
"sense of ownership¹" and not "ownership". IOW it helps if there people
who care not only about the raw information in the wiki, but how it's
expressed and presentation.

Clean-up can vary from increasing clarity by removing unintentional
ambiguities and improving unidiomatic phrases (many contributors are
not writing in their mother tongues), to regrouping related information,
prioritising the order in which it's presented, inserting headings,
and so on.

> Reminder: development of all Debian manuals is open, anyone is free to 
> report bugs and/or provide suggestions, preferably as patches.

*These* are, rightly, the Cathedral.

> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar

¹ a sense of ownership is shown by somebody who walks their street
  after school turns out, picking up the litter, and then does the
  same whenever they visit their favourite beauty spot.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brian]

On Thu 23 Apr 2020 at 14:24:06 +0200, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 23, 2020 at 02:56:36PM +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> 
> > This looks very much like "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" models.
> > 
> > In my opinion a wiki is much better suited for the bazaar model [...]
> 
> I think you are right, in principle. That said, I don't believe you'll
> get as outstanding a result as Arch Wiki is by just bazaaring around.

"bazaaring". What a lovely use of the English language!

I think it is about time we had some concrete examples of "outstanding".
Preferably technical in nature. Contrasts would be useful.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brian]

On Wed 22 Apr 2020 at 17:44:00 -0500, David Wright wrote:

> On Tue 21 Apr 2020 at 20:07:55 (+0100), Brian wrote:
> > On Tue 21 Apr 2020 at 11:18:14 +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> > 
> > > On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 11:35:00PM -0500, David Wright wrote:
> > > > I don't know what the writer of those two sentences meant by
> > > > structure, but I specifically mentioned the Discussion page
> > > > (≡ Wikipedia's Talk page) which I think is an important
> > > > factor in improving content.
> > > 
> > > At some point a long time ago, the Debian Wiki administrators (at the
> > > time) decided to direct meta-discussions towards the debian-www@ mailing
> > > list, instead of Discussion pages. I think this was a mistake, and it's
> > > something I've been wanting to push back on for some time, but it hasn't
> > > raised up my TODO list far enough.
> > 
> > I do not have a TODO list, but pushing all wiki issues onto debian-www
> > probably wasn't the best of ideas. It seems to me that discourse would
> > be a good place to put them.
> > 
> > At the same time, what is the point of discusssion? A user thinks a
> > technical point on the wiki is wrong; they know it is wrong; they change
> > it. Where's the problem? 
> 
> 1. Going from thinking to knowing. Even assuming they're well-informed,
> it may be worth checking with other people running different systems
> about what's wrong, and what the new text should say.

If I were to conduct some rewriting of

  https://wiki.debian.org/xinit

the last thing I would ask for is opinions on altering the External
links section, the provision of other links and removal of ?. Should
I go on to explain the function of the xinit and startx commands and
expand on the text, I would not be likely to seek advice on the
purpose or content. Those who come afterwards can deal with it in
whatever way they see fit.

You could see this as arrogant - but Debian is a do-ocracy.

> 2. Pages often need more than just piecemeal corrections: they may
> need someone with a sense of ownership to restructure them, or even
> to coordinate a rewrite when they lose focus.

I like this idea of "sense of ownership".

-- 
Brian.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brian]

On Thu 23 Apr 2020 at 10:21:57 +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 21, 2020 at 08:07:55PM +0100, Brian wrote:
> > I do not have a TODO list, but pushing all wiki issues onto debian-www
> > probably wasn't the best of ideas. It seems to me that discourse would
> > be a good place to put them.
> 
> I think the mistake was trying to drive discussion about the wiki *away*
> from the wiki. Pushing it to Discourse instead of debian-www@ would not be
> an improvement in that respect.
> 
> > At the same time, what is the point of discusssion? A user thinks a
> > technical point on the wiki is wrong; they know it is wrong; they change
> > it. Where's the problem?
> 
> Discussion pages serve as the place to discuss planning what goes where,
> explaining changes that might be obvious, asking questions about the content
> of a page e.g. phrasing to establish whether there's a mistake or something
> should be reworded for clarity, etc.
> 
> Take a look at "Talk" pages on a large Mediawiki instance (E.g.  Wikipedia)
> to see how they can be used. Here's an example
> 

Discourse would provide a single point of contact for wiki discussion.
That's a step up on what we have at present and is (I assume) very easy
to implement.

Does MoinMoin even allow for Discussion pages in an easy way?

-- 
Brian.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[tomas]

On Thu, Apr 23, 2020 at 02:56:36PM +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

> This looks very much like "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" models.
> 
> In my opinion a wiki is much better suited for the bazaar model [...]

I think you are right, in principle. That said, I don't believe you'll
get as outstanding a result as Arch Wiki is by just bazaaring around.

Cheers
-- tomas "all generalizations suck"


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Mi, 22 apr 20, 17:44:00, David Wright wrote:
> On Tue 21 Apr 2020 at 20:07:55 (+0100), Brian wrote:
> > 
> > At the same time, what is the point of discusssion? A user thinks a
> > technical point on the wiki is wrong; they know it is wrong; they change
> > it. Where's the problem? 
> 
> 1. Going from thinking to knowing. Even assuming they're well-informed,
> it may be worth checking with other people running different systems
> about what's wrong, and what the new text should say.
 
The best thing about a wiki is that anyone can edit it[1]. Having to 
check with others first would, in my opinion, just hinder contributions.

Reverts are much easier to do than edits ;)

> 2. Pages often need more than just piecemeal corrections: they may
> need someone with a sense of ownership to restructure them, or even
> to coordinate a rewrite when they lose focus.

This looks very much like "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"[2] models.

In my opinion a wiki is much better suited for the bazaar model, the 
cathedral model you seem to be advocating is better suited for more 
formal documents (Debian Policy, Installation Guide, Release Notes, 
etc.).

Reminder: development of all Debian manuals is open, anyone is free to 
report bugs and/or provide suggestions, preferably as patches.

[1] Unfortunately this can also mean that nobody is actually editing it.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2020 at 08:07:55PM +0100, Brian wrote:

I do not have a TODO list, but pushing all wiki issues onto debian-www
probably wasn't the best of ideas. It seems to me that discourse would
be a good place to put them.


I think the mistake was trying to drive discussion about the wiki *away* 
from the wiki. Pushing it to Discourse instead of debian-www@ would not 
be an improvement in that respect.



At the same time, what is the point of discusssion? A user thinks a
technical point on the wiki is wrong; they know it is wrong; they change
it. Where's the problem?


Discussion pages serve as the place to discuss planning what goes where, 
explaining changes that might be obvious, asking questions about the 
content of a page e.g. phrasing to establish whether there's a mistake 
or something should be reworded for clarity, etc.


Take a look at "Talk" pages on a large Mediawiki instance (E.g.  
Wikipedia) to see how they can be used. Here's an example

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[tomas]

On Thu, Apr 23, 2020 at 08:29:46AM +0200, deloptes wrote:
> David Wright wrote:
> 
> > 1. Going from thinking to knowing. Even assuming they're well-informed,
> > it may be worth checking with other people running different systems
> > about what's wrong, and what the new text should say.
> > 
> > 2. Pages often need more than just piecemeal corrections: they may
> > need someone with a sense of ownership to restructure them, or even
> > to coordinate a rewrite when they lose focus.
> > 
> 
> totally agree with you. You see what happens to wikipedia.  (I mean wikipedia
> can not be trusted. it was prooven that people falsify information or
> impose censorship).

[citation needed]

Now irony aside: manipulation efforts are to be expected on high
visibility sites like Wikipedia. I think that, given the constraints,
it's doing a pretty good job nevertheless.

If you pick anything up on the internet, don't swallow it right away,
says my doctor.

What's your source of wisdom? Facebook?

> Best would be to have ownership and the community to decide what needs to be
> there, after which the owner of the document can edit.

Each scheme has its advantages and disadvantages. The one you propose
mimicks Debian's traditional packaging setup -- although you see more
and more team-owned packages nowadays.

Cheers
-- t


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[deloptes]

David Wright wrote:

> 1. Going from thinking to knowing. Even assuming they're well-informed,
> it may be worth checking with other people running different systems
> about what's wrong, and what the new text should say.
> 
> 2. Pages often need more than just piecemeal corrections: they may
> need someone with a sense of ownership to restructure them, or even
> to coordinate a rewrite when they lose focus.
> 

totally agree with you. You see what happens to wikipedia. (I mean wikipedia
can not be trusted. it was prooven that people falsify information or
impose censorship).
Best would be to have ownership and the community to decide what needs to be
there, after which the owner of the document can edit.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Nate Bargmann]

This topic has been on LWN.net for the past several days and should be
free to view in the next day or two:  https://lwn.net/Articles/817668/

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Web: https://www.n0nb.us
Projects: https://github.com/N0NB
GPG fingerprint: 82D6 4F6B 0E67 CD41 F689 BBA6 FB2C 5130 D55A 8819



signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[David Wright]

On Tue 21 Apr 2020 at 20:07:55 (+0100), Brian wrote:
> On Tue 21 Apr 2020 at 11:18:14 +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 11:35:00PM -0500, David Wright wrote:
> > > I don't know what the writer of those two sentences meant by
> > > structure, but I specifically mentioned the Discussion page
> > > (≡ Wikipedia's Talk page) which I think is an important
> > > factor in improving content.
> > 
> > At some point a long time ago, the Debian Wiki administrators (at the
> > time) decided to direct meta-discussions towards the debian-www@ mailing
> > list, instead of Discussion pages. I think this was a mistake, and it's
> > something I've been wanting to push back on for some time, but it hasn't
> > raised up my TODO list far enough.
> 
> I do not have a TODO list, but pushing all wiki issues onto debian-www
> probably wasn't the best of ideas. It seems to me that discourse would
> be a good place to put them.
> 
> At the same time, what is the point of discusssion? A user thinks a
> technical point on the wiki is wrong; they know it is wrong; they change
> it. Where's the problem? 

1. Going from thinking to knowing. Even assuming they're well-informed,
it may be worth checking with other people running different systems
about what's wrong, and what the new text should say.

2. Pages often need more than just piecemeal corrections: they may
need someone with a sense of ownership to restructure them, or even
to coordinate a rewrite when they lose focus.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brian]

On Tue 21 Apr 2020 at 11:18:14 +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 11:35:00PM -0500, David Wright wrote:
> > I don't know what the writer of those two sentences meant by
> > structure, but I specifically mentioned the Discussion page
> > (≡ Wikipedia's Talk page) which I think is an important
> > factor in improving content.
> 
> At some point a long time ago, the Debian Wiki administrators (at the
> time) decided to direct meta-discussions towards the debian-www@ mailing
> list, instead of Discussion pages. I think this was a mistake, and it's
> something I've been wanting to push back on for some time, but it hasn't
> raised up my TODO list far enough.

I do not have a TODO list, but pushing all wiki issues onto debian-www
probably wasn't the best of ideas. It seems to me that discourse would
be a good place to put them.

At the same time, what is the point of discusssion? A user thinks a
technical point on the wiki is wrong; they know it is wrong; they change
it. Where's the problem? 

-- 
Brian.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 11:35:00PM -0500, David Wright wrote:

I don't know what the writer of those two sentences meant by
structure, but I specifically mentioned the Discussion page
(≡ Wikipedia's Talk page) which I think is an important
factor in improving content.


At some point a long time ago, the Debian Wiki administrators (at the
time) decided to direct meta-discussions towards the debian-www@ mailing
list, instead of Discussion pages. I think this was a mistake, and it's
something I've been wanting to push back on for some time, but it hasn't
raised up my TODO list far enough.


--
  Jonathan Dowland
   https://jmtd.net

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[tomas]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 11:35:00PM -0500, David Wright wrote:

[...]

> That's why I wrote "curated". There are some dedicated people working
   
> on their wiki. Look at their News or Statistics pages.

This is it, I think. We as geeks tend to invent technical thingies
("discussion page", whatever), to avoid doing the Hard Work (TM),
but thing is, that at the very bottom, people can't be substituted
when it comes to write documentation for... people.

Technology is fine, but it's a tool.

I'm sure there are a few very gifted folks at Arch Wiki's root who
acted as cristallization points for that breathtaking beauty.

Cheers
-- t


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[deloptes]

Ihor Antonov wrote:

> As a former Arch user I second that opinion. The wiki is better
> structured, has better contents and is easy to edit anyway. Archlinux wiki
> is the primary, if not the only, source of the documentation, so all the
> effort is concentrated there.
> 

I can second that - for general Linux question I use very often the arch
wiki.

For Debian usually google & co give the right page, but very often as
mentioned structure or content is not that good or contemporary.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[David Wright]

On Mon 20 Apr 2020 at 23:05:54 (-0400), Celejar wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Apr 2020 21:33:37 -0500
> David Wright  wrote:
> 
> > On Mon 20 Apr 2020 at 13:13:50 (-0400), Celejar wrote:
> > > On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 10:19:13 +0300
> > > Andrei POPESCU  wrote:
> > > 
> > > ...
> > > 
> > > > about Debian on non-Debian platforms (like StackExchange), the other 
> > > > one 
> > > > being the Arch's wiki (significantly better than Debian's).
> > > 
> > > Everyone loves the Arch wiki - I've long wondered why it's so much
> > > better than ours. Do they just have more community-minded users?
> > 
> > It looks better curated, organised and structured. The latter is hardly
> > surprising when you read Debian's FAQ¹:
> > 
> >   Q) Wouldn't the wiki be more useful if it was better organized?
> >   A) Possibly, but a structured wiki is largely a contradiction in terms.
> >   It's more important to give it good content.
> 
> In my experience, the content of the Arch wiki is ofter far superior to
> ours, not just the organization and structure.

I don't know what the writer of those two sentences meant by
structure, but I specifically mentioned the Discussion page
(≡ Wikipedia's Talk page) which I think is an important
factor in improving content.

Here's how the Debian wiki sometimes works (or, rather, fails to):

A to list> I have a problem with  …
B to A>Doing so-and-so should fix it.
C to A>Try doing this. And I guess you should also do that.
B to C>Why would you do that? That's wrong; see wiki on Foo.
C to B>But surely X suggests to do Y. Your fix is confusing.
B to C>Read the wiki which shows so-and-so is correct.
C to B>I disagree, it doesn't show that.
B to C>OK, I'll explain in great detail just what's happening.
   (Detailed explanation follows.)
C to B>Great, that really explains it well. Perhaps that summary
   should go on the wiki.
B to C>Anyone can edit the wiki. (Implying: Why don't you do it.)

So the person who made a poor suggestion showing that they didn't
understand the problem, but now (one hopes) has a slightly firmer
grasp of what's going on, is left to edit the wiki. (In this case,
five years ago, they declined.)

Now compare with Arch's "Contributing". Do you think the Debian page
for "Foo", above, is on anyone's watchlist?

> > So they have different philosophies. Perhaps Debian puts more effort
> > into the packages themselves, the installer, and documentation like
> > the Reference Manual, Release Notes etc, whereas AIUI Arch relies
> > more on its wiki. And I think Debian has a much broader scope:
> 
> But the Debian documentation you mention doesn't cover a great deal
> of practical, real-world areas of system configuration, maintenance,
> and use, at least not in any useful, up-to-date way.

I was being charitable.

> The Arch wiki, in
> my experience, simply does a much better job at documenting this sort of
> stuff than any Debian documentation.

That's why I wrote "curated". There are some dedicated people working
on their wiki. Look at their News or Statistics pages.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Ihor Antonov]

I am not sure why we are discussing this is in a discourse thread, but what 
the heck.
> 
> In my experience, the content of the Arch wiki is ofter far superior to
> ours, not just the organization and structure.
> 
> ...
> 
> > So they have different philosophies. Perhaps Debian puts more effort
> > into the packages themselves, the installer, and documentation like
> > the Reference Manual, Release Notes etc, whereas AIUI Arch relies
> 
> > more on its wiki. And I think Debian has a much broader scope:
> But the Debian documentation you mention doesn't cover a great deal
> of practical, real-world areas of system configuration, maintenance,
> and use, at least not in any useful, up-to-date way. The Arch wiki, in
> my experience, simply does a much better job at documenting this sort of
> stuff than any Debian documentation.

As a former Arch user I second that opinion. The wiki is better structured, 
has better contents and is easy to edit anyway. Archlinux wiki is the primary, 
if not the only, source of the documentation, so all the effort is concentrated 
there.

I would love to get better navigation / search in Debian wiki, some sort of 
side bar would not be amiss. What do you think can be done to make Debian wiki 
more usable and more attractive to users/editors?


---
Ihor Antonov

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Celejar]

On Mon, 20 Apr 2020 21:33:37 -0500
David Wright  wrote:

> On Mon 20 Apr 2020 at 13:13:50 (-0400), Celejar wrote:
> > On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 10:19:13 +0300
> > Andrei POPESCU  wrote:
> > 
> > ...
> > 
> > > about Debian on non-Debian platforms (like StackExchange), the other one 
> > > being the Arch's wiki (significantly better than Debian's).
> > 
> > Everyone loves the Arch wiki - I've long wondered why it's so much
> > better than ours. Do they just have more community-minded users?
> 
> It looks better curated, organised and structured. The latter is hardly
> surprising when you read Debian's FAQ¹:
> 
>   Q) Wouldn't the wiki be more useful if it was better organized?
>   A) Possibly, but a structured wiki is largely a contradiction in terms.
>   It's more important to give it good content.

In my experience, the content of the Arch wiki is ofter far superior to
ours, not just the organization and structure.

...

> So they have different philosophies. Perhaps Debian puts more effort
> into the packages themselves, the installer, and documentation like
> the Reference Manual, Release Notes etc, whereas AIUI Arch relies
> more on its wiki. And I think Debian has a much broader scope:

But the Debian documentation you mention doesn't cover a great deal
of practical, real-world areas of system configuration, maintenance,
and use, at least not in any useful, up-to-date way. The Arch wiki, in
my experience, simply does a much better job at documenting this sort of
stuff than any Debian documentation.

Celejar

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[David Wright]

On Mon 20 Apr 2020 at 13:13:50 (-0400), Celejar wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 10:19:13 +0300
> Andrei POPESCU  wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> > about Debian on non-Debian platforms (like StackExchange), the other one 
> > being the Arch's wiki (significantly better than Debian's).
> 
> Everyone loves the Arch wiki - I've long wondered why it's so much
> better than ours. Do they just have more community-minded users?

It looks better curated, organised and structured. The latter is hardly
surprising when you read Debian's FAQ¹:

  Q) Wouldn't the wiki be more useful if it was better organized?
  A) Possibly, but a structured wiki is largely a contradiction in terms.
  It's more important to give it good content.

Another weakness is what lies behind the pages:

  Q) How do I keep track of changes?
  A) By using two features accessible via the sidebar menu:
  the link to the RecentChanges page (limited to a week for visitors,
   90 days for logged-in users);
  the Subscribe option, which requests e-mail notification when the page is 
modified. 

With ~16½ thousand pages², and up to 90 days of time-ordered changes,
I would imagine it's difficult to keep track of what's up-to-date or
being worked on.

The Arch wiki pages have a discussion area where changes can be
debated and the page can be refined, as well as a History area
that I haven't seen (because I'm not registered on their system).

So they have different philosophies. Perhaps Debian puts more effort
into the packages themselves, the installer, and documentation like
the Reference Manual, Release Notes etc, whereas AIUI Arch relies
more on its wiki. And I think Debian has a much broader scope:
how many architectures does Arch support? Not even 32-bit PCs.

For all their faults, I think the two wikis complement each other
rather than trying to compete, and I use both, generally navigating
via search engines.

¹ The one at the bottom of the EditorGuide
  https://wiki.debian.org/DebianWiki/EditorGuide

² There are far fewer content pages really, but the TitleIndex
  listing, which I counted, includes the name of all the people
  who edit the wiki. It would be nice to have them separated.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Celejar]

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 10:19:13 +0300
Andrei POPESCU  wrote:

...

> about Debian on non-Debian platforms (like StackExchange), the other one 
> being the Arch's wiki (significantly better than Debian's).

Everyone loves the Arch wiki - I've long wondered why it's so much
better than ours. Do they just have more community-minded users?

Celejar

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Eric S Fraga]

On Sunday, 12 Apr 2020 at 10:58, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> It's second-class, at best. I have to suffer from it in another context.

third class or worse.  we have tried and tested mechanisms (email and
usenet), both of which are significantly better.  I also have to use it
in another context and I hate it.  Doesn't work well at all with email
despite the claims.

don't do it!

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 28.0.50 & org 9.3.6 on Debian bullseye/sid

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brian]

On Tue 14 Apr 2020 at 18:15:16 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

> On Ma, 14 apr 20, 09:49:16, Curt wrote:
> > On 2020-04-14, Andrei POPESCU  wrote:
> >
> > > To me "may or may not be a replacemnt" and "would be better of" are
> > > very far away from "I propose to replace X with Y".
> > 
> > It is also rather distant from "Nobody is proposing replacing
> > debian-user with Discourse," so I guess we're kind of even, though I
> > think my interpretation is closer to the truth than your flat and
> > unequivocal dismissal.
> 
> Let's agree to disagree on this, see below on why.
> 
> > I'm sorry, but it does follow from Neil's
> > comments that replacing debian-user by Discourse is under consideration
> > (as he *specified* debian-user as a *particular list* he believes would
> > benefit from the shift).
> 
> Debian's lists are under the responsibility of the Listmaster Team[1] 
> and so far they haven't expressed any opinion on this. Even if some 
> other Debian Member would explicitly advance a proposal to change 
> something regarding Debian's lists they are in charge to approve and 
> implement (and no, they can't be forced to do this, because they are 
> volunteers).
> 
> What *may* happen:
> 
> If (and only if) Discourse is popular enough it could be promoted to an 
> official channel (moved from debian.net to debian.org), most likely 
> operated by a completely different team than the Listmasters.
> 
> As we have seen with shapado/ask.debian.net this might *never* happen.
> 
> If (and only if) *some* mailing list is not useful anymore it could be 
> disabled by the Listmaster Team (regardless of the popularity of some 
> other official channel).
> 
> With 3000+ subscribers I don't see this happening for debian-user 
> anytime soon. If it's going to see any significant decline in use it 
> will probably be correlated to general decline in e-mail use.
> 
> I'm not aware of any list on lists.debian.org with as many subscribers 
> as debian-user, only debian-devel comes close with 2500+ subscribers.
> 
> Do note that some lists on lists.debian.org have less than 100 
> subscribers.
> 
> [1] I was under the impression they are delegated as per Debian's 
> Constitution, though I can't find any proof of that now.

A nice exposition of some salient points. Perhaps this

  https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2020/04/msg00208.html

will also help to clarify.

  On Wed, Apr 15, 2020 at 10:12:21AM -0400, Brian Gupta wrote:
  > Do we have to start by making it a mandatory switch? I don't feel consensus 
to
  > move to discourse will be impossible in the long term but it's normal for 
human
  > beings to resist change, especially during a time of otherwise great stress.
> 

  I think we're miles away from making it a mandatory switch! In fact, I
  explictly stated this in my initial email:
  > What about the mailing lists?
  >   This may or may not be a replacement for any particular list. I suspect
  >   there are some thet would benefit greatly from having Discourse be the
  >   primary interaction, and other places where this would be less suitable.
  > 
  > Be specific!
  >  Ok... I think debian-user, debian-vote and possibly debian-project would
  >  be better off in Discourse. I think debian-devel-announce should stay as
  >  an email list (for now). However, I am not suddenly proposing that we shut
  >  those lists down. The aim of this exercise is to see if Discourse would
  >  work well for us.

  The whole point of this is to evaluate if Discourse would work for
  Debian at all, rather than if it should be the primary communication
  platform. I think that discussion is very different. 

  > How do you feel about making discourse.debian.org, and making it a fully
  > supported tool, that's fully backed up, and available as an alternative for 
new
  > lists? He can have another discussion later about migrating existing lists.
  > 

  Personally, I think that would be fantastic, and the idea behind this
  initial call for testing is to determine if I should be spending my
  time, and aiming for a discourse.debian.org instance, or if there is no
  appetite for that.

  Neil

-- 
Brian.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[rhkramer]

On Wednesday, April 15, 2020 12:11:24 AM Andy Smith wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 08:14:22AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I had to look up Neil McGovern to find out what "status" he has in the
> > Debian organization.  IIUC, he was the DPL (I guess I learned an
> > acronym) in something like 2015, and he may now be the executive
> > director of GNOME.
> > 
> > Does he have some current status in Debian that would make his thoughts
> > any more of indicative of the intentions of Debian than anyone else?
> 
> There are some very strange assumptions being made in the above text
> about the decision-making processes of Debian. 

Interesting.

Communication is often (always?) difficult.

I often (sometimes?)  try to look back what I wrote and try to see what I did 
wrong or could have done better.

Sometimes the problem may be on the other side, the mindset of the reader (or 
maybe I didn't quote enough).

Sometimes I feel the need to respond (publicly or privately) for the sake of 
my own self respect -- maybe that is the primary reason for this response.

I don't see many (any?) assumptions in what I wrote, I see questions.

I guess I was somewhat using a form of indirect response (though not in the 
coding indirection sense) -- the intent of my response is almost exactly what 
you stated in your last paragraph -- I was trying to say (or at least imply) 
that I didn't see any reason that just because some "ordinary" writer to this 
list proposes something doesn't make it an intention of the debian project.  

(If the writer was the current DPL or some other person with delegated 
authority for the project, it might be different, but I hope that, in that 
case, the writer would distinguish between things that were being "proposed" 
for discussion as opposed to (for example) plans for implementation.)

> I have no idea why
> you would just imagine that huge sections of project infrastructure
> could be torn down and replaced based on the wishes of one person,
> even if you started off with having no idea about how it's actually
> done. Clearly in a project the size of Debian that sort of behaviour
> just wouldn't scale.
> 
> Briefly and broadly:
> 
> Debian makes decisions based on rough consensus, with some areas of
> responsibility delegated to teams. When a decision has to be made
> and consensus can't be found, sometimes things are referred to the
> Technical Committee, or sometimes they are put to a General
> Resolution (a vote).

I understand (and understood) all that -- I guess I'm disappointed that my 
response apparently indicated otherwise, although maybe that had to do with 
phrasing -- but I guess I think it had more to do with your mindset.
 
> If you're interested in watching Debian make decisions then I think
> it would be best to subscribe to the debian-project mailing list. It
> sometimes is not very pretty - maybe the saying about watching
> sausages being made applies here.

I am subscribed, although maybe for not all that long -- I subscribed when I 
first saw this subject come up on debian-user.

> It does not matter if someone is a highly esteemed Debian developer
> and DPL emeritus; if they try to push through a change that is
> controversial and ignore dissent then someone will call a GR and
> then the proponent has 1 vote just like every other eligible Debian
> voter.

Exactly.

Have a good day.

regards,
Randy Kramer

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 apr 20, 13:34:30, John Hasler wrote:
> Brad writes:
> > I /thought/ Discourse was a service similar to, say, google groups.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_(software)
> 
> The company behind it offers such a service.  I would be appalled if
> Debian made use of it.

Debian is hosting all its official services and there is no indication 
this is going to change (for any of its official services).

On the other hand I'm guessing most of us are also not donating to 
support Debian with hardware, hosting, etc. so it's not fair for us to 
judge how Debian is providing its free services.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brad Rogers]

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 13:34:30 -0500
John Hasler  wrote:

Hello John,

>The company behind it offers such a service.  I would be appalled if
>Debian made use of it.

TBH, if Debian wish to offload some of the 'grunt work'  I'd have no
issue with that.  Of course, the supplier's ToS would have to be
suitable.  Probably difficult to achieve.

As Sven suggested, I may have been muddling things up somewhat with
disqus.

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
It belongs to them, let's give it back
Beds Are Burning - Midnight Oil


pgpmA5_4IZKtk.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Andy Smith]

Hello,

On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 08:14:22AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> I had to look up Neil McGovern to find out what "status" he has in the Debian 
> organization.  IIUC, he was the DPL (I guess I learned an acronym) in 
> something like 2015, and he may now be the executive director of GNOME.
> 
> Does he have some current status in Debian that would make his thoughts any 
> more of indicative of the intentions of Debian than anyone else?

There are some very strange assumptions being made in the above text
about the decision-making processes of Debian. I have no idea why
you would just imagine that huge sections of project infrastructure
could be torn down and replaced based on the wishes of one person,
even if you started off with having no idea about how it's actually
done. Clearly in a project the size of Debian that sort of behaviour
just wouldn't scale.

Briefly and broadly:

Debian makes decisions based on rough consensus, with some areas of
responsibility delegated to teams. When a decision has to be made
and consensus can't be found, sometimes things are referred to the
Technical Committee, or sometimes they are put to a General
Resolution (a vote).

If you're interested in watching Debian make decisions then I think
it would be best to subscribe to the debian-project mailing list. It
sometimes is not very pretty - maybe the saying about watching
sausages being made applies here.

It does not matter if someone is a highly esteemed Debian developer
and DPL emeritus; if they try to push through a change that is
controversial and ignore dissent then someone will call a GR and
then the proponent has 1 vote just like every other eligible Debian
voter.

Cheers,
Andy

-- 
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[John Hasler]

Brad writes:
> I /thought/ Discourse was a service similar to, say, google groups.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_(software)

The company behind it offers such a service.  I would be appalled if
Debian made use of it.


-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Sven Hartge]

Brad Rogers  wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 12:01:44 -0500 John Hasler  wrote:

>> Surely the Discourse server would be under direct Debian control.  I was

> TBH, I 'm not certain.  I /thought/ Discourse was a service similar
> to, say, google groups.  Of course, if it's software, then yes, it
> could be hosted anywhere.

I think you are thinking about "disqus" here, which is indeed a central
comment hosting service, mostly used in blogs and other online
communities.

Grüße,
Sven.

-- 
Sigmentation fault. Core dumped.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brad Rogers]

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 12:01:44 -0500
John Hasler  wrote:

Hello John,

>Surely the Discourse server would be under direct Debian control.  I was

TBH, I 'm not certain.  I /thought/ Discourse was a service similar to,
say, google groups.  Of course, if it's software, then yes, it could be
hosted anywhere.

>not aware that Debian's servers were overworked.

I did add that the above possibility was not part of the proposition.

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
We are the League, we are the anti band
We're The League - Anti-Nowhere League


pgp1WAs0lEmLH.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[John Hasler]

Brad writes: 
> ...it wouldn't be Discourse. It'd be a discourse variant,

The patch adding the ability to disable the features in question would
be sent upstream, of course.

> It'd be a discourse variant, a fork, that somebody would have to host
> elsewhere.  Which could defeat one of the purposes(1), potentially, of
> moving certain Debian lists to Discourse.

Surely the Discourse server would be under direct Debian control.  I was
not aware that Debian's servers were overworked.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brad Rogers]

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 11:25:59 -0400
Carl Fink  wrote:

Hello Carl,

>Actually, since Discourse is Open Source, yes, it can.
>Not necessarily easily, but it can.

Point taken, *but*.

...it wouldn't be Discourse

It'd be a discourse variant, a fork, that somebody would have to host
elsewhere.  Which could defeat one of the purposes(1), potentially, of
moving certain Debian lists to Discourse.

(1)  Assuming, that is, one of the purposes is to lighten the load on
Debian's already overworked servers.  Nothing I've read indicates that
is part of the aim, though.

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
Chose to play the fool in a six piece band
What A Waste - Ian Dury And The Blockheads


pgpnqXvRm1dbU.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 apr 20, 10:35:57, John Hasler wrote:
> Dan Ritter writes:
> >There's this general problem: when you place incentives, even
> > {etc.}
> 
> Brad writes:
> > Despite my relative maturity (read: I'm old), I've fallen prey to this
> > myself, on occasion.
> 
> Likewise.

Guilty :)

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!aboutgroup/linux.debian.user

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[John Hasler]

Dan Ritter writes:
>There's this general problem: when you place incentives, even
> {etc.}

Brad writes:
> Despite my relative maturity (read: I'm old), I've fallen prey to this
> myself, on occasion.

Likewise.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Carl Fink]

On 4/14/20 10:28 AM, Brad Rogers wrote:

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 06:54:19 -0700
Peter Ehlert  wrote:

Hello Peter,


can that "feature" be removed?

Only by lobotomising/killing the person.

Oh, you mean at discourse?   :-)

Apparently not.  :-(


Actually, since Discourse is Open Source, yes, it can.

Not necessarily easily, but it can.

--
Carl Fink   nitpick...@nitpicking.com

Read my blog at blog.nitpicking.com.  Reviews!  Observations!

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 apr 20, 09:49:16, Curt wrote:
> On 2020-04-14, Andrei POPESCU  wrote:
>
> > To me "may or may not be a replacemnt" and "would be better of" are
> > very far away from "I propose to replace X with Y".
> 
> It is also rather distant from "Nobody is proposing replacing
> debian-user with Discourse," so I guess we're kind of even, though I
> think my interpretation is closer to the truth than your flat and
> unequivocal dismissal.

Let's agree to disagree on this, see below on why.

> I'm sorry, but it does follow from Neil's
> comments that replacing debian-user by Discourse is under consideration
> (as he *specified* debian-user as a *particular list* he believes would
> benefit from the shift).

Debian's lists are under the responsibility of the Listmaster Team[1] 
and so far they haven't expressed any opinion on this. Even if some 
other Debian Member would explicitly advance a proposal to change 
something regarding Debian's lists they are in charge to approve and 
implement (and no, they can't be forced to do this, because they are 
volunteers).

What *may* happen:

If (and only if) Discourse is popular enough it could be promoted to an 
official channel (moved from debian.net to debian.org), most likely 
operated by a completely different team than the Listmasters.

As we have seen with shapado/ask.debian.net this might *never* happen.

If (and only if) *some* mailing list is not useful anymore it could be 
disabled by the Listmaster Team (regardless of the popularity of some 
other official channel).

With 3000+ subscribers I don't see this happening for debian-user 
anytime soon. If it's going to see any significant decline in use it 
will probably be correlated to general decline in e-mail use.

I'm not aware of any list on lists.debian.org with as many subscribers 
as debian-user, only debian-devel comes close with 2500+ subscribers.

Do note that some lists on lists.debian.org have less than 100 
subscribers.

[1] I was under the impression they are delegated as per Debian's 
Constitution, though I can't find any proof of that now.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brad Rogers]

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 06:54:19 -0700
Peter Ehlert  wrote:

Hello Peter,

>can that "feature" be removed?

Only by lobotomising/killing the person.

Oh, you mean at discourse?   :-)

Apparently not.  :-(

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
It's becoming an obsession
Teenage Depression - Eddie & The Hot Rods


pgpIMgUzaQFeh.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brad Rogers]

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 09:38:55 -0400
Dan Ritter  wrote:

Hello Dan,

>There's this general problem: when you place incentives, even
{etc.}

Despite my relative maturity (read: I'm old), I've fallen prey to this
myself, on occasion.

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
I'm doubling the rent 'coz the building's condemned
Let's Lynch The Landlord - Dead Kennedys


pgpaMd2meo453.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Glenn Holmer]

On Sun, Apr 12, 2020 at 3:45 AM Reco  wrote:

> [1] came to my attention today. To quote relevant parts:
>
> So, thoughts, options?
>
> [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2020/04/msg00074.html
>

-1 to newfangled fol-de-rol

-- 
Glenn Holmer (Linux registered user #16682)
"After the vintage season came the aftermath -- and Cenbe."

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Dan Purgert]

On Apr 14, 2020, Brad Rogers wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 08:21:14 -0400
> Dan Purgert  wrote:
> 
> Hello Dan,
> 
> >Mine actually says "tested only in Lynx, if it doesn't look right in
> >your preferred CLI browser, let me know" :)
> 
> Which is fine.  It differs from "Works best in" because you state
> you're prepared to do things to improve your site for the general good.
> The "works best in..." brigade are saying "We won't change anything,
> even if it is broken".

Yep, I can understand the difference of thinking there.  I used to be
part of the "works best in" brigade; but I was also still in university
(albeit, I always had "works best in FF").  I've since learned a thing
or two (whether or not it was the CORRECT thing or two has yet to be
seen :) ).


-- 
|_|O|_| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|_|_|O| PGP: DDAB 23FB 19FA 7D85 1CC1  E067 6D65 70E5 4CE7 2860
|O|O|O| Former PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Peter Ehlert]

On 4/14/20 6:38 AM, Dan Ritter wrote:

Brad Rogers wrote:

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 08:58:12 - (UTC)
Curt  wrote:


My current Trust Level: Totally Untrustworthy.

Until you've posted, and your initial post(s) have been proved to be
acceptable (IOW, not offensive, off topic, spam.), yep.


Some Discourse "badges":

All very juvenile, I agree.  One doesn't have to 'play' that game,
though.

There's this general problem: when you place incentives, even
ridiculously meaningless ones, you get behavior that maximizes
those incentives. (Not everybody, not all the time.)

can that "feature" be removed?


So if Discourse badges and points and reputation scores become
an incentive -- imaginary internet points -- people will do the
things that get them the points.

-dsr-

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Dan Ritter]

Brad Rogers wrote: 
> On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 08:58:12 - (UTC)
> Curt  wrote:
> 
> >My current Trust Level: Totally Untrustworthy.
> 
> Until you've posted, and your initial post(s) have been proved to be
> acceptable (IOW, not offensive, off topic, spam.), yep.
> 
> >Some Discourse "badges":
> 
> All very juvenile, I agree.  One doesn't have to 'play' that game,
> though.

There's this general problem: when you place incentives, even
ridiculously meaningless ones, you get behavior that maximizes
those incentives. (Not everybody, not all the time.)

So if Discourse badges and points and reputation scores become
an incentive -- imaginary internet points -- people will do the
things that get them the points.

-dsr-

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Reco]

Hi.

On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 08:14:22AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, April 14, 2020 05:56:39 AM Dan Purgert wrote:
> > On Apr 14, 2020, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > > On Ma, 14 apr 20, 08:19:50, Curt wrote:
> > > > On 2020-04-14, Andrei POPESCU  wrote:
> > > > > It doesn't matter much as nobody is proposing to replace debian-user
> > > > > with Discourse.
> > > > 
> > > > Nobody but Neil McGovern himself.
> 
> Does he have some current status in Debian that would make his thoughts any 
> more of indicative of the intentions of Debian than anyone else?

A Debian Developer, unless I misunderstood that:

https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/e1jneel-0007cd...@mail.einval.com

Current DPL is Sam Hartman, and an election process for the next DPL is
going on until Apr 18th.

Reco

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brad Rogers]

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 08:21:14 -0400
Dan Purgert  wrote:

Hello Dan,

>Mine actually says "tested only in Lynx, if it doesn't look right in
>your preferred CLI browser, let me know" :)

Which is fine.  It differs from "Works best in" because you state
you're prepared to do things to improve your site for the general good.
The "works best in..." brigade are saying "We won't change anything,
even if it is broken".

It's also a far cry from being redirected, or shown a page telling me to
"F*&@ Off!" because I use a browser the site owner dislikes.  Yes, I've
seen that in the past, too.   :-(

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
Who's a sucker now?
Edward The Bear - The Damned


pgpxB9e_e19rK.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Dan Purgert]

On Apr 14, 2020, Brad Rogers wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 05:52:48 -0400
> Dan Purgert  wrote:
> 
> Hello Dan,
> 
> >"Works best with Internet Explorer" :D
> 
> That sort of statement on a web site is coming back.   :-(

Mine actually says "tested only in Lynx, if it doesn't look right in
your preferred CLI browser, let me know" :)

But then again, I'm writing static html ... so it should work entirely
cleanly.

-- 
|_|O|_| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|_|_|O| PGP: DDAB 23FB 19FA 7D85 1CC1  E067 6D65 70E5 4CE7 2860
|O|O|O| Former PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[rhkramer]

On Tuesday, April 14, 2020 05:56:39 AM Dan Purgert wrote:
> On Apr 14, 2020, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > On Ma, 14 apr 20, 08:19:50, Curt wrote:
> > > On 2020-04-14, Andrei POPESCU  wrote:
> > > > It doesn't matter much as nobody is proposing to replace debian-user
> > > > with Discourse.
> > > 
> > > Nobody but Neil McGovern himself.

I had to look up Neil McGovern to find out what "status" he has in the Debian 
organization.  IIUC, he was the DPL (I guess I learned an acronym) in 
something like 2015, and he may now be the executive director of GNOME.

Does he have some current status in Debian that would make his thoughts any 
more of indicative of the intentions of Debian than anyone else?

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brad Rogers]

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 13:24:14 +0200
Sven Hartge  wrote:

Hello Sven,

>> On 2020-04-13, Brad Rogers  wrote:  
>>> There have, in the past existed gateways between mailing lists and
>>> usenet newsgroups.  They worked well, for the most part.  
>> I'm using one at this very moment.  
>Same here, reading via tin in my local INN2 pulled via Gmane.

Okay, I'll change my statement;

There exist gateways between mailing lists and usenet newsgroups.  They
work well, for the most part.

;-D

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
Watching the people get lairy
I Predict A Riot - Kaiser Chiefs


pgpriVxlTPIJ7.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brad Rogers]

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 11:46:39 +0300
Andrei POPESCU  wrote:

Hello Andrei,

>To me "may or may not be a replacemnt" and "would be better of" are
>very far away from "I propose to replace X with Y"

The two former are clearly a precursor to the latter.  Obviously,
viability has to be assessed, hence the hedging - 'may or may not'.

Of course, as things stand, the third (I propose, etc.) is not
inevitable.

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
He signed up for just three years, it seemed a small amount
Tin Soldiers - Stiff Little Fingers


pgpUSbX4jbYTr.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brad Rogers]

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 05:52:48 -0400
Dan Purgert  wrote:

Hello Dan,

>"Works best with Internet Explorer" :D

That sort of statement on a web site is coming back.   :-(

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
Words as weapons, sharper than knives
Devil Inside - INXS


pgpb4gVdmxm9I.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brad Rogers]

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 08:58:12 - (UTC)
Curt  wrote:

Hello Curt,

>Color me stupid but I mosied over to the test site and couldn't figure
>out how to post. Maybe you gotta sign up (that must be it). 

It is just that.

>My current Trust Level: Totally Untrustworthy.

Until you've posted, and your initial post(s) have been proved to be
acceptable (IOW, not offensive, off topic, spam.), yep.

>Some Discourse "badges":

All very juvenile, I agree.  One doesn't have to 'play' that game,
though.

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
He's got all the answers
Ask Mr Waverley - The Cortinas


pgpPcyIJFLHD7.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brad Rogers]

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 07:57:50 - (UTC)
Curt  wrote:

Hello Curt,

>As Brian P. has already sort of implied, some might find it hard to
>believe in the total sincerity of a change to Discourse for debian-user
>(a community of users for users by users) in the name of inclusiveness

Well, quite.  If a move to Discourse were made, I'd not follow, that's
for sure.

Certainly, discourse has advantages - *for the moderators*.  For every
one else - not so much.

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
I hit the ground, boy have I arrived!
The History Of The World (Part 1) - The Damned


pgpiv3xaNLJvg.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Brian]

On Tue 14 Apr 2020 at 10:19:13 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

> On Lu, 13 apr 20, 20:30:45, Brian wrote:
> 
> > A similar, less constrictive, idea has been tried before
> > 
> >   http://shapado.debian.net/
> > 
> > and has failed miserably.
> 
> Sadly this yet another instance where I end up finding better answers 
> about Debian on non-Debian platforms (like StackExchange), the other one 
> being the Arch's wiki (significantly better than Debian's).
> 
> For some reasons (missing SEO?) I don't see many hits from 
> lists.debian.org in DuckDuckGo or Google.

Fortunately, I could remember fragments of the original post on
debian -project, so my search didn't take too long.

 https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/09/msg00123.html

The shapado.debian.net domain eventually became ask.debian.net.
See

 https://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2010/14/#ask

  > With the help of the Shapado Project, members of the
  > Debian project started a new user oriented service at
  > ask.debian.net. It lets users ask specific questions
  > and find answers, while also providing rating systems
  > and badges for users. It allows Debian Developers and
  > other contributors to easily stay in touch with the
  > community.

My recollection is that, after an initial flurry of activity by
DDs, the response to questions was left in the hands of a single
person.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Sven Hartge]

Curt  wrote:
> On 2020-04-13, Brad Rogers  wrote:
>> On Mon, 13 Apr 2020 18:33:13 - (UTC) Curt  wrote:

>>> There could be a channel to connect the pools
>>
>> There have, in the past existed gateways between mailing lists and usenet
>> newsgroups.  They worked well, for the most part.

> I'm using one at this very moment.

Same here, reading via tin in my local INN2 pulled via Gmane.

But gatewaying between Mail and Usenet was always easier, because both
use the same base RfC to describe the message format and the (initial)
social way of replying (shunning top-quotes, etc.) between Mail and
Usenet was largely the same.

On the other side, gatewaying between different platforms, for example a
Web forum that does not support threading and a mailinglist is much much
harder to do right, let alone the social differences between most forums
and mailinglist.

S!

-- 
Sigmentation fault. Core dumped.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Sven Hartge]

Andrei POPESCU  wrote:
> On Lu, 13 apr 20, 22:38:11, Sven Hartge wrote:
 
>> Same example from my circle of friends and aquaintances:
>> 
>>  - some use WhatsApp
>>  - some use Facebook
>>  - some use Mail (like me)

> https://xkcd.com/1782/

Yes.

S!

-- 
Sigmentation fault. Core dumped.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Dan Purgert]

On Apr 14, 2020, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Ma, 14 apr 20, 08:19:50, Curt wrote:
> > On 2020-04-14, Andrei POPESCU  wrote:
> > >
> > > It doesn't matter much as nobody is proposing to replace debian-user
> > > with Discourse.
> > 
> > Nobody but Neil McGovern himself.
> > 
> > https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2020/04/msg00074.html
> >  
> >  What about the mailing lists?
> >This may or may not be a replacement for any particular list.
> >  
> >  Be specific!
> >Ok... I think debian-user, debian-vote and possibly debian-project
> >would be better off in Discourse.
> > 
> > Obviously, as usual, confusion reigns supreme.
> 
> To me "may or may not be a replacemnt" and "would be better of" are very 
> far away from "I propose to replace X with Y".

It's language that gives the other party room to think that it was their
idea to replace X with Y the whole time.  Have to use it every day at
work with the suits.


-- 
|_|O|_| 
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Dan Purgert]

On Apr 13, 2020, John Hasler wrote:
> Kenneth Parker writes:
> > On a Laptop of mine, I have an old version of Firefox, with the
> > "NoScript" add-on.  I wonder how it would work there.
> 
> Works ok for a casual test.  I have no acount so I have no idea how it
> would work for posting, though.
> 
> "Works best with Javascript" could turn into "Requires Javascript"
> from one release to the next, though.

"Works best with Internet Explorer" :D

-- 
|_|O|_| 
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Curt]

On 2020-04-14, Andrei POPESCU  wrote:
>
>> https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2020/04/msg00074.html

>>  What about the mailing lists?
>>This may or may not be a replacement for any particular list.

>>  Be specific!
>>Ok... I think debian-user, debian-vote and possibly debian-project
>>would be better off in Discourse.

>> Obviously, as usual, confusion reigns supreme.
>
> To me "may or may not be a replacemnt" and "would be better of" are
> very far away from "I propose to replace X with Y".

It is also rather distant from "Nobody is proposing replacing
debian-user with Discourse," so I guess we're kind of even, though I
think my interpretation is closer to the truth than your flat and
unequivocal dismissal. I'm sorry, but it does follow from Neil's
comments that replacing debian-user by Discourse is under consideration
(as he *specified* debian-user as a *particular list* he believes would
benefit from the shift).

> Maybe this is because English is not my first language. Or not.
>
> Kind regards,
> Andrei
> http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Curt]

On 2020-04-13, Tom Dial  wrote:
>
> 3. I also know nothing about Discourse. Although the remarks so far in
> the thread don't particularly make me want to use it, I don't find the
> idea entirely abhorrent.

Color me stupid but I mosied over to the test site and couldn't figure
out how to post. Maybe you gotta sign up (that must be it). 

My current Trust Level: Totally Untrustworthy.

  Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have
  to show you any stinking badges!

Some Discourse "badges":

 Higher Love
 Used 50 likes in a day 5 times

 Nice Share
 Shared a post with 25 unique visitors

 Anniversary
 Active member for a year, posted at least once

 Good Reply
 Received 25 likes on a reply

 Nice Topic
 Received 10 likes on a topic

Lord Jesus. Isn't this kind of Pavlovian mind-fuck derived from Facebook
et. al. (I don't participate in any of that, being anti-social and all, 
so I'm unsure).

At any rate, my primary sentiment is one of embarrassment.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 apr 20, 08:19:50, Curt wrote:
> On 2020-04-14, Andrei POPESCU  wrote:
> >
> > It doesn't matter much as nobody is proposing to replace debian-user
> > with Discourse.
> 
> Nobody but Neil McGovern himself.
> 
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2020/04/msg00074.html
>  
>  What about the mailing lists?
>This may or may not be a replacement for any particular list.
>  
>  Be specific!
>Ok... I think debian-user, debian-vote and possibly debian-project
>would be better off in Discourse.
> 
> Obviously, as usual, confusion reigns supreme.

To me "may or may not be a replacemnt" and "would be better of" are very 
far away from "I propose to replace X with Y".

Maybe this is because English is not my first language. Or not.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Curt]

On 2020-04-14, Andrei POPESCU  wrote:
>
> It doesn't matter much as nobody is proposing to replace debian-user
> with Discourse.
>

Nobody but Neil McGovern himself.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2020/04/msg00074.html
 
 What about the mailing lists?
   This may or may not be a replacement for any particular list.
 
 Be specific!
   Ok... I think debian-user, debian-vote and possibly debian-project
   would be better off in Discourse.

Obviously, as usual, confusion reigns supreme.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 14 apr 20, 07:57:50, Curt wrote:
> 
> As Brian P. has already sort of implied, some might find it hard to
> believe in the total sincerity of a change to Discourse for debian-user
> (a community of users for users by users) in the name of inclusiveness
> and respectfulness (dixit Steve M.) that expressly does *not* include (and
> therefore cannot rightfully respect) debian-users in the decisional
> discourse, who had to rely on a heads up by Reco to abruptly discover we
> had a King who fails to consult his subjects.
 
In my opinion you are making more out of it than it is. Nothing was 
decided and the Discourse instance is just a test (hence the debian.net 
domain) which may as well fail.

Besides, if you care about things like this you should subscribe to the 
relevant mailing list (in this case -project).

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Curt]

On 2020-04-13, Brad Rogers  wrote:

> On Mon, 13 Apr 2020 18:33:13 - (UTC)
> Curt  wrote:
>
> Hello Curt,
>
>>There could be a channel to connect the pools
>
> There have, in the past existed gateways between mailing lists and usenet
> newsgroups.  They worked well, for the most part.

I'm using one at this very moment.

> Web forums to email rarely works as well, since web forum text editors
> allow for all sorts of formatting guff that doesn't translate to email
> well, if at all despite how good the translating part of the forum
> software is supposed to work (it's always second class).  *Especially*
> when reactionaries like me insist on having plain text emails, or at
> least emails with a plain text part.
>
> I *never* read the HTML part.
>

As Brian P. has already sort of implied, some might find it hard to
believe in the total sincerity of a change to Discourse for debian-user
(a community of users for users by users) in the name of inclusiveness
and respectfulness (dixit Steve M.) that expressly does *not* include (and
therefore cannot rightfully respect) debian-users in the decisional
discourse, who had to rely on a heads up by Reco to abruptly discover we
had a King who fails to consult his subjects.

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 13 apr 20, 22:38:11, Sven Hartge wrote:
> 
> Same example from my circle of friends and aquaintances:
> 
>  - some use WhatsApp
>  - some use Facebook
>  - some use Mail (like me)

https://xkcd.com/1782/

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 13 apr 20, 20:30:45, Brian wrote:
> 
> If the proposer and supporters of the idea that debian-user would be
> be better off in Discourse were prepared to engage here, we might have
> a better understanding of the intention. I fear such engagement will
> be conspicuous by its absence.

It doesn't matter much as nobody is proposing to replace debian-user 
with Discourse.

> A similar, less constrictive, idea has been tried before
> 
>   http://shapado.debian.net/
> 
> and has failed miserably.

Sadly this yet another instance where I end up finding better answers 
about Debian on non-Debian platforms (like StackExchange), the other one 
being the Arch's wiki (significantly better than Debian's).

For some reasons (missing SEO?) I don't see many hits from 
lists.debian.org in DuckDuckGo or Google.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[John Hasler]

 Kenneth Parker writes:
> But I want to test Discourse *with* Javascript, so that I understand
> the difference.

I just tried it with JS.  Better without.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Kenneth Parker]

On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 8:44 PM John Hasler  wrote:

> Kenneth Parker writes:
> > On a Laptop of mine, I have an old version of Firefox, with the
> > "NoScript" add-on.  I wonder how it would work there.
>
> Works ok for a casual test.  I have no acount so I have no idea how it
> would work for posting, though.
>

Same for me.  (The Firefox-ESR was the "current" version for Debian
Jessie).

"Works best with Javascript" could turn into "Requires Javascript"
> from one release to the next, though.
>

True enough!   But I want to test Discourse  *with*  Javascript, so that I
understand the difference.  My "safe test bed"?  A Debian Buster Gnome
Live-DVD, and *its* version of Firefox.

Okay:  *THAT* version of Discourse had about 3 or 4 times longer page than
I remember without Javascript.  So yes, Discourse is based, quite heavily
on Javascript.

So I would say that, since the "NoScript" version of Discourse was a
Skeleton of a page, tells me that it "Requires Javascript".

-- 
> John Hasler
> jhas...@newsguy.com
> Elmwood, WI USA
>

Thanks!  Kenneth Parker

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[John Hasler]

Kenneth Parker writes:
> On a Laptop of mine, I have an old version of Firefox, with the
> "NoScript" add-on.  I wonder how it would work there.

Works ok for a casual test.  I have no acount so I have no idea how it
would work for posting, though.

"Works best with Javascript" could turn into "Requires Javascript"
from one release to the next, though.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Kenneth Parker]

On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 1:15 PM Reco  wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 06:09:59PM +0100, Brian wrote:
> > > > On the contrary, it is different and requires a modern Web browser
> (how
> > > > does the non-GUI user participate since it is noted that an email
> user
> > > > is a distant second-class user?) but as he notes it is a centralized
> > > > database that facilitates an amount of control that is lacking with
> > > > email lists.  I think that the key to the discussion is that some
> people
> > > > seek greater control over discussions.
> > >
> > > Moreover, it brings two interesting aspects of the problem:
> > >
> > > 1) By its design the Discourse relies on Javascript executing in user's
> > > browser. While Discourse itself may be the free software, such usage of
> > > Discourse violates Software Freedom 1 ("change it so it does your
> > > computing as you wish").
> >
> > I understand the concern with Javascript. I have read what there is of
> > Discourse using Lynx. Am I missing out an anything?
>
> Wow. Just wow. Thank you for the idea.
> I confirm that it's enough to use any text-based browser (be it lynx,
> links or w3m) to read, say, discourse.mozilla.org.
> Cannot comment if it's possible to participate there with these fine
> browsers (the answers is probably "no"), but it's a start.
>

Okay.  I have a Text only Server (due to a Mouse issue with our Kindred
Distro, Devuan), and so put this to the test.

First, w3m apparently doesn't do Redirects, instead, giving the short page,
*describing* the Redirect to come.  (I remember these from using wget).

However, I got a good page, using lynx. (Hard to read, as I'm sure the
Pictures describe a lot of what Discourse is trying to do).  And it was
amusing to see the bottom of the page, with the message:  "Powered by
Discourse, best viewed with Javascript enabled".

So, at least with Lynx, the page will load without Javascript.

On a Laptop of mine, I have an old version of Firefox, with the "NoScript"
add-on.  I wonder how it would work there.  If I find out anything good,
I'll check back in.

Thank you!

Kenneth Parker


>
> Reco
>
>

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Dan Purgert]

On Apr 13, 2020, Sven Hartge wrote:
> Dan Purgert  wrote:
>> [...]
> > TS was basically *required* while in a big engagement though.  If you
> > weren't on TS, you weren't in the raid / fleet / whatever the game at
> > hand called it. 
> 
> I think the TS/Mumble vs. Forum comparison is flawed here, it was unwise
> of me to bring this to the table, because both serve completely
> different use-cases in most cases.

Honestly, you're not that far off the mark though -- for those groups
that didn't force TS/Mumble, those of us who would go between both as
necessary would see the divergence of the group into "the forum people"
and "the speech people".


-- 
|_|O|_| 
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2020 13 Apr 15:27 -0500, Sven Hartge wrote:
> What I am saying here is that by having multiple channels of
> communication you naturally get different groups of people in them which
> tend to drift apart sooner or later, because each group isn't
> represented in the other media. And then you get the "forum casuals"
> against the "mailinglist greybeards" against the "IRC noobs" in the end.

So, we need one more silo to contain them all?  Insert obligatory XKCD
here as I'm sure is one that applies.

> I can see why the GNOME people choose to close all other communication
> channels and focus on one and only one: to avoid splintering the
> community. 
> 
> That by doing so they may have lost some members who absolutely didn't
> want to use the new way of communicating and if they anticipated and
> went with it anyways I can't say from the outside.

They certainly did lose users.  It seems the GTK subreddit is active as
a result and probably some Web forums, unrelated mailing lists elsewhere
and maybe even some Usenet group.

If Free Software, Linux, and the entire software ecosystem we enjoy
should have taught us anything it is that it is impossible to contain
everything in a single silo.  Considering the breadth of topics on this
list over the years and the topics of all the other Debian lists, not
all of this can possibly thrown into a single Discourse silo with only
tagging to provide any separation, can it?  The scope of the Gnome
project is much smaller but still large enough that I don't find their
Discourse implementation to be all that friendly (in terms of Discourse
and their chosen layout, not the people involved) and I've been around
plenty of Web forums over the past couple of decades.

Every approach, Usenet, mailing lists, Web forums, Reddits, et. al. has
a certain amount of onboarding/learning curve.  If you don't have
separate topic-based implementations of the preceding and think that
everything can be done with tags, the segregation will still exist as
those interested in a certain topic will only search for certain tags
and thus an improperly tagged post may still be ignored.  This is how I
see Gnome's Discourse working, for some definition of working.

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Web: https://www.n0nb.us
Projects: https://github.com/N0NB
GPG fingerprint: 82D6 4F6B 0E67 CD41 F689 BBA6 FB2C 5130 D55A 8819



signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Tom Dial]

On 4/12/20 22:36, Celejar wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Apr 2020 12:47:52 -0700
> Ihor Antonov  wrote:
> 
>> On Sunday, April 12, 2020 12:39:43 PM PDT John Hasler wrote:
>>> I note that Discourse is not in the Debian archive.
>>>
>>> Not that it matters, but I certainly won't use Discourse and if most
>>> debian-user traffic were to shift to Discourse I would simply stop
>>> subscribing.
>>>
>>> "Ease of moderation" is *not* a plus.
>>
>> +1
>> Observing how zealots have moderated Norbert Preining is a perfect example 
>> of how 
>> biased and closed-minded those moderators can be.
> 
> +1
> 
> Moderation seems eminently reasonable on paper, but in practice, my
> experiences with it have been generally bad (stack exchange sites, some
> other mailing lists).

As a fairly regular reader and occasional participant here, I'd like to
offer a comment. This list, and from what I have seen, the laptop and
security lists, do not seem to need moderation. Occasionally a post is a
bit over the top, and as far as I can tell are generally corrected by a
relatively gentle reply or suggestion (e. g., don't top post).

Full disclosure:
1. I am of the older persuasion, and therefore(?) quite happy with email
and the conversational style it promotes.

2. I might be thought biased against moderation, having been unpersoned
by the Editor in Chief ("This account is no longer allowed to
participate on The Register forums"), apparently for asking why he
rejected a post I thought unobjectionable and entirely compliant with
the comments guidelines.

3. I also know nothing about Discourse. Although the remarks so far in
the thread don't particularly make me want to use it, I don't find the
idea entirely abhorrent.

Tom Dial

> 
> Celejar
> 

Re: Debian is testing Discourse

[Sven Hartge]

Dan Purgert  wrote:
> On Apr 13, 2020, Sven Hartge wrote:
>> Dan Purgert  wrote:
>>> On Apr 13, 2020, Sven Hartge wrote:

 And I've also witnissed this in other contexts, be it in an
 Enterprise setup (where one group flocks to Confluence and the
 other stay in the mailinglist) or a MMO guild, where one group
 prefers to converse in Teamspeak and the other uses the forum.
 
>>> forum-only people are filthy casuals and should be shown the door :)
>> 
>> Well, no. In my experience it always depends on what medium was
>> first.  This one will have the most experienced users. Everything
>> coming later will most likely having a harder time getting (fully)
>> integrated.

> I was specifically taking the reference of your guild / mmo context.
> In my case, we would always spin up both a forum and TS (or the
> experienced were always on both). In fact, I think a forum account was
> more often than not required in order to even get on TS in the first
> place.

Even more if you tied the TS server to the forum account, yes.

> TS was basically *required* while in a big engagement though.  If you
> weren't on TS, you weren't in the raid / fleet / whatever the game at
> hand called it. 

I think the TS/Mumble vs. Forum comparison is flawed here, it was unwise
of me to bring this to the table, because both serve completely
different use-cases in most cases.

Comparing a mailinglist with a forum, as in fact the thread is about, is
more apt.

Grüße,
Sven

-- 
Sigmentation fault. Core dumped.