It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new === My first post on this list was over 19 years ago. (It was about Bugzilla. I was a fan!) Ever since those early days, devel list has been the heart and center of Fedora activity. Now, I hope to convince all of us here that it’s time for something different. As it is, devel list is too much for many people to follow — people we’d like to have around. It covers many different things at once, yet also drives us towards more scattered communications. Our infamous mega-threads are not really effective for getting to community consensus, and tend to bring out the worst in us. I propose that we transition devel list, and eventually most of our mailing lists, to Fedora Discussion (our Discourse-powered forum). I know this is a big change, but, hear me out… We’re missing people A Mastodon post from long-time Fedora contributor Major Hayden got me thinking: > How do people make so much time available for mailing list > discourse? > > Once I ensure my team has the technical guidance they need > and I work through the tasks of work that I owe other > people, I take a look at the mailing list and say: "Oh my > gosh, what the heck happened here?" Then the discussion > goes further off the rails while I'm typing out a reply and > my reply is no longer relevant. > > — https://tootchute.com/@major/109666036733834421 I know many Fedora folks, old-school and new, for whom devel list is just too much. Some of it is the sheer volume, but this “off the rails” tendency is real — threads drift, get into back-and-forth debates about particular details, etc. And… some people aren’t here because — in contrast with our “Friends” foundation, it isn’t always a nice place to be (and mailing lists don’t provide many tools for moderation, except the big hammer of outright bans). Ben Cotton recently did some basic analysis on devel list traffic over time, and there’s a clear trend: fewer people are participating, even though the number of different threads goes up. I don’t think this is because of any decline in Fedora contributors overall — I think it’s that conversations are happening elsewhere. Big threads are … bad, actually --- When we have something to talk about, it tends to explode into a big thread. The thing in January with FESCo’s frame pointers decision (https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/RNJZUX3ZI34DIX6E4PVDKYQWCOFDQ4UY/#RNJZUX3ZI34DIX6E4PVDKYQWCOFDQ4UY) is a good example of things going badly. Most of the conversation was under the subject “Schedule for Tuesday's FESCo Meeting (2023-01-03)”, because everything started as a reply to that. That’s pretty easy to overlook. It’s possible for replies to change the subject when replying, but that can’t be done retroactively, and then isn’t consistent (and it breaks threading in Gmail, too). Then, things got rather hostile, making it hard to have a reasonable conversation about the issues (both technical and procedural). And then, things went in circles without adding anything new. This could have all gone a lot better. And that’s just one example. Take a look back at any mega-thread, and you’ll find similar — and worse. When things get heated, the only way to intervene is by adding more. There are often long subthreads of two people going back and forth on tangents. Then, other conversation branches duplicate that, or refer across. Classical email tools don’t actually handle this kind of thing very well at all. In my experience, it only really works if you keep up with the conversation in almost real time, which has its own problems even when that’s possible. We’re scattered in actual practice -- Devel list may be the center, but we have _hundreds_ of Fedora mailing lists. A dozen or so are reasonably active (Test, Legal, ARM…) but most are inactive or dead. Some are just meeting reminders over and over — for meetings that aren’t even active anymore. It’s easy to make but hard to _unmake_ a mailing list. For lists that are active, the split is confusing — when should something be on the packaging list rather than devel? What happens when something is related to both Cloud and Server, or Workstation and KDE? One can post to both lists, but if someone replies and isn’t subscribed to both, the conversation gets split. With “devel” as the main list, conversations about marketing, design, events, and so on don’t really have a central place. (The Mindshare list never really caught on.) That makes these important activities feel even more disconnected and secondary in status — and they shouldn’t be. Many groups have actually moved away from lists to using tickets for team conversations — both those non-engineering functions and development. Design Team has a
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Thu, 20 Apr 2023 at 17:21, Matthew Miller wrote: > > It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new > === > > I hate to ask this but could you give a more summarized version of this email? I realize you had a lot of reasoning you wanted to cover on the why's but I frankly got lost several times. That makes it really hard not to respond in ways which are overly emotional and not helpful. Anything I wrote would start with me trying to summarize what was written but failing to do so, or I would end up trying to pick apart different paragraphs in non-helpful ways. -- Stephen Smoogen, Red Hat Automotive Let us be kind to one another, for most of us are fighting a hard battle. -- Ian MacClaren ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
I dont mind discourse for a forum, although it's "one long list to rule them all" is frankly annoying at times and reminds me too much of the modern social media UX where you have to scroll and scroll to find something you care about. Sometimes, someone only cares about one subtopic. Yes I know this can be somewhat addressed with proper tagging, but that takes constant effort by everyone involved to make that useful. Most users wont use them, so its up to mods or other site users to constantly be back filling that information. It's a constant effort that must always be made to keep things orderly. It exchanges immediate convenience for recent information for a more long term effort to keep older information as easily accessible as it would have been in a mailing list or a classic forum/sub-forum style structure. And speaking of older information... there's another problem with them in that aspect... the ability to work with them offline or local copy is not possible with a SAAS solution like discourse. As I do a lot of historical research in open source and actively archiving what I can for future people. This is something I focus on and while I know there's not many of us that are doing it, it's still a thing for some of us. Working with old Distros and trying to research how we got from there to here has only been possible because people back in the day archived mailing lists and things like sunsite.unc.edu I can scrape a modern mailing lists for reference later, and pull up mailing lists that others have archived before me. In an effort to be more efficient and "modern", are we taking away that possibility for the next generation? Using a SAAS solution doesn't seem to make that possible, but maybe I'm wrong and there is a way that I dont know about. Will there be an effort to export a PII sanitized database for people to use as an offline or local reference. I'm not saying that we have to keep using the same tools we have in the past, if new tools can offer us new abilities that's great. But I'd appreciate it if there was a way to move forward with new tools while not taking away the abilities that older tools gave us to archive things for the future. JT > > ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
So, I've been using email and lists for... 25+ years now. For me personally (and I think many of the other survivors you mention) we have carefully tuned filters and email clients and can read/reply to lists with ease and forums are new and anoying because you have to read them with the interface the forum has instead of your trusty mail client. That said, for everyone except us, mail lists are much worse for all the reasons you list. I'm willing to try to learn new tricks and move things to discourse. kevin signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 4:21 PM Matthew Miller wrote: > > > It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new > === > > My first post on this list was over 19 years ago. (It was about > Bugzilla. I was a fan!) Ever since those early days, devel list has > been the heart and center of Fedora activity. Now, I hope to convince > all of us here that it’s time for something different. > > As it is, devel list is too much for many people to follow — people > we’d like to have around. It covers many different things at once, yet > also drives us towards more scattered communications. Our infamous > mega-threads are not really effective for getting to community > consensus, and tend to bring out the worst in us. > > I propose that we transition devel list, and eventually most of our > mailing lists, to Fedora Discussion (our Discourse-powered forum). > > I know this is a big change, but, hear me out… I love this idea. > > > We’re missing people > > > A Mastodon post from long-time Fedora contributor Major Hayden got me > thinking: > > > How do people make so much time available for mailing list > > discourse? > > > > Once I ensure my team has the technical guidance they need > > and I work through the tasks of work that I owe other > > people, I take a look at the mailing list and say: "Oh my > > gosh, what the heck happened here?" Then the discussion > > goes further off the rails while I'm typing out a reply and > > my reply is no longer relevant. > > > > — https://tootchute.com/@major/109666036733834421 > > I know many Fedora folks, old-school and new, for whom devel list is > just too much. Some of it is the sheer volume, but this “off the rails” > tendency is real — threads drift, get into back-and-forth debates about > particular details, etc. And… some people aren’t here because — in > contrast with our “Friends” foundation, it isn’t always a nice place to > be (and mailing lists don’t provide many tools for moderation, except > the big hammer of outright bans). > > Ben Cotton recently did some basic analysis on devel list traffic over > time, and there’s a clear trend: fewer people are participating, even > though the number of different threads goes up. I don’t think this is > because of any decline in Fedora contributors overall — I think it’s > that conversations are happening elsewhere. All of these points ring true for me. I often find myself just avoiding the devel list entirely. > > > Big threads are … bad, actually > --- > > When we have something to talk about, it tends to explode into a big > thread. The thing in January with FESCo’s frame pointers decision > (https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/RNJZUX3ZI34DIX6E4PVDKYQWCOFDQ4UY/#RNJZUX3ZI34DIX6E4PVDKYQWCOFDQ4UY) > is a good example of things going badly. > > Most of the conversation was under the subject “Schedule for Tuesday's > FESCo Meeting (2023-01-03)”, because everything started as a reply to > that. That’s pretty easy to overlook. It’s possible for replies to > change the subject when replying, but that can’t be done > retroactively, and then isn’t consistent (and it breaks threading in > Gmail, too). > > Then, things got rather hostile, making it hard to have a reasonable > conversation about the issues (both technical and procedural). And > then, things went in circles without adding anything new. > > This could have all gone a lot better. > > And that’s just one example. Take a look back at any mega-thread, and > you’ll find similar — and worse. When things get heated, the only way > to intervene is by adding more. There are often long subthreads of two > people going back and forth on tangents. Then, other conversation > branches duplicate that, or refer across. Classical email tools don’t > actually handle this kind of thing very well at all. In my experience, > it only really works if you keep up with the conversation in almost > real time, which has its own problems even when that’s possible. > > > We’re scattered in actual practice > -- > > Devel list may be the center, but we have _hundreds_ of Fedora mailing > lists. A dozen or so are reasonably active (Test, Legal, ARM…) but most > are inactive or dead. Some are just meeting reminders over and over — > for meetings that aren’t even active anymore. It’s easy to make but > hard to _unmake_ a mailing list. > > For lists that are active, the split is confusing — when should > something be on the packaging list rather than devel? What
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 05:39:51PM -0400, Stephen Smoogen wrote: > I hate to ask this but could you give a more summarized version of this > email? I realize you had a lot of reasoning you wanted to cover on the > why's but I frankly got lost several times. That makes it really hard not > to respond in ways which are overly emotional and not helpful. Anything I > wrote would start with me trying to summarize what was written but failing > to do so, or I would end up trying to pick apart different paragraphs in > non-helpful ways. Sure. I realize it is quite long. I am proposing that over the course of 2023, starting with the Changes process, we move Fedora development conversations from this mailing list to the Discourse-based Fedora Discussion. Many Fedora folks, new and old, can't keep with this list. The number of participants is down over time (even as the number of threads has risen). Many teams are moving away from devel list anyway -- using various scattered bug trackers as their effective "forum". Discourse gives us better tools for the conversations we need to have as a project. I know it takes some getting used to, but I strongly believe it will be worth it. Devel list actually covers a lot of different topics. Discourse lets us categorize those better while still keeping it all together. The first thing I suggest moving is discussion around proposed Changes. This is a FESCo decision. The rest I won't duplicate here. -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 05:53:34PM -0400, JT wrote: > Sometimes, someone only cares about one subtopic. Yes I know this can be > somewhat addressed with proper tagging, but that takes constant effort by > everyone involved to make that useful. Most users wont use them, so its up > to mods or other site users to constantly be back filling that > information. It's a constant effort that must always be made to keep > things orderly. It exchanges immediate convenience for recent information > for a more long term effort to keep older information as easily accessible > as it would have been in a mailing list or a classic forum/sub-forum style > structure. For tagging, in the Project Discussion category, each topic requires at least one tag, and all of the available tags are from a relatively-short list meant to correspond directly to active project teams. You can think of each of these as a kind of mailing list — you can subscribe to or mute each of these tags. For example, you can find docs team topics at https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/tag/docs-team In my experience in the last year or so with this structure, it works well and doesn't require a lot of maintenance. The Ask Fedora category uses looser tagging generally based around topics, and c For older information, Discourse has significantly better search than Hyperkitty provides. > And speaking of older information... there's another problem with them in > that aspect... the ability to work with them offline or local copy is not > possible with a SAAS solution like discourse. That's basically true, although there is an API and it would be theoretically possible to make an offline client of some sort. We also have automatic backups so that all of the data is available in a Fedora-controlled way. > As I do a lot of historical research in open source and actively archiving > what I can for future people. This is something I focus on and while I > know there's not many of us that are doing it, it's still a thing for some > of us. Working with old Distros and trying to research how we got from > there to here has only been possible because people back in the day > archived mailing lists and things like sunsite.unc.edu I can scrape a > modern mailing lists for reference later, and pull up mailing lists that > others have archived before me. > > In an effort to be more efficient and "modern", are we taking away that > possibility for the next generation? I care about this too. I don't think we are taking away the possibility of archival research. But, also: "efficient and modern" aren't in my reasons for suggesting this. > Using a SAAS solution doesn't seem to make that possible, but maybe I'm > wrong and there is a way that I dont know about. Will there be an effort > to export a PII sanitized database for people to use as an offline or local > reference. I don't have an effort like that planned, but I would not be opposed to someone who wants to work on that. -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
> For example, you can find docs team topics at https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/tag/docs-team > In my experience in the last year or so with this structure, it works well and doesn't require a lot of maintenance. Cool, a few of the discourse forums I'm on it's been a problem, but if our community is able to keep up with it then that's great to hear. >> > And speaking of older information... there's another problem with them in that aspect... the ability to work with them offline or local copy is not possible with a SAAS solution like discourse. > That's basically true, although there is an API and it would be theoretically possible to make an offline client of some sort. We also have automatic backups so that all of the data is available in a Fedora-controlled way. >> Using a SAAS solution doesn't seem to make that possible, but maybe I'm wrong and there is a way that I dont know about. Will there be an effort to export a PII sanitized database for people to use as an offline or local reference. > I don't have an effort like that planned, but I would not be opposed to someone who wants to work on that. I'm still getting settled in to a new job after a few months of being without work, and I need to build another safety net for myself for the next transitional period I face, but when I've gotten that taken care of, I'd be interested in funding some dev work towards making that a problem that we have a solution to. JT On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 7:00 PM Matthew Miller wrote: > On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 05:53:34PM -0400, JT wrote: > > Sometimes, someone only cares about one subtopic. Yes I know this can be > > somewhat addressed with proper tagging, but that takes constant effort by > > everyone involved to make that useful. Most users wont use them, so its > up > > to mods or other site users to constantly be back filling that > > information. It's a constant effort that must always be made to keep > > things orderly. It exchanges immediate convenience for recent > information > > for a more long term effort to keep older information as easily > accessible > > as it would have been in a mailing list or a classic forum/sub-forum > style > > structure. > > For tagging, in the Project Discussion category, each topic requires at > least one tag, and all of the available tags are from a relatively-short > list meant to correspond directly to active project teams. You can think of > each of these as a kind of mailing list — you can subscribe to or mute each > of these tags. > > For example, you can find docs team topics at > https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/tag/docs-team > > In my experience in the last year or so with this structure, it works well > and doesn't require a lot of maintenance. > > The Ask Fedora category uses looser tagging generally based around topics, > and c > > For older information, Discourse has significantly better search than > Hyperkitty provides. > > > And speaking of older information... there's another problem with them in > > that aspect... the ability to work with them offline or local copy is not > > possible with a SAAS solution like discourse. > > That's basically true, although there is an API and it would be > theoretically possible to make an offline client of some sort. We also have > automatic backups so that all of the data is available in a > Fedora-controlled way. > > > > As I do a lot of historical research in open source and actively > archiving > > what I can for future people. This is something I focus on and while I > > know there's not many of us that are doing it, it's still a thing for > some > > of us. Working with old Distros and trying to research how we got from > > there to here has only been possible because people back in the day > > archived mailing lists and things like sunsite.unc.edu I can scrape a > > modern mailing lists for reference later, and pull up mailing lists that > > others have archived before me. > > > > In an effort to be more efficient and "modern", are we taking away that > > possibility for the next generation? > > I care about this too. I don't think we are taking away the possibility of > archival research. > > But, also: "efficient and modern" aren't in my reasons for suggesting this. > > > > > Using a SAAS solution doesn't seem to make that possible, but maybe I'm > > wrong and there is a way that I dont know about. Will there be an effort > > to export a PII sanitized database for people to use as an offline or > local > > reference. > > I don't have an effort like that planned, but I would not be opposed to > someone who wants to work on that. > > > -- > Matthew Miller > > Fedora Project Leader > ___ > devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org > To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org > Fedora Code of Conduct: > https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Maili
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Hi Matthew, you say: "We're missing people", and I think, "who?". And who are you going to miss if you move to discourse? I will be candid, I tried to use forums since the old phpBB times, it never works for me. I have no time to go roaming over forums except if a search engine brings me there. The mailing list make messages land in my client, on which I am very efficient, therefore I can check all messages once a day, and respond if I find a worthy topic. Unless this discourse has some great mail bridge (it doesn't) or maybe an rss feed (I do not use those at work, but I guess I could ?) So that I can skim messages on my terms, I think I (and those like me) will be the next "missing people". Btw I could make exactly the same quote about any forum that Major made for Mailing lists, messy discussions are messy and a forum does not make them easier to follow by any means (perhaps except for those that chose inferior email readers). All that said, why waste time with this discussion? Your own post communicates to me (whether you intended it or not) that in the end the thread that will be generated by this post won't matter, because this is just a courtesy post and you already think that the opinion of the "minority of self selected mailing list lovers and dinosaurs" does not matter much. On Thu, 2023-04-20 at 17:20 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote: > It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new > === -- Simo Sorce RHEL Crypto Team Red Hat, Inc ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Thu, 20 Apr 2023 at 18:47, Matthew Miller wrote: > On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 05:39:51PM -0400, Stephen Smoogen wrote: > > I hate to ask this but could you give a more summarized version of this > > email? I realize you had a lot of reasoning you wanted to cover on the > > why's but I frankly got lost several times. That makes it really hard not > > to respond in ways which are overly emotional and not helpful. Anything I > > wrote would start with me trying to summarize what was written but > failing > > to do so, or I would end up trying to pick apart different paragraphs in > > non-helpful ways. > > Sure. I realize it is quite long. > > I am proposing that over the course of 2023, starting with the Changes > process, we move Fedora development conversations from this mailing list to > the Discourse-based Fedora Discussion. > > Many Fedora folks, new and old, can't keep with this list. The number of > participants is down over time (even as the number of threads has risen). > Many teams are moving away from devel list anyway -- using various > scattered > bug trackers as their effective "forum". > > Discourse gives us better tools for the conversations we need to have as a > project. I know it takes some getting used to, but I strongly believe it > will be worth it. > > Devel list actually covers a lot of different topics. Discourse lets us > categorize those better while still keeping it all together. > > The first thing I suggest moving is discussion around proposed Changes. > This > is a FESCo decision. The rest I won't duplicate here. > > Thank you. I have a better understanding of where you are coming from, and what this meant to do. I don't like the solution, but I know all too well that the current mailman3 solution works on a wing and a prayer. It has been running an EOL version of the software for a long time and there are not enough infrastructure resources to do all the things that are needed for an upgrade AND keep builds going. I also understand that the general community of the lists has shrunk over the last 10 years with it becoming more and more 'the same old people complaining about the same old things'. That said, I don't think I will be greatly active after the move. I have tried Discourse for a year, but have found it to be like every forum and BBS I have tried for the last 30 years.. frustrating and needy. I get tired and angry after 30 minutes and my replies start becoming the problem you don't want. [I realize this is how many people feel about email which causes them to drop out there.] If that lack of engagement requires me to orphan packages or other items, I completely understand. -- Stephen Smoogen, Red Hat Automotive Let us be kind to one another, for most of us are fighting a hard battle. -- Ian MacClaren ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 07:21:54PM -0400, Simo Sorce wrote: > Hi Matthew, you say: "We're missing people", and I think, "who?". > And who are you going to miss if you move to discourse? Again and again I have seen this "we're missing people" sentiment be used to justify scrapping "old" workflows, and *not once* has it ever resulted in "more people" coming out of the woodwork that would have happily contributed in the past, but were turned off/away by the need to use archaic email. (FFS, If we're going to follow this to its logical conclusion, we should just scrap all of this email/discourse/whatever and just move everything to github, or even facebook, as that's clearly where the most numbers of people are. "but no, our custom tooling makes things better for us" is the inevitable pushback, which arguably applies just as much to email-based flows!) > The mailing list make messages land in my client, on which I am very > efficient, therefore I can check all messages once a day, and respond > if I find a worthy topic. ...and the very nature of Discourse or various other Forums pretty much make this sort of workflow impossible; that is to say you're all but forced to manually poll every site you care about in a way that all but makes automation impossible. In other words, it's locally optimal for any given site, but is utterly incapable of scaling if you care about more than a small handful of sites. Calling myself semi-active here would be quite generous, but I can uneqvocibly state that if I have to manually poll a discourse site or whatever, that will be the end of my participating in anything Fedora, except to report bugs via abrt (assuming I don't have to keep logging in for new API keys) I suspect I'm far from the only one in that respect. > Unless this discourse has some great mail bridge (it doesn't) or maybe > an rss feed (I do not use those at work, but I guess I could ?) So > that I can skim messages on my terms, I think I (and those like me) > will be the next "missing people". RSS doesn't scale for higher volumes unless you're literally polling every few minutes or the feed includes a large number of entries. > Btw I could make exactly the same quote about any forum that Major made > for Mailing lists, messy discussions are messy and a forum does not > make them easier to follow by any means (perhaps except for those that > chose inferior email readers). Yeah. > Your own post communicates to me (whether you intended it or not) that > in the end the thread that will be generated by this post won't matter, > because this is just a courtesy post and you already think that the > opinion of the "minority of self selected mailing list lovers and > dinosaurs" does not matter much. Unfortunately, I have to agree with this perception. Perhaps it's because I've seen so many other formerly e-mail based communities bifrucate [1] chasing after "engagagement" that never occurs, or even RH/Fedora's near-perfect abysmal record of framing core infrastructure changes like this as a "discussion" when the decision has already been made and will happen no matter what the masses have to say about it. At the end of the day, distro development, like most other infrastructure, isn't sexy or glamorous, and the humongous effort that goes into it is rarely rewarded with anything other than abuse. "Who cares about distros? I just use Docker containers!" [1] Splitting into the "core" developers (ie those paid/compensated for participating) and an endless summer of newbs seeking help/support; the middle gets completely hollowed out. - Solomon -- Solomon Peachypizza at shaftnet dot org (email&xmpp) @pizza:shaftnet dot org (matrix) Dowling Park, FL speachy (libra.chat) signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Thu, 2023-04-20 at 18:59 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote: > On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 05:53:34PM -0400, JT wrote: > > Sometimes, someone only cares about one subtopic. Yes I know this can be > > somewhat addressed with proper tagging, but that takes constant effort by > > everyone involved to make that useful. Most users wont use them, so its up > > to mods or other site users to constantly be back filling that > > information. It's a constant effort that must always be made to keep > > things orderly. It exchanges immediate convenience for recent information > > for a more long term effort to keep older information as easily accessible > > as it would have been in a mailing list or a classic forum/sub-forum style > > structure. > > For tagging, in the Project Discussion category, each topic requires at > least one tag, and all of the available tags are from a relatively-short > list meant to correspond directly to active project teams. You can think of > each of these as a kind of mailing list — you can subscribe to or mute each > of these tags. > > For example, you can find docs team topics at > https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/tag/docs-team > > In my experience in the last year or so with this structure, it works well > and doesn't require a lot of maintenance. Well, I just opened the tags box and typed 'qa', and got...#fedora-qa , #qa, and #qa-team . So it looks like some maintenance might be in order. :D Is there any way to 'guide' people to use 'standard' tags? -- Adam Williamson (he/him/his) Fedora QA Fedora Chat: @adamwill:fedora.im | Mastodon: @ad...@fosstodon.org https://www.happyassassin.net ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 8:58 PM Solomon Peachy via devel < devel@lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote: > On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 07:21:54PM -0400, Simo Sorce wrote: > > Hi Matthew, you say: "We're missing people", and I think, "who?". > > And who are you going to miss if you move to discourse? > > Again and again I have seen this "we're missing people" sentiment be > used to justify scrapping "old" workflows, and *not once* has it ever > resulted in "more people" coming out of the woodwork that would have > happily contributed in the past, but were turned off/away by the need to > use archaic email. > > (FFS, If we're going to follow this to its logical conclusion, we should > just scrap all of this email/discourse/whatever and just move > everything to github, or even facebook, as that's clearly where the > most numbers of people are. "but no, our custom tooling makes things > better for us" is the inevitable pushback, which arguably applies just > as much to email-based flows!) > > > The mailing list make messages land in my client, on which I am very > > efficient, therefore I can check all messages once a day, and respond > > if I find a worthy topic. > > ...and the very nature of Discourse or various other Forums pretty much > make this sort of workflow impossible; that is to say you're all but > forced to manually poll every site you care about in a way that all but > makes automation impossible. > > ... snip ... Although I rarely participate, I do read just about everything. And I have to completely agree with Solomon's response. Moving to a forum based tool will a) have the opposite effect expected, and b) make it harder to follow because of the effort required to be notified, scan and read messages. - email is push, not poll; so it consumes much less time and bandwidth - email allows 'notification-scan-respond/delete' in basically one (or two) clicks in ~3 seconds of elapsed time (for 'n' messages/topics) Can you say the same for Discourse? ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Once upon a time, Matthew Miller said: > I am proposing that over the course of 2023, starting with the Changes > process, we move Fedora development conversations from this mailing list to > the Discourse-based Fedora Discussion. I feel this is a case of trading one group of people (email list users) for a different group of people (web forum users). I have seen this done multiple times over the years, tried to follow a few times, and always dropped off fairly rapidly. I'm solidly in the "email list users" group. Web forums far from fit how I use communication tools. For example, I'm highly keyboard driven and dislike lots of things that force me to use a mouse. I use mutt to read email, which works great. I have email filters to organize and save things, I can flag messages for later review/reference, and more. Web forums also seem in my experience to be much more casual interaction, where people come and go for long stretches of time, much more than email lists. If I just don't click on your bookmark for a day or two, it's out of mind quickly and I might not come back for weeks or months (or ever, which is usually the case). And then even if I do come back, now I'm pretty much too far behind to ever catch up. I guess you're hoping for enough overlap between email and web forum users to keep an active developer community... I wish you luck with that. -- Chris Adams ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/21/23 04:24, Chris Adams wrote: > Once upon a time, Matthew Miller said: >> I am proposing that over the course of 2023, starting with the Changes >> process, we move Fedora development conversations from this mailing list to >> the Discourse-based Fedora Discussion. > > I feel this is a case of trading one group of people (email list users) > for a different group of people (web forum users). I have seen this > done multiple times over the years, tried to follow a few times, and > always dropped off fairly rapidly. I'm solidly in the "email list > users" group. Discourse is very nice. It is open source, uses a reasonable license [0] (though [1] would be better), and is great for casual interactions that maybe spread out over time. Would highly recommend it for moderate size community discussion. However, it doesn't seem like we can hack on it to better suite community needs, for example to have the same functionality as mailing lists[2]. It is not standards driven and is primarily developed by one company - something that follows Apache way[3] or has a community governance process would be better in the long term for a large project with many contributors who have technical expertise. Email clients offer significant customizability that a one size fits all web interface cannot provide. Mailing list mode for Discourse is helpful, but not at the same level as email lists, where once one has gained sufficient knowledge, interaction can be done from the comfort of the client of your choice. As such, simply adopting it because it can be deployed may leave out many contributors, in particular those who drive development forward. Mailing lists are not perfect, but it is not clear Discourse is a good replacement for the devel list. 0) https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/LICENSE.txt 1) https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html 2) https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-discourse-mailing-list-mode-incorrectly-personally-addresses-all-email/738 3) https://apache.org/theapacheway/ ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On to, 20 huhti 2023, Stephen Smoogen wrote: On Thu, 20 Apr 2023 at 18:47, Matthew Miller wrote: On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 05:39:51PM -0400, Stephen Smoogen wrote: > I hate to ask this but could you give a more summarized version of this > email? I realize you had a lot of reasoning you wanted to cover on the > why's but I frankly got lost several times. That makes it really hard not > to respond in ways which are overly emotional and not helpful. Anything I > wrote would start with me trying to summarize what was written but failing > to do so, or I would end up trying to pick apart different paragraphs in > non-helpful ways. Sure. I realize it is quite long. I am proposing that over the course of 2023, starting with the Changes process, we move Fedora development conversations from this mailing list to the Discourse-based Fedora Discussion. Many Fedora folks, new and old, can't keep with this list. The number of participants is down over time (even as the number of threads has risen). Many teams are moving away from devel list anyway -- using various scattered bug trackers as their effective "forum". Discourse gives us better tools for the conversations we need to have as a project. I know it takes some getting used to, but I strongly believe it will be worth it. Devel list actually covers a lot of different topics. Discourse lets us categorize those better while still keeping it all together. The first thing I suggest moving is discussion around proposed Changes. This is a FESCo decision. The rest I won't duplicate here. Thank you. I have a better understanding of where you are coming from, and what this meant to do. I don't like the solution, but I know all too well that the current mailman3 solution works on a wing and a prayer. It has been running an EOL version of the software for a long time and there are not enough infrastructure resources to do all the things that are needed for an upgrade AND keep builds going. I also understand that the general community of the lists has shrunk over the last 10 years with it becoming more and more 'the same old people complaining about the same old things'. That said, I don't think I will be greatly active after the move. I have tried Discourse for a year, but have found it to be like every forum and BBS I have tried for the last 30 years.. frustrating and needy. I get tired and angry after 30 minutes and my replies start becoming the problem you don't want. [I realize this is how many people feel about email which causes them to drop out there.] If that lack of engagement requires me to orphan packages or other items, I completely understand. My main trouble with Discourse and other places where I try to help people with answers to their questions is that forums promote a drive-by questions without further engagement. This experience is opposite to what forum proponents are claiming but I see it pretty consistently on Discourse, on Stackoverflow sites, on Reddit and in many other places. In my area, identity management and authentication, the topics are complex enough to want to help others but lack of further engagement simply kills any interest to use a particular discussion board. If people asking questions aren't interested in getting the answers or even tying in the ends for their own questions, it comes hard to keep an interest in helping those people again and again. I can point you to one specific topic on Fedora Discourse as an example: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/fedora-login-bug-having-a-128-character-password-breaks-otp-and-will-lock-users-out-of-account/78960 I would have supposed that someone would follow-up, right? As a FreeIPA maintainer in Fedora, as an upstream FreeIPA contributor and a contact for security issues, I have never been contacted with either details for what the thread claims to happen or never got any follow-up on the thread to my comments. This is an experience I want to avoid. If this is what Matthew is proposing a Fedora development discussions to be, then sorry, this is not an improvement. -- / Alexander Bokovoy Sr. Principal Software Engineer Security / Identity Management Engineering Red Hat Limited, Finland ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/21/23 02:21, Simo Sorce wrote: Hi Matthew, you say: "We're missing people", and I think, "who?". And who are you going to miss if you move to discourse? I will be candid, I tried to use forums since the old phpBB times, it never works for me. I have no time to go roaming over forums except if a search engine brings me there. The mailing list make messages land in my client, on which I am very efficient, therefore I can check all messages once a day, and respond if I find a worthy topic. Unless this discourse has some great mail bridge (it doesn't) or maybe an rss feed (I do not use those at work, but I guess I could ?) So that I can skim messages on my terms, I think I (and those like me) will be the next "missing people". Ditto. I actually quite like Discourse - for a forum software - from experience related to various freetime activities. However, Discourse replacing mailing lists WILL be the end of habitually skimming through everything that goes on devel (and a whole bunch of other lists) to spot issues that might be of my concern. The result will be in me being considerably less aware of what goes around in Fedora, rpm related or not. Just FWIW. - Panu - ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, 21 Apr 2023 10:31:04 +0300 Panu Matilainen wrote: > On 4/21/23 02:21, Simo Sorce wrote: > > Hi Matthew, you say: "We're missing people", and I think, "who?". > > And who are you going to miss if you move to discourse? > > > > I will be candid, I tried to use forums since the old phpBB times, it > > never works for me. > > I have no time to go roaming over forums except if a search engine > > brings me there. > > > > The mailing list make messages land in my client, on which I am very > > efficient, therefore I can check all messages once a day, and respond > > if I find a worthy topic. > > > > Unless this discourse has some great mail bridge (it doesn't) or maybe > > an rss feed (I do not use those at work, but I guess I could ?) So that > > I can skim messages on my terms, I think I (and those like me) will be > > the next "missing people". > > Ditto. I am in the same boat, FWIW ... > > I actually quite like Discourse - for a forum software - from experience > related to various freetime activities. > > However, Discourse replacing mailing lists WILL be the end of habitually > skimming through everything that goes on devel (and a whole bunch of > other lists) to spot issues that might be of my concern. The result will > be in me being considerably less aware of what goes around in Fedora, > rpm related or not. Dan ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 05:20:37PM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote: > We’re missing people > > > A Mastodon post from long-time Fedora contributor Major Hayden got me > thinking: > > > How do people make so much time available for mailing list > > discourse? > > > > Once I ensure my team has the technical guidance they need > > and I work through the tasks of work that I owe other > > people, I take a look at the mailing list and say: "Oh my > > gosh, what the heck happened here?" Then the discussion > > goes further off the rails while I'm typing out a reply and > > my reply is no longer relevant. > > > > — https://tootchute.com/@major/109666036733834421 > > I know many Fedora folks, old-school and new, for whom devel list is > just too much. I think that applies to the vast majority of people on my team. They are doing work that ends up in Fedora, they use Fedora, and they will sometimes needs to make changes in Fedora packages, but they'll rarely / never read the mailing lists. Essentially, unless a very large amount of your daily work is Fedora oriented, the devel list is not feasible to follow. It is not suited to infrequent/sporadic Fedora contributors. Myself I'll try to keep an eye out for interesting $SUBJECTs and read those, or peek into exploding threads to see what the fuss is about, but the rest I'll just ignore as it is too much. I'll try to relay the important nuggets of info to others in my team, but that's a limited mitigation. When you say "We're missing people" there's actually another factor that you've not mentionedspam, or more specifically anti-spam countermeasures. There are a handful of very regular Fedora contributors, for whom about 50% of messages they send get reliably classified as spam by my employer's mail service because of something it dislikes about their mail server/domain's reputation. While I can allow-list their addrs for myself, each subscriber has to repeat the same allow-listing and I expect many won't bother. IOW, we have people who think they are contributing to Fedora discussions, but in fact their mails are getting effectively silently discarded. This is bad if we want inclusive discussions. In other mailing lists where I am the admin I get to see even worse problems where mails get unconditionally discarded at time of delivery due to disagreements between mail servers about the correct way to implement DMARC and DKIM. As a result certain senders are entirely prevented from collaborating via the mailing list in the worst possible way. They successfull send the mail, it is accepted by the list server, added to the online archives, but when the list server delivers to subscribers the message bounces back. Unless the mailing list admin watches non-delivery bounces no one will know this is happening. Certain senders will simply not be part of the discussions. Having battled email/spam problems wrt mailing lists for years now, I can only conclude that email is not viable as a reliable & inclusive communications tool in the modern world. > We’re scattered in actual practice > -- > Many groups have actually moved away from lists to using tickets for > team conversations — both those non-engineering functions > and development. Design Team has a mailing list, but mostly for > announcements: the work happens in tickets. Workstation largely uses > their Pagure tracker. And CoreOS conversations happen almost entirely > in tickets on Github. > > Tickets are made for tracking specific, actionable tasks, and that kind > of tracking is part of why teams use them over mailing lists — but > Fedora teams use them for open development conversations too. I think > that’s largely a symptom of mailing lists not being enough for what we > need. The trackers have media support, editing for typos or updates, > reactions for simple agreement, tagging people, and granular > subscriptions. They are effectively “off-label use” mini-forums that > teams can quietly move to using without the sort of conversation I > expect this message to generate. > Airplane diagram, survivorship bias > --- > > The set of remaining regular participants on this list is naturally > biased towards those for whom it is working just fine. But, core Fedora > development discussion can’t be limited to that ever-shrinking group. > Consider who isn’t here. The problems are real, and the trend isn’t in > a good direction. Or stockholm syndrome. As a long term email users I'm familiar with it and learn to put up with all its flaws and figured out ways to mitigate the limitations of email. If you speak to any long term email users in high traffic OSS communities you'll find many of them have created very elaborate mail filters, scripts and tools to create workflows for handling the high volume of their inbox. Newer contributors won't have this, so when you ask them to turn on the fire hose by subscribing to Fedora
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/20/23 23:20, Matthew Miller wrote: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new === My first post on this list was over 19 years ago. (It was about Bugzilla. I was a fan!) Ever since those early days, devel list has been the heart and center of Fedora activity. Now, I hope to convince all of us here that it’s time for something different. As it is, devel list is too much for many people to follow — people we’d like to have around. It covers many different things at once, yet also drives us towards more scattered communications. Our infamous mega-threads are not really effective for getting to community consensus, and tend to bring out the worst in us. Passionate people generate passionate discussion. The only thing you will gain by a forum is that at the point the message will not be deemed appropriate, it will probably be deleted or "beatified" by the mod team. The passion from our human nature will not go away with a platform change. I propose that we transition devel list, and eventually most of our mailing lists, to Fedora Discussion (our Discourse-powered forum). I know this is a big change, but, hear me out… We’re missing people A Mastodon post from long-time Fedora contributor Major Hayden got me thinking: How do people make so much time available for mailing list discourse? Once I ensure my team has the technical guidance they need and I work through the tasks of work that I owe other people, I take a look at the mailing list and say: "Oh my gosh, what the heck happened here?" Then the discussion goes further off the rails while I'm typing out a reply and my reply is no longer relevant. —https://tootchute.com/@major/109666036733834421 I know many Fedora folks, old-school and new, for whom devel list is just too much. Some of it is the sheer volume, but this “off the rails” tendency is real — threads drift, get into back-and-forth debates about particular details, etc. Moving a discussion does not reduce the volume. From what I've heard from engineers around me, the volume of devel is hard to keep up with. That, to me, does not sound like a platform problem, but a scale problem. And… some people aren’t here because — in contrast with our “Friends” foundation, it isn’t always a nice place to be (and mailing lists don’t provide many tools for moderation, except the big hammer of outright bans). Ben Cotton recently did some basic analysis on devel list traffic over time, and there’s a clear trend: fewer people are participating, even though the number of different threads goes up. I don’t think this is because of any decline in Fedora contributors overall — I think it’s that conversations are happening elsewhere. Big threads are … bad, actually --- When we have something to talk about, it tends to explode into a big thread. The thing in January with FESCo’s frame pointers decision (https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/RNJZUX3ZI34DIX6E4PVDKYQWCOFDQ4UY/#RNJZUX3ZI34DIX6E4PVDKYQWCOFDQ4UY) is a good example of things going badly. Most of the conversation was under the subject “Schedule for Tuesday's FESCo Meeting (2023-01-03)”, because everything started as a reply to that. That’s pretty easy to overlook. It’s possible for replies to change the subject when replying, but that can’t be done retroactively, and then isn’t consistent (and it breaks threading in Gmail, too). Then, things got rather hostile, making it hard to have a reasonable conversation about the issues (both technical and procedural). And then, things went in circles without adding anything new. This could have all gone a lot better. And that’s just one example. Take a look back at any mega-thread, and you’ll find similar — and worse. When things get heated, the only way to intervene is by adding more. There are often long subthreads of two people going back and forth on tangents. Then, other conversation branches duplicate that, or refer across. Classical email tools don’t actually handle this kind of thing very well at all. In my experience, it only really works if you keep up with the conversation in almost real time, which has its own problems even when that’s possible. We’re scattered in actual practice -- Devel list may be the center, but we have _hundreds_ of Fedora mailing lists. A dozen or so are reasonably active (Test, Legal, ARM…) but most are inactive or dead. Some are just meeting reminders over and over — for meetings that aren’t even active anymore. It’s easy to make but hard to _unmake_ a mailing list. For lists that are active, the split is confusing — when should something be on the packaging list rather than devel? What happens when something is related to both Cloud and Server, or Workstation and KDE? One can post to both lists, but if some
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Hi all, On 21/04/2023 10:50, Jarek Prokop wrote: > As a person in my early 20s, I hate how everything is becoming > web centric and no one can convince me to feel otherwise. hm... I thought this was kind of a generation conflict. Glad to be proven wrong. I enjoyed Fedora being on mailing lists, nothing ever came close to the threading of emails. Actually, Zulip [1] does. It's an interesting tool, basically something in between traditional forums and email threading. --alec [1] https://zulip.com/ ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
How dare you - I'm glad you did :) Even though I'm a "mail/mailing list guy" using TUI MUAs, I found myself turning delivery off on many high volume MLs where the volume does not correspond to my contributor's frequency. I even read fedora-devel via hyperkitty's web interface, which is really suboptimal. So I see both the value and the problem with MLs. A different transport like public-inbox may help me but not many others. In any case, we have quite a fragmentation right now with the MLs, forum (discourse), IRC, Matrix, plus tickets on various platforms (bz, dist-git, pagure, gitlab) some of which offer teams and discussions, too. Choice is good, fragmentation is not because it makes it hard to know: - Where can I reach whom? - Where can I discuss what? So I'm really all for reducing that fragmentation, and it can be made to work as a community decision only (community discussion that you started, whatever committee's decision). Ideally, we reduce the platforms to a few which still allow choices about how to participate (clickery vs tui, poll vs push/notify). More technically oriented folks will be more capable to adapt technically (than "pure users") but less willing to communicate by clicking around in a web browser. A platform analysis in this regard could support that. ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/21/23 02:57, Solomon Peachy via devel wrote: On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 07:21:54PM -0400, Simo Sorce wrote: Hi Matthew, you say: "We're missing people", and I think, "who?". And who are you going to miss if you move to discourse? Again and again I have seen this "we're missing people" sentiment be used to justify scrapping "old" workflows, and *not once* has it ever resulted in "more people" coming out of the woodwork that would have happily contributed in the past, but were turned off/away by the need to use archaic email. Funny, how from where I am sitting I can not really remember any time we managed to scrape the old workflow at least once. So I wouldn't be able to measure the effectiveness of such an imaginary thing. I can only see how we are unable to do changes and therefore we are always adding things on top of old ones, which of course doesn't make anything easier neither for those who want to change, nor for those who don't. That's a slight exaggeration of course, but so is your statement. People come to Fedora via many ways. But I doubt any of it starts with e-mail nowadays. And the fact that you don't see newcomers _here_ actually proves the point, isn't it? (FFS, If we're going to follow this to its logical conclusion, we should just scrap all of this email/discourse/whatever and just move everything to github, or even facebook, as that's clearly where the most numbers of people are. "but no, our custom tooling makes things better for us" is the inevitable pushback, which arguably applies just as much to email-based flows!) The mailing list make messages land in my client, on which I am very efficient, therefore I can check all messages once a day, and respond if I find a worthy topic. ...and the very nature of Discourse or various other Forums pretty much make this sort of workflow impossible; that is to say you're all but forced to manually poll every site you care about in a way that all but makes automation impossible. Discourse 1) sends email in a multipart format which has html and plain text(kind of markdown); 2) adds headers which allow you to filter the messages by topic or category on the client-side; 2) allows you to configure notifications for mentions per category or per tag; 3) allows to configure custom searches on the server side, and will notifies you for it. Here is the example of the mail headers: Message-ID: In-Reply-To: References: List-Unsubscribe: <...> X-Discourse-Post-Id: 215862 X-Discourse-Topic-Id: 81258 X-Discourse-Category: Team Workflows/Fedora Magazine X-Auto-Response-Suppress: All Auto-Submitted: auto-generated Precedence: list List-ID: Fedora Discussion | Team Workflows Fedora Magazine List-Archive: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/article-proposal-using-btrfs-to-upgrade-fedora/81258 Feedback-ID: fedoraproject:user_posted:discoursemail It is not perfect, and it requires some effort. But I don't see why it is impossible. In other words, it's locally optimal for any given site, but is utterly incapable of scaling if you care about more than a small handful of sites. Calling myself semi-active here would be quite generous, but I can uneqvocibly state that if I have to manually poll a discourse site or whatever, that will be the end of my participating in anything Fedora, except to report bugs via abrt (assuming I don't have to keep logging in for new API keys) I suspect I'm far from the only one in that respect. Let's not get into a "who would you miss more" competition and work on a solution which actually helps us to bridge the gap and allows us to compromise between different use cases. Unless this discourse has some great mail bridge (it doesn't) or maybe an rss feed (I do not use those at work, but I guess I could ?) So that I can skim messages on my terms, I think I (and those like me) will be the next "missing people". RSS doesn't scale for higher volumes unless you're literally polling every few minutes or the feed includes a large number of entries. Btw I could make exactly the same quote about any forum that Major made for Mailing lists, messy discussions are messy and a forum does not make them easier to follow by any means (perhaps except for those that chose inferior email readers). Yeah. Your own post communicates to me (whether you intended it or not) that in the end the thread that will be generated by this post won't matter, because this is just a courtesy post and you already think that the opinion of the "minority of self selected mailing list lovers and dinosaurs" does not matter much. Unfortunately, I have to agree with this perception. Perhaps it's because I've seen so many other formerly e-mail based communities bifrucate [1] chasing after "engagagement" that never occurs, or even RH/Fedora's near-perfect abysmal record of framing core infrastructure changes like this as a
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Am 21.04.23 um 01:34 schrieb Stephen Smoogen: That said, I don't think I will be greatly active after the move. I have tried Discourse for a year, but have found it to be like every forum and BBS I have tried for the last 30 years.. frustrating and needy. ACK. - you do not see, what new answeres have arrived - you need to open and login into it, everytime your browser gets started - you need to actively look into any open TAB for any ML with theire own discourse-like-websolution - you are required to work with tools that specific service offers - "offline" breaks the workflow - you need a shitload of traffic to archive the same result, as you can have with one single email. - it takes longer to find something aso. aso. and best of all: - you (multiply this with any participant) need way more cpu power (at home and on the server) to archive the same results => Which is bad for the climate!!! Mails get concentrated in one place in an efficient way, with a short and easy workflow in one system, we all need to work on a day-by-day basis, or do you know anyone who can uninstall his/her mailapp after the Fedora ML has moved to Discourse? I don't think so. If "you",reader, have problems following the threads with your mailapp, which was the main argument here, get a better mailapp to handle it. Best regards, Marius Schwarz ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
I know Matthew mentioned long replies to long posts as a problem, so I'll do what on discourse would be an emoticon to sum a complex discussion: +1 Simo :) Cheers, Mario On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 1:22 AM Simo Sorce wrote: > > Hi Matthew, you say: "We're missing people", and I think, "who?". > And who are you going to miss if you move to discourse? > > I will be candid, I tried to use forums since the old phpBB times, it > never works for me. > I have no time to go roaming over forums except if a search engine > brings me there. > > The mailing list make messages land in my client, on which I am very > efficient, therefore I can check all messages once a day, and respond > if I find a worthy topic. > > Unless this discourse has some great mail bridge (it doesn't) or maybe > an rss feed (I do not use those at work, but I guess I could ?) So that > I can skim messages on my terms, I think I (and those like me) will be > the next "missing people". > > Btw I could make exactly the same quote about any forum that Major made > for Mailing lists, messy discussions are messy and a forum does not > make them easier to follow by any means (perhaps except for those that > chose inferior email readers). > > All that said, why waste time with this discussion? > > Your own post communicates to me (whether you intended it or not) that > in the end the thread that will be generated by this post won't matter, > because this is just a courtesy post and you already think that the > opinion of the "minority of self selected mailing list lovers and > dinosaurs" does not matter much. > > On Thu, 2023-04-20 at 17:20 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote: > > It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new > > === > > -- > Simo Sorce > RHEL Crypto Team > Red Hat, Inc > > > ___ > devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org > To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org > Fedora Code of Conduct: > https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > List Archives: > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org > Do not reply to spam, report it: > https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue -- Mario Torre Manager, Software Engineering, Red Hat OpenJDK, Java Champion https://keybase.io/neugens 9704 A60C B4BE A8B8 0F30 9205 5D7E 4952 3F65 7898 Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@MarioTorre Red Hat GmbH, Registered seat: Werner von Siemens Ring 12, D-85630 Grasbrunn, Germany Commercial register: Amtsgericht Muenchen/Munich, HRB 153243, Managing Directors: Ryan Barnhart, Charles Cachera, Michael O'Neill, Amy Ross ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Hi, On 4/21/23 10:47, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote: I agree with most of your points, but I wanted to comment on the Change process. (...skipped a lot...) First, I’d like to move the Changes discussion. They will still be posted to devel-announce, but responses directed to Project Discussion in a new #changes tag. Ben tells me that this is a FESCo decision, which seems reasonable. Early you mentioned that lots of teams have moved discussions into tickets in Pagure/GitHub/etc. I think that is an entirely natural thing to do for task oriented discussions. I think that Change proposals are precisely that - a task oriented discussion, and thus would naturally fit into issue tracker model. You then have the associated tools for tracking, tagging the changes, linking between related tickets, and more, all in one place. The way we use wiki categories to tag Change proposal pages, and then have to have discussions somewhere else entirely, is effectively reinventing a poor-mans' issue tracker. Just use a real issue tracker here and stop splitting the process around multiple tools. I think the issue with the Change process is that while the change itself is a task, its discussion has a property of generating sub-threads and sidetracks going in all directions, which shape the rest of the fedora-devel discourse. So while from the execution point of view having it in the issue tracker makes a lot of sense, from the communication point of view Change discussion is a seed, which when planted on a forum can create a whole forest. The hope is that forum tooling can be used to split the subthreads and to let them live on their own. So instead of strict moderation of the conversation in the issue tracker, which would be required to keep it on point, we will allow conversations to spread out but in a way that you have a possibility to choose your track. P.S. It is funny how even though I consider myself a "seasoned" Fedora Contributor, every time I send a mail to a mailing list, I still go to a Hyper-Kitty interface to verify that I did everything correctly. -- Aleksandra Fedorova bookwar ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Hi, On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 07:21:54PM -0400, Simo Sorce wrote: > The mailing list make messages land in my client, on which I am very > efficient, therefore I can check all messages once a day, and respond > if I find a worthy topic. > > Unless this discourse has some great mail bridge (it doesn't) or maybe > an rss feed (I do not use those at work, but I guess I could ?) So that > I can skim messages on my terms, I think I (and those like me) will be > the next "missing people". I think I would fall in the same category. The fedora-devel mailinglist keeps me connected to the project even though I rarely reply to messages. > Your own post communicates to me (whether you intended it or not) that > in the end the thread that will be generated by this post won't matter, > because this is just a courtesy post and you already think that the > opinion of the "minority of self selected mailing list lovers and > dinosaurs" does not matter much. Agreed. It was a very long post with several important and interesting observations about communication in a large groups of people. But it felt like it wasn't meant as actually discussing how we can communicate better, but to work towards a conclusion that a specific forum technology should be adopted and get rid of people who use the mailinglist to participate in the project. Cheers, Mark ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 1:22 AM Simo Sorce wrote: > > Hi Matthew, you say: "We're missing people", and I think, "who?". > And who are you going to miss if you move to discourse? > > I will be candid, I tried to use forums since the old phpBB times, it > never works for me. > I have no time to go roaming over forums except if a search engine > brings me there. > > The mailing list make messages land in my client, on which I am very > efficient, therefore I can check all messages once a day, and respond > if I find a worthy topic. > > Unless this discourse has some great mail bridge (it doesn't) or maybe > an rss feed (I do not use those at work, but I guess I could ?) So that > I can skim messages on my terms, I think I (and those like me) will be > the next "missing people". > > Btw I could make exactly the same quote about any forum that Major made > for Mailing lists, messy discussions are messy and a forum does not > make them easier to follow by any means (perhaps except for those that > chose inferior email readers). > > All that said, why waste time with this discussion? > > Your own post communicates to me (whether you intended it or not) that > in the end the thread that will be generated by this post won't matter, > because this is just a courtesy post and you already think that the > opinion of the "minority of self selected mailing list lovers and > dinosaurs" does not matter much. I have to say, even at the risk of making me sound like "old dinosaur man yells at cloud", I agree here. The way I interact with the mailing list is very efficient - new messages land in my email client, they are clearly labeled as "unread", and archiving read messages (or discussion threads that I'm not interested in) creates a searchable archive of everything that happened "as a byproduct". Interacting with discourse works completely differently - messages don't "come to me", I need to *actively seek them out*, it's hard to tell what's new, the interface isn't entirely obvious (maybe this would be better if I used discourse more regularly, but I really don't want to do that, unless I *absolutely need to*). Especially the "messages come to me" vs. "I need to go looking" aspect would likely result in me both 1. not being as informed about what's going on in Fedora, and 2. interacting much less with discussions than I do now. Fabio ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Like many of you, I have built up a lot of workflow around my email. I'm on several dozen Fedora mailing lists, so I heavily filter my inbox. In fact, that's one of the areas where I'm least enthusiastic about a large-scale move to Fedora Discussion. Our tag-based setup makes it very difficult for Gmail (as an email client specifically) to filter alerts the way I want. On the other hand, as someone who often needs to cross-post announcements and the like, the experience for that on Discussion is so much better. And there are a lot of other quality of life improvements, some big and some small, but they add up: * The ability to move threads from "contributor" to "developer" areas and vice versa * Splitting off tangents to a new thread * Editing posts (with visible history, of course) * In-post polls * In-line date/time tags that can render the time in the user's zone Discussion isn't perfect, but it's better on the whole than I thought it would be. -- Ben Cotton He / Him / His Fedora Program Manager Red Hat TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/20/23 5:20 PM, Matthew Miller wrote: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new === As someone that read this list 99% ot the time and 1% for replying, I have no problem with having a web based forum for discussions, but that kind of software if always awful for my kind of usage. I like the mailing list methos because I get all the threads and I see what I wish to read in order to be informed of the general direction of the project and ignore the ones I don't want to, with a simple responsive UI, that even works when I am offline. I know that there are people that love web based forums (I don't), but in order to not leave people behind with a lot of experience in the project, for new ones, maybe instead of only proposing a change, maybe proposing a change with good email integration is better. Discourse default email integration is bad IMHO. The model I wish to have with email integration are the tools that were installed for the OpenJDK - GitHub integration. in that mailing list, you never notice you are reading a bunch of emails that comes from GitHub comments and I can pretty much read the entire discussions from my email client, without ever using a web browser. ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Once upon a time, Marius Schwarz said: > - you are required to work with tools that specific service offers I think this is my biggest complaint with any web forum - unlike email, where users can choose clients that work the way they like, learning and customizing them, web forums force a use/workflow method based on what some developer likes. They also tend to be "locked in" to a singular UI, because any significant change after a critical mass of users is reached is too upsetting. Also: with web forums, I feel my content is not my own. I can't automatically keep copies and archive them. For example, I can in seconds tell you when my first post here was (January 2010 in the current incarnation, September 2003 on the @redhat.com version), or even my first post to any @redhat.com list (wow, June 1996!). -- Chris Adams ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/21/23 8:17 AM, Robert Marcano wrote: On 4/20/23 5:20 PM, Matthew Miller wrote: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new === As someone that read this list 99% ot the time and 1% for replying, I have no problem with having a web based forum for discussions, but that kind of software if always awful for my kind of usage. I like the mailing list methos because I get all the threads and I see what I wish to read in order to be informed of the general direction of the project and ignore the ones I don't want to, with a simple responsive UI, that even works when I am offline. I know that there are people that love web based forums (I don't), but in order to not leave people behind with a lot of experience in the project, for new ones, maybe instead of only proposing a change, maybe proposing a change with good email integration is better. Discourse default email integration is bad IMHO. The model I wish to have with email integration are the tools that were installed for the OpenJDK - GitHub integration. in that mailing list, you never notice you are reading a bunch of emails that comes from GitHub comments and I can pretty much read the entire discussions from my email client, without ever using a web browser. On 4/20/23 5:20 PM, Matthew Miller wrote: > That said, it is web-first software. (Or mobile, if that’s your thing.) > That requires some adjustment, I know. I hope opening up a Fedora > Discussion tab – or keeping one open — becomes an easy habit. I forgot to add. Discourse is worse for mobile users, the "app" was just an embedded web browser, the only thing efficient it did was to get a notification and remembering your session, everything else is worse that writing an email on a email client for phones. ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Just a slight addition about "archaic email" and related comments: Email and its capability for being used in conjunction with OpenPGP ensures two major institutions in kernel development and elsewhere: "Trusting the developers, not infrastructure" [1], and, assume "any part of the infrastructure can be compromised at any time" [1]. This avoids single points of failure, and complements the chain of trust. I am not sure if Discourse is capable to be used in conjunction with OpenPGP if it reformats contents or if it removes attachments (maybe someone knows?). This leads to the possibility that discourse introduces a single point of failure (or, single point of vulnerability), which breaks the above institutions. Having said that, as far as I follow our devel mailing list, I think the argument above is of minor relevance, because I think this mailing list is not used to forward code or to do reviews. Signatures seem to be not omnipresent at the moment anyway. However, I just wanted to remind that the issue is a little more complex than just assuming "email is old and has to be replaced by modern": there is another consideration, too. And we have to be aware that if discourse does not support OpenPGP signatures practically, we loose the possibility to ensure "security of integrity" in the mailing list in cases WHEN it is necessary - IF there are such cases (which I cannot determine). Just some thoughts :) [1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/maintainer-pgp-guide.html Chris On 4/21/23 11:42, Aleksandra Fedorova wrote: On 4/21/23 02:57, Solomon Peachy via devel wrote: On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 07:21:54PM -0400, Simo Sorce wrote: Hi Matthew, you say: "We're missing people", and I think, "who?". And who are you going to miss if you move to discourse? Again and again I have seen this "we're missing people" sentiment be used to justify scrapping "old" workflows, and *not once* has it ever resulted in "more people" coming out of the woodwork that would have happily contributed in the past, but were turned off/away by the need to use archaic email. Funny, how from where I am sitting I can not really remember any time we managed to scrape the old workflow at least once. So I wouldn't be able to measure the effectiveness of such an imaginary thing. I can only see how we are unable to do changes and therefore we are always adding things on top of old ones, which of course doesn't make anything easier neither for those who want to change, nor for those who don't. That's a slight exaggeration of course, but so is your statement. People come to Fedora via many ways. But I doubt any of it starts with e-mail nowadays. And the fact that you don't see newcomers _here_ actually proves the point, isn't it? (FFS, If we're going to follow this to its logical conclusion, we should just scrap all of this email/discourse/whatever and just move everything to github, or even facebook, as that's clearly where the most numbers of people are. "but no, our custom tooling makes things better for us" is the inevitable pushback, which arguably applies just as much to email-based flows!) The mailing list make messages land in my client, on which I am very efficient, therefore I can check all messages once a day, and respond if I find a worthy topic. ...and the very nature of Discourse or various other Forums pretty much make this sort of workflow impossible; that is to say you're all but forced to manually poll every site you care about in a way that all but makes automation impossible. Discourse 1) sends email in a multipart format which has html and plain text(kind of markdown); 2) adds headers which allow you to filter the messages by topic or category on the client-side; 2) allows you to configure notifications for mentions per category or per tag; 3) allows to configure custom searches on the server side, and will notifies you for it. Here is the example of the mail headers: Message-ID: In-Reply-To: References: List-Unsubscribe: <...> X-Discourse-Post-Id: 215862 X-Discourse-Topic-Id: 81258 X-Discourse-Category: Team Workflows/Fedora Magazine X-Auto-Response-Suppress: All Auto-Submitted: auto-generated Precedence: list List-ID: Fedora Discussion | Team Workflows Fedora Magazine List-Archive: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/article-proposal-using-btrfs-to-upgrade-fedora/81258 Feedback-ID: fedoraproject:user_posted:discoursemail It is not perfect, and it requires some effort. But I don't see why it is impossible. In other words, it's locally optimal for any given site, but is utterly incapable of scaling if you care about more than a small handful of sites. Calling myself semi-active here would be quite generous, but I can uneqvocibly state that if I have to manually poll a discourse site or whatever, that will be the end of my participating in anyt
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
* Fulko Hew [20/04/2023 21:18] : > > Can you say the same for Discourse? I've tried using Fedora Discussions and its email notifications (both the text and html versions) leave a lot to be desired. So much so that I never actually go on to read the discussions. Emmanuel ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/20/23 17:20, Matthew Miller wrote: Most of the conversation was under the subject “Schedule for Tuesday's FESCo Meeting (2023-01-03)”, because everything started as a reply to that. That’s pretty easy to overlook. It’s possible for replies to change the subject when replying, but that can’t be done retroactively, and then isn’t consistent (and it breaks threading in Gmail, too). At the risk of causing at least one of the problems that Matthew pointed out, this is the most important one for me: lots of people say "I decide what to read based on what I see in my email client", but when the subject of the emails doesn't reflect their contents, that's a losing proposition. I completely ignored the thread in question until a *different* thread referred to it and I learned about the conversation going on there. On another note: I've been an active Discourse user since the 'early adopter' days, and frequent at least six Discourse sites of varying content volumes. I've learned good ways to stay on top of what is going on without having to open each site on a daily basis, and while it's not as low-effort as mailing lists are, I've found the benefits to be worth the increased effort. In fact many of the replies in this thread have complaints/concerns about aspects of Discourse usage which have been 'solved' already, but the person making the complaint/voicing the concern just isn't aware of the solutions available yet... so for those people I encourage you to ask for assistance learning how to address the problems you perceive, instead of claiming the problems can't be solved. A case in point is the statement "it's so hard to know what's new": I struggled with this as well, until I learned about configuring the behavior of the 'New' tab in Discourse, and aggressively filtering out categories and tags I do not care about. Now I can click 'refresh' while looking at the 'New' tab on a highly active site and I will see *all* of the New topics that are of potential interest to me. In the end this is very similar to taking the same actions in a local mail client, but more capable since it is based on metadata about the topics and not just the often-incorrect subject lines in email threads. -- Kevin P. Fleming He/Him/His Principal Program Manager, RHEL Red Hat US/Eastern Time Zone ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
> Am 21.04.2023 um 15:37 schrieb Emmanuel Seyman : > > * Fulko Hew [20/04/2023 21:18] : >> >> Can you say the same for Discourse? > > ... leave a lot to be desired. So much so that You put it very nicely. I have been desperately trying to follow new posts under the tag #server via email notification. Total failure. I missed everything. A nice collection of "bells and whistles" just doesn't cut it yet. Currently, it is far too unreliable for systematic and long-term professional activities. And it is structured in an undercomplex way. Try to find something further back in time. You must have a lot of boredom. A simple grouping by year/month like the mailing lists is very comfortable in comparison. And I think that's not what discourse was originally designed for. We are now trying to squeeze in something that works "somehow". An 'egg-laying, milk-gearing woolly pig' like with the infamous SAP software in some companies. And the problems that Matthew accurately describes (lengthy discussion, abusive discussion style, etc) cannot be solved by this, in my opinion. I am very much in favor of modernizing our communication tools. But I don't think this is the way to go (but I don't know anything better, except maybe a more "traditional", more structured forum). ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 11:42:20AM +0200, Aleksandra Fedorova wrote: > That's a slight exaggeration of course, but so is your statement. People > come to Fedora via many ways. But I doubt any of it starts with e-mail > nowadays. And the fact that you don't see newcomers _here_ actually proves > the point, isn't it? Correlation is not causation. Distro building isn't "fun", or sexy. There are much more immediately (and fiscally) rewarding things for "newcomers" to mess with. > Let's not get into a "who would you miss more" competition and work on a > solution which actually helps us to bridge the gap and allows us to > compromise between different use cases. Oh, I know my contributions here are miniscule, but my point is that we'd lose a ton of voices that collectively represent a ton of experience and use cases. > In all seriousness, I would advise you to hang out at the current > discussion.fedoraproject.org and feel the vibe a bit. You kinda just demonstrated my point -- "hanging out at and feel the vibe" is going to take time, attention, and distruption. My total available time/attention is fixed, which means this "hanging out" will have to come at the cost of something else that frankly matters _more_. And I won't personally gain anything from the effort -- at _best_ it will break even vs what I have now. > Distributions _are_ cool and sexy. And people have ideas and interest in > them. Some of them are totally wrong and misplaced, some may be very old, > and some are better. But that's how it should be. I'm sorry, the numbers are _not_ on your side here, not just with Fedora itself but the bigger picture of distributions in general. It's not "email" that is keeping folks away, it's the nature of the work. And _work_ it absolutely is. (And I say this as someone who has spent most of the past couple of decades working on low-level infrastructure-type stuff. Sure, I find it fun/enjoyable but I freely acknowledge I am several standard deviations from the mean) > It seems you feel like you are cornered, but it is you who put yourself in > the corner by ignoring the part of the community, which actually can and > wants to support you. By that same token bananas could make themselves more appealing to people that like oranges if they'd only be more orange-like. This isn't me "putting myself in a corner", it's Fedora moving the tent that I was underneath and expecting me to move with it. (Because they either don't understand _why_ anyone wouldn't want to move, or understand, and do it anyway. I can actually respect the latter position, even if I think it's not going to yield the expected results. But I think this is yet another case of the former) But whatever, I won't lose any sleep over this. As I already mentioned, I have plenty of other things to do, both in the F/OSS world and in (gasp) meatspace where I won't have to look at yet another screen. > > [1] Splitting into the "core" developers (ie those paid/compensated for > > participating) and an endless summer of newbs seeking help/support; > > the middle gets completely hollowed out. FWIW, I stand by this analogy. - Solomon -- Solomon Peachypizza at shaftnet dot org (email&xmpp) @pizza:shaftnet dot org (matrix) Dowling Park, FL speachy (libra.chat) signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 08:24:14AM +0300, Benson Muite wrote: > As such, simply adopting it because it can be deployed may leave out > many contributors, in particular those who drive development forward. I have made this point several times in other contexts; a new tool/workflow has to yield tangible improvements for the _existing_ contributor base. Otherwise you're just going to trade away _current_ contributors for the _possibility_ of attracting new ones. (In a volunteer context, that is) - Solomon -- Solomon Peachypizza at shaftnet dot org (email&xmpp) @pizza:shaftnet dot org (matrix) Dowling Park, FL speachy (libra.chat) signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
> Am 21.04.2023 um 16:15 schrieb Solomon Peachy via devel > : > > You kinda just demonstrated my point -- "hanging out at > and feel the vibe" is going to take time, attention, and distruption. > My total available time/attention is fixed, which means this "hanging > out" will have to come at the cost of something ... +++…+++1 :-) ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/21/23 15:25, Christopher Klooz wrote: Just a slight addition about "archaic email" and related comments: Email and its capability for being used in conjunction with OpenPGP ensures two major institutions in kernel development and elsewhere: "Trusting the developers, not infrastructure" [1], and, assume "any part of the infrastructure can be compromised at any time" [1]. This avoids single points of failure, and complements the chain of trust. I am not sure if Discourse is capable to be used in conjunction with OpenPGP if it reformats contents or if it removes attachments (maybe someone knows?). This leads to the possibility that discourse introduces a single point of failure (or, single point of vulnerability), which breaks the above institutions. Having said that, as far as I follow our devel mailing list, I think the argument above is of minor relevance, because I think this mailing list is not used to forward code or to do reviews. Signatures seem to be not omnipresent at the moment anyway. From security or impersonation point of view our current mailing list is actually the worst. Both Matrix and Discourse are at least tied to FAS account. And while it can be considered a single point of failure, it is at least the one which exists and is properly maintained by the project. We had the issue with impersonation over e-mail before, and that was not nice. However, I just wanted to remind that the issue is a little more complex than just assuming "email is old and has to be replaced by modern": there is another consideration, too. And we have to be aware that if discourse does not support OpenPGP signatures practically, we loose the possibility to ensure "security of integrity" in the mailing list in cases WHEN it is necessary - IF there are such cases (which I cannot determine). I think we really try hard to not oversimplify the conversation to the point of "old" vs "new", or "us" vs "them" approach, though many of the replies in this thread are pulling us into that direction. Matthew's mail in my opinion does a good job to highlight that there is no single "we want a new shiny thing for newbies" driver behind the switch. There are multiple reasons for it. And making discussions more secure and better maintained is on that list too. And like, hey, e-mail is a still a thing. Use it where you need it, and where it fits. There is no fight against the technology. But for this particular purpose within this particular environment the mailing list just doesn't work(*), and we see it. (*) Works = provides shared space where old and new Fedora contributors can discuss changes and other project-related topics in a collaborative way to advance the project. This is the problem which we must solve. And it won't go away on its own if just wait for it. Again, the goal is not to fight against Fedora contributors using the e-mail technology. The goal is to find a solution. And if the requirement for that solution is to improve the Discourse mail interface, can we at least try to look into it with open mind and actually list what needs to be done to make it work. We are a group of FOSS developers using FOSS tools, and we have a year long plan to make the tool working for us and everyone else. Let's maybe work on it? Just some thoughts :) [1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/maintainer-pgp-guide.html Chris -- Aleksandra Fedorova bookwar ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 08:24:48PM -0500, Chris Adams wrote: > Once upon a time, Matthew Miller said: > > I am proposing that over the course of 2023, starting with the Changes > > process, we move Fedora development conversations from this mailing list to > > the Discourse-based Fedora Discussion. > > I feel this is a case of trading one group of people (email list users) > for a different group of people (web forum users). I don't think this is _really_ a "there are two kinds of people in the world..." situation. Of course there are some people who have preferences (strong or weak) for one or the other, and completely legitimate pros and cons to each. But I don't want to "trade" anyone. I'd like to bring everyone along. > I have seen this > done multiple times over the years, tried to follow a few times, and > always dropped off fairly rapidly. I'm solidly in the "email list > users" group. Is there anything which could be different this time which would make it better for you? -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
I suppose it's ironically suitable that my first attempt to send the following failed because I wasn't actually subscribed to the list... Matthew Miller writes: > We’re missing people > I will just make the point that, when you make this switch, you will be missing people as well. Projects that switch to forum systems, to a great extend, go dark for people who aren't immersed in them all the time. Keeping up with fedora-devel takes very little of my time; keeping up with Discourse instances is a much slower affair. I know I'm a grumpy old-timer, but I see this move to forum systems as a powerful force putting projects into silos and isolating them from each other. Now get off my lawn, it's time to go watch Lawrence Welk...:) jon ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
> I am very much in favor of modernizing our communication tools. But I don't think this is the way to go (but I don't know anything better, except maybe a more "traditional", more structured forum). I'm up for modernizing things and making them more efficient as well, though as Matthew replied to me earlier, that's not his reason for suggesting it. Having taken some more time to consider this and thinking about the past, I've actually sort of already experienced this when I was a PuppyLinux dev. At the time, we used a forum as their primary means of dev communication. (I think they still do, but I'm not sure) Puppy is a different dev community with many working on their own derivatives of puppy but happily collaborating together with other devs doing their own side thing. While there definitely was an increase in interaction with people, that also came at a cost. Two or three devs having a conversation in a thread would also have to deal with a dozen or so no- devs chiming in on the situation and putting in their two cents. Time and again this would end up being nothing more than a distraction, an argument, or causing a developer to end up going to PMs to discuss the bug they were trying to resolve instead of doing it openly. The users who were jumping in on the thread weren't doing so maliciously, they were actually trying to help, but due to not understanding the issue it ended up doing the opposite. The problem with mixing general community discussion and development discussion... is you get exactly that as the outcome. While this did sometimes result in a community member getting more involved in development, I am/was an example of that, it also had the result of causing devs to end up relying on direct emails or PMs to other devs to cut through the chatter of most of the thread being non relevant or wasting time to read through replies that are off topic or unhelpful. And once that communication went private, it was no longer accessible to any other devs to read. This resulted a few times in bugs being fixed in some custom releases but not others, and devs having to re-engineer the same fix because the solution that was found wasn't open. That's less of a problem in Fedora's case because it's not disjointed like Puppy, but it could still happen if there was an issue a dev was dealing with patching source due to some GCC update. The fact is with a mailing list, someone has to intentionally seek it out and sign up. You dont run into the people casually ending up in developer discussions around esoteric but important engineering discussions. In the real world I'd relate it to this... A small housing development somewhere, that occasionally has visitors who just drive through to check the place out and look at the neighborhood. Versus When there's a detour on the highway and the entire interstate's traffic ends up getting routed through that same small development to get back onto the interstate later. The first case is one that no one really gets upset at, the latter is one that almost no one is happy with. I feel like there is a delicate balance between not making communication hard or putting up roadblocks... and making it so easy that the volume becomes a distraction for those that are trying to get code work done. We know what we have now mostly works even though it's not very elegant and has its own issues. Updating tools, encouraging new people to get involved in development are great things, but we dont want to take one step forward which results in two steps back for development overall. Maybe this can be addressed somehow with discourse, but I am clueless as to how. Hopefully those smarter than I can find the right balance for what we should use. On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 10:15 AM Peter Boy wrote: > > > > Am 21.04.2023 um 15:37 schrieb Emmanuel Seyman : > > > > * Fulko Hew [20/04/2023 21:18] : > >> > >> Can you say the same for Discourse? > > > > ... leave a lot to be desired. So much so that > > You put it very nicely. I have been desperately trying to follow new posts > under the tag #server via email notification. Total failure. I missed > everything. > > A nice collection of "bells and whistles" just doesn't cut it yet. > Currently, it is far too unreliable for systematic and long-term > professional activities. > > And it is structured in an undercomplex way. Try to find something further > back in time. You must have a lot of boredom. A simple grouping by > year/month like the mailing lists is very comfortable in comparison. > > And I think that's not what discourse was originally designed for. We are > now trying to squeeze in something that works "somehow". An 'egg-laying, > milk-gearing woolly pig' like with the infamous SAP software in some > companies. And the problems that Matthew accurately describes (lengthy > discussion, abusive discussion style, etc) cannot be solved by this, in my > opinion. > > I am very much in favor of modernizing our communication tool
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
* Kevin P. Fleming [21/04/2023 10:03] : > > lots of people say "I decide > what to read based on what I see in my email client", but when the subject > of the emails doesn't reflect their contents, that's a losing proposition. I agree there's a huge lack of netiquette in Fedora's mailing lists, with wholesale quoting, top-posting, subjects not being updated, etc but changing mediums seems far more expensive than asking people to post emails that are easier to read. Emmanuel ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 04:55:00PM +0200, Emmanuel Seyman wrote: > I agree there's a huge lack of netiquette in Fedora's mailing lists, > with wholesale quoting, top-posting, subjects not being updated, etc but > changing mediums seems far more expensive than asking people to post > emails that are easier to read. Not to mention these problems won't go away just because it's now hosted on a web page.. - Solomon -- Solomon Peachypizza at shaftnet dot org (email&xmpp) @pizza:shaftnet dot org (matrix) Dowling Park, FL speachy (libra.chat) signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
> Am 21.04.2023 um 14:27 schrieb Chris Adams : > > I can't > automatically keep copies and archive them. For example, I can in > seconds tell you when my first post here was This is an extremely important criterion to consider when renewing our communications tools. I can arrange information that I find important in a way that makes it quick and easy to find. In discouse, this could perhaps be simulated by giving everyone a virtual repository for copies (links). ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/21/23 16:15, Solomon Peachy via devel wrote: On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 11:42:20AM +0200, Aleksandra Fedorova wrote: That's a slight exaggeration of course, but so is your statement. People come to Fedora via many ways. But I doubt any of it starts with e-mail nowadays. And the fact that you don't see newcomers _here_ actually proves the point, isn't it? Correlation is not causation. Distro building isn't "fun", or sexy. There are much more immediately (and fiscally) rewarding things for "newcomers" to mess with. Let's not get into a "who would you miss more" competition and work on a solution which actually helps us to bridge the gap and allows us to compromise between different use cases. Oh, I know my contributions here are miniscule, but my point is that we'd lose a ton of voices that collectively represent a ton of experience and use cases. In all seriousness, I would advise you to hang out at the current discussion.fedoraproject.org and feel the vibe a bit. You kinda just demonstrated my point -- "hanging out at and feel the vibe" is going to take time, attention, and distruption. My total available time/attention is fixed, which means this "hanging out" will have to come at the cost of something else that frankly matters _more_. And I won't personally gain anything from the effort -- at _best_ it will break even vs what I have now. No, not really. I advised you to look into it, because you may actually get more from it personally, than you currently expect. I haven't proposed it to become a required Fedora activity, I gave you the unsolicited advice. Which maybe I shouldn't have. Distributions _are_ cool and sexy. And people have ideas and interest in them. Some of them are totally wrong and misplaced, some may be very old, and some are better. But that's how it should be. I'm sorry, the numbers are _not_ on your side here, not just with Fedora itself but the bigger picture of distributions in general. It's not "email" that is keeping folks away, it's the nature of the work. And _work_ it absolutely is. And now you try to tell me that "coolness" is defined by numbers. Sorry, I don't agree. I don't need everyone in the world to work on Linux distribution. I don't want majority of people to work on Linux distribution. I don't even need "more than in Ubuntu" people to work on Fedora Linux distribution. That is not the point at all, and it is not what makes things cool. But with my Fedora Ambassador hat on I can tell you that the problem we see right now is not that we don't have people coming to Fedora. We have a problem helping people to connect to where the work is happening in a way that they can contribute. And this includes both mentoring them to be able to contribute, but also accepting the fact that new people can bring new ideas, and we should provide them space to work on them and not just expect them to follow and do what they were told to do. (And I say this as someone who has spent most of the past couple of decades working on low-level infrastructure-type stuff. Sure, I find it fun/enjoyable but I freely acknowledge I am several standard deviations from the mean) It seems you feel like you are cornered, but it is you who put yourself in the corner by ignoring the part of the community, which actually can and wants to support you. By that same token bananas could make themselves more appealing to people that like oranges if they'd only be more orange-like. This isn't me "putting myself in a corner", it's Fedora moving the tent that I was underneath and expecting me to move with it. (Because they either don't understand _why_ anyone wouldn't want to move, or understand, and do it anyway. I can actually respect the latter position, even if I think it's not going to yield the expected results. But I think this is yet another case of the former) But whatever, I won't lose any sleep over this. As I already mentioned, I have plenty of other things to do, both in the F/OSS world and in (gasp) meatspace where I won't have to look at yet another screen. [1] Splitting into the "core" developers (ie those paid/compensated for participating) and an endless summer of newbs seeking help/support; the middle gets completely hollowed out. FWIW, I stand by this analogy. The middle doesn't magically appear out of nowhere. It appears when you build paths for newbies to grow into it. And it it sort of responsibility of the current middle to grow the next one. We think the communication channels change is one of the initiatives which helps with that. Mentorship is the other. There are currently three initiatives under Sustainable Community objective and everyone's feedback is welcome: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/fedora-strategy-2028-focus-area-review-community-sustainability/79277 - Solomon ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe se
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/21/23 16:30, Aleksandra Fedorova wrote: On 4/21/23 15:25, Christopher Klooz wrote: Just a slight addition about "archaic email" and related comments: Email and its capability for being used in conjunction with OpenPGP ensures two major institutions in kernel development and elsewhere: "Trusting the developers, not infrastructure" [1], and, assume "any part of the infrastructure can be compromised at any time" [1]. This avoids single points of failure, and complements the chain of trust. I am not sure if Discourse is capable to be used in conjunction with OpenPGP if it reformats contents or if it removes attachments (maybe someone knows?). This leads to the possibility that discourse introduces a single point of failure (or, single point of vulnerability), which breaks the above institutions. Having said that, as far as I follow our devel mailing list, I think the argument above is of minor relevance, because I think this mailing list is not used to forward code or to do reviews. Signatures seem to be not omnipresent at the moment anyway. From security or impersonation point of view our current mailing list is actually the worst. Both Matrix and Discourse are at least tied to FAS account. And while it can be considered a single point of failure, it is at least the one which exists and is properly maintained by the project. The FAS account is useless if one has access to the infra, or if the latter has vulnerabilities (which can be social and technical). Misconfigurations also occur in complex infra. That's the point of avoiding single points of failure. If one uses OpenPGP and if people verify it, it is not relevant if the infra itself is the "worst" or not, because no one needs to trust it anyway (that's the point in the kernel mailing lists). By default, without ensuring integrity, every email-based mailing list that is used in Linux realms (and at all) falls in the "worst" category because of the concept/architecture of email. Again, this does not mean that discourse is not suitable for us. Given what I see on the mailing lists, our mailing list contents seem to be not relevant for integrity, and mostly not signed at all. I just read some comments where I had the perception that they are partly assuming things to be simpler than they are. There are reasons for traditional email mailing lists in some circumstances, they are not "generally obsolete", but this does not mean that this applies to our mailing lists. Given what I see and where I am present in the mailing lists, I would be +1 for discourse. But we still have to consider and put forward all points. So I think we are on the same page, I just added a point that has to be considered in advance: do we have >=1 mailing lists that have a need for independent "security of integrity"? I guess the answer is no, we do not have >=1. But I do not know all of our mailing lists and for what they are used. We had the issue with impersonation over e-mail before, and that was not nice. However, I just wanted to remind that the issue is a little more complex than just assuming "email is old and has to be replaced by modern": there is another consideration, too. And we have to be aware that if discourse does not support OpenPGP signatures practically, we loose the possibility to ensure "security of integrity" in the mailing list in cases WHEN it is necessary - IF there are such cases (which I cannot determine). I think we really try hard to not oversimplify the conversation to the point of "old" vs "new", or "us" vs "them" approach, though many of the replies in this thread are pulling us into that direction. Matthew's mail in my opinion does a good job to highlight that there is no single "we want a new shiny thing for newbies" driver behind the switch. There are multiple reasons for it. And making discussions more secure and better maintained is on that list too. And like, hey, e-mail is a still a thing. Use it where you need it, and where it fits. There is no fight against the technology. But for this particular purpose within this particular environment the mailing list just doesn't work(*), and we see it. (*) Works = provides shared space where old and new Fedora contributors can discuss changes and other project-related topics in a collaborative way to advance the project. This is the problem which we must solve. And it won't go away on its own if just wait for it. Again, the goal is not to fight against Fedora contributors using the e-mail technology. The goal is to find a solution. And if the requirement for that solution is to improve the Discourse mail interface, can we at least try to look into it with open mind and actually list what needs to be done to make it work. We are a group of FOSS developers using FOSS tools, and we have a year long plan to make the tool working for us and everyone else. Let's maybe work on it? Just some thoughts :) [1] ht
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
> If one uses OpenPGP and if people verify it As you mention, that's a big "if" ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 04:55:00PM +0200, Emmanuel Seyman wrote: > * Kevin P. Fleming [21/04/2023 10:03] : > > > > lots of people say "I decide > > what to read based on what I see in my email client", but when the subject > > of the emails doesn't reflect their contents, that's a losing proposition. > > I agree there's a huge lack of netiquette in Fedora's mailing lists, > with wholesale quoting, top-posting, subjects not being updated, etc but > changing mediums seems far more expensive than asking people to post > emails that are easier to read. I generally find the term "netiquette" to be quite unpleasant, because it is historically frequently applied in user hostile manner, where people repeatedly rebuke (new) contributors/participants who don't follow the "rules", which has the effect of discouraging engagement with the project. Contributor guidelines are fine, but it is important to accept, expect and tolerate that people are *NOT* going to following the guidelines, for a variety of reasons. IMHO the application of "netiquette" rules in a particular scenario is usually a sign that the tools being used are inadequate for the job they're be applied to. With regards, Daniel -- |: https://berrange.com -o-https://www.flickr.com/photos/dberrange :| |: https://libvirt.org -o-https://fstop138.berrange.com :| |: https://entangle-photo.org-o-https://www.instagram.com/dberrange :| ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/21/23 17:27, Daniel Alley wrote: If one uses OpenPGP and if people verify it As you mention, that's a big "if" Absolutely, and if the majority does not verify in the devel mailing list, it is clearly an indicator that this type of security is not relevant here ;) But finally, I am not sufficiently involved in all of our mailing lists to know. ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, 2023-04-21 at 10:44 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote: > On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 08:24:48PM -0500, Chris Adams wrote: > > Once upon a time, Matthew Miller said: > > > I am proposing that over the course of 2023, starting with the Changes > > > process, we move Fedora development conversations from this mailing list > > > to > > > the Discourse-based Fedora Discussion. > > > > I feel this is a case of trading one group of people (email list users) > > for a different group of people (web forum users). > > I don't think this is _really_ a "there are two kinds of people in the > world..." situation. Of course there are some people who have preferences > (strong or weak) for one or the other, and completely legitimate pros and > cons to each. But I don't want to "trade" anyone. I'd like to bring everyone > along. > > > > I have seen this > > done multiple times over the years, tried to follow a few times, and > > always dropped off fairly rapidly. I'm solidly in the "email list > > users" group. > > Is there anything which could be different this time which would make it > better for you? So I am trying to see how it works to follow those discussions via email (sorry this is the only way, following via web simply doesn't work for me). So I registered the account, added the email I want to get notifications at, and selected a few topics. First impressions. It is absolutely confusing to figure out how to watch topics. If you select a category and a topic you do not get the notification bell to watch them. If you select just a topic you get it. Topics are all in random order. When you select some topic by searching you sometimes are then proposed a different one (? renames ?) I found no way to watch all, and let my client sort it out ... which would need client filtering, because the stupid gmail filtering can't handle header fields (#@#%$@#). And if you can't watch all it means you can watch only know topics, and anything new will simply be missed. It would be useful to be able to say "watch all except these specific topics", which are the ones you realize are uninteresting to you and explicitly start to filter out. I could do that filtering after receiving though, so being able to watch all is the minimum requirement to be able to follow anything. [late edit: in a plot twist, if you select a category, then you get a new meta-tag call all-tags, and you can watch that ... I selected that now and will see if I can block specific tags somehow later or filter them on my end] I couldn't find a place to list all the topics I am watching ... only way I found so far is to click on all the tags in a notification to see if any of them has the bell thingy ... On the actual notifications I am receiving: They come several minutes (at least 5 minutes, as the email is *sent* that much later, and the sent date is set to when the email is sent, not to when the post is made) after the actual message is posted in discourse, I do not care much, I generally read asynchronously as well, but it is sometimes annoying not to be able to establish the real time a post was made. The only way to know who posted is by looking at the From field, where the description of the notification email address is changed to include the display name of the poster. That is a bit confusing at times. There is no formatting in the mail that tells me who is someone replying to, or which message in the thread it was being replied to (I disabled sending me the whole thread with each notification, I may re- enable it). The test part so far is otherwise decently rendered, and for image posts it is clear enough that there is something to look at in the html part. *however* the images are not embedded in the email, so all that information is unavailable offline or for archival (and in my configuration requires to actively pull images as I configured my client to not pull 3rd party content automatically for privacy and security reasons). I have not tried to reply to anything, so I do not know how that will fare. -- Simo Sorce RHEL Crypto Team Red Hat, Inc ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 10:50:42AM +0200, Jarek Prokop wrote: > >also drives us towards more scattered communications. Our infamous > >mega-threads are not really effective for getting to community > >consensus, and tend to bring out the worst in us. > > Passionate people generate passionate discussion. > > The only thing you will gain by a forum is that at the point > the message will not be deemed appropriate, it will probably > be deleted or "beatified" by the mod team. The passion from our > human nature will not go away with a platform change. That's true -- and I'm not looking to get rid of passion, or silence opinions. But when something is _really_ out of line (often written in the heat of the moment), it's better to have options to ... as you say, beautify* the conversation. That makes it better for other people participating, and better for the person who has a chance to make their point in a more constructive way. * also, to fix typos :) [snip] > A discussion to a technical change, for me, will forever be in a ticket. > No matter the "wider discussion platform" projects will always have > bug trackers where one can create a ticket. Of course. That's not what I'm talking about. Consider for example this: https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/2817. That's not about the technical decision itself -- it's an branch of the conversation that should have been here. > >biased towards those for whom it is working just fine. But, core Fedora > >development discussion can’t be limited to that ever-shrinking group. > >Consider who isn’t here. The problems are real, and the trend isn’t in > >a good direction. > But, is it shrinking due to a platform, or something other? I don't think Fedora contribution and activity overall are shrinking. And I'm quite convinced that the platform is part of it. > It makes me want to try discourse out, not saying I'll stick around, I'm glad to hear that. > I am, luckily, not paid to read forums > with no threading. IMO, a stream of posts with mentions of previous > posts is not threading. Threading begins and ends > on new topic posts AFAICT on discourse. It's not presented as a tree, but there _are_ threads of replies. If you see something like "2 replies" under a particular post, you can click that and the view will be restricted to just those replies, which you can then follow further. Example: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/future-of-encryption-in-fedora-desktop-variants/80397/83?replies_to_post_number=83 But also, yes — when something really diverges in Discourse, it should be a new topic. A moderator can move things after the fact (like I did with https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/getting-systemd-homed-working-properly-on-fedora-workstation/81004) but even better, when replying, you can create a linked topic. See https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/site-tip-create-linked-topics-for-deep-dives-or-tangents/34526 > But I'd be happier if there was some > tangible metric how to measure if we got more *related to the topic* > engagement. > I would hate to see 20 "+1" posts from "random" users counted > towards "it is better now". That's reasonable. Do you have suggestions for a good metric? > >In Project Discussion, each different Fedora team can have its own tag, > >and you can subscribe to those that you’re interested in. Cross-posting > >is easy: tag a post with multiple teams. > I'd be interested in having a kind of "crossroad sign", to direct me > towards tags what I would care about > from a packager perspective. Not happy about this change, but it > would make my experience a bit better... There's a big _index_ at https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/tags, but that's probably bit much (while at the same time not containing enough description). What would this "sign" ideally look like to you? > >That said, it is web-first software. (Or mobile, if that’s your thing.) > >That requires some adjustment, I know. I hope opening up a Fedora > >Discussion tab – or keeping one open — becomes an easy habit. > If I was a volunteer that's the thing I'd remember once in a blue > moon that it even exists. > But I guess that's just person to person :). There _are_ email notifications, and you can interact by replying to them. (You can even +1 or <3.) There is also a "digest" mail sent automatically if you're not active, showing active topics possibly of interest, which can serve as a more-frequent-than-blue-moon reminder. (You can turn this off, of course.) > As a person in my early 20s, I hate how everything is becoming web centric > and no one can convince me to feel otherwise. While I am hearing from > varying people around me, how it must be bad using email, it provides > client-side filtering unparalleled by any platform that I used in the > past. It's fine, but it's no NNTP. That was really the best. :) Do take a look at https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/guide-to-interacting-with-this-site-by-email/25960 It's not perfect, but it's bette
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
> But with my Fedora Ambassador hat on I can tell you that the problem we see right now is not that we don't have people coming to Fedora. We have a problem helping people to connect to where the work is happening in a way that they can contribute. > And this includes both mentoring them to be able to contribute, but also accepting the fact that new people can bring new ideas, and we should provide them space to work on them and not just expect them to follow and do what they were told to do. So I'm interested by what you bring up here. Have you run into situations where someone wanted to contribute to development but was unwilling to use a mailing list? With a community as big as Fedora and with a multitude of ways that people can contribute, I'm curious what the roadblocks you are seeing for people wanting to get into development. I can completely understand if someone wants to join mindshare, D&I, outreachy, or docs, etc... that they might find a mailinglist to cumbersome to work with. Have you run into sitautions where people wanted to get involved in development but were having issues with a mailing list? I'm involved in many things FOSS related, from development, to outreach, to media production, etc. I've found that in those different 'ecosystems' for lack of a better word, there are some tools that are more effective than others. I think that there are some things that happen on the mailing list that might certainly benefit from moving to discourse, but I also feel that there are some things that benefit from the current system until something new is designed. On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 11:07 AM Aleksandra Fedorova wrote: > On 4/21/23 16:15, Solomon Peachy via devel wrote: > > On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 11:42:20AM +0200, Aleksandra Fedorova wrote: > >> That's a slight exaggeration of course, but so is your statement. People > >> come to Fedora via many ways. But I doubt any of it starts with e-mail > >> nowadays. And the fact that you don't see newcomers _here_ actually > proves > >> the point, isn't it? > > > > Correlation is not causation. > > > > Distro building isn't "fun", or sexy. There are much more immediately > > (and fiscally) rewarding things for "newcomers" to mess with. > > > >> Let's not get into a "who would you miss more" competition and work on a > >> solution which actually helps us to bridge the gap and allows us to > >> compromise between different use cases. > > > > Oh, I know my contributions here are miniscule, but my point is that > > we'd lose a ton of voices that collectively represent a ton of > > experience and use cases. > > > >> In all seriousness, I would advise you to hang out at the current > >> discussion.fedoraproject.org and feel the vibe a bit. > > > > You kinda just demonstrated my point -- "hanging out at > > and feel the vibe" is going to take time, attention, and distruption. > > My total available time/attention is fixed, which means this "hanging > > out" will have to come at the cost of something else that frankly > > matters _more_. And I won't personally gain anything from the effort -- > > at _best_ it will break even vs what I have now. > > No, not really. I advised you to look into it, because you may actually > get more from it personally, than you currently expect. I haven't > proposed it to become a required Fedora activity, I gave you the > unsolicited advice. Which maybe I shouldn't have. > > >> Distributions _are_ cool and sexy. And people have ideas and interest in > >> them. Some of them are totally wrong and misplaced, some may be very > old, > >> and some are better. But that's how it should be. > > > > I'm sorry, the numbers are _not_ on your side here, not just with Fedora > > itself but the bigger picture of distributions in general. It's not > > "email" that is keeping folks away, it's the nature of the work. And > > _work_ it absolutely is. > > And now you try to tell me that "coolness" is defined by numbers. Sorry, > I don't agree. I don't need everyone in the world to work on Linux > distribution. I don't want majority of people to work on Linux > distribution. I don't even need "more than in Ubuntu" people to work on > Fedora Linux distribution. That is not the point at all, and it is not > what makes things cool. > > But with my Fedora Ambassador hat on I can tell you that the problem we > see right now is not that we don't have people coming to Fedora. We have > a problem helping people to connect to where the work is happening in a > way that they can contribute. > > And this includes both mentoring them to be able to contribute, but also > accepting the fact that new people can bring new ideas, and we should > provide them space to work on them and not just expect them to follow > and do what they were told to do. > > > > > (And I say this as someone who has spent most of the past couple of > > decades working on low-level infrastructure-type stuff. Sure, I find it > > fun/enjoyable but I freely acknowledge I am
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Once upon a time, Matthew Miller said: > On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 08:24:48PM -0500, Chris Adams wrote: > > I have seen this > > done multiple times over the years, tried to follow a few times, and > > always dropped off fairly rapidly. I'm solidly in the "email list > > users" group. > > Is there anything which could be different this time which would make it > better for you? I really can't imagine a change for me (and I apologize if that sounds really "grumpy old man"... which I guess it starting to apply to me, since I was in college when a friend told me about some guy in Finland saying "hey Minix people..."). It really comes down to how I use a computer I guess; I am highly keyboard-focused, and I haven't seen a web forum yet that can handle that. Some have a few keyboard shortcuts, but they rarely fill the whole use and often are not well-maintained. Email lets me have full control of how I consume it. I can sort it my way, save what I want and delete the rest, flag things for more review, etc. Web forums force me to consume their content their way, and then when I maybe have a way to deal with it, they change things. Also, I can easily edit email posts in vi until I get my message the way I want (for example, this paragraph started out as a sentence further down the message :) ). So for web-based forums and such, they are very casual use for me, where I might drop in occasionally, but mostly just when searching for info. When I've tried web forums before (like when Red Hat killed off their mailing lists), I tend to lose interest and stop going pretty quickly (maybe it's an ADHD thing there, I don't know). I have a bookmark folder of a handful of web forums, and when I look at it, I mostly see sites I haven't visited in months or years. The only GUI-based communication tools I have stuck with are Slack and Discord, which I can run largely with a keyboard. Even there, I'm only in a small number of servers (Slack is mostly just for work at this point). I tried loading https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/ in Lynx, but it's way too "busy" to be able to visually browse it, and of course it has the "best viewed with JavaScript enabled" tag, which is usually kiss-of-death for Lynx users (in fact, I couldn't see a way to log in or post/comment). I'm a small-time packager in Fedora, just a few leaf packages, but I do try to contribute to development discussions based on my experience and use cases. I don't like dropping out of it, but that just feels like the likely outcome. -- Chris Adams ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Once upon a time, Matthew Miller said: > * also, to fix typos :) So, I will say this is kind of a peeve of mine about server-based discussion systems (whether web or client like Slack/Discord): allowing people to edit messages, especially after people have replied to them, is a bad idea. Person 1 says "we should do XYZ", somebody replies "no XYZ is bad", and person 1 can go change their original message to say something completely different. It kind of goes back to who "owns" (and I don't mean in the legal sense) the content. When the content is held on a server, the server owner has an editorial control that can be problematic. Fixing typos sounds nice, but... just don't make typos, or proofread. :) -- Chris Adams ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Il 21/04/23 17:37, Simo Sorce ha scritto: > On Fri, 2023-04-21 at 10:44 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote: >> On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 08:24:48PM -0500, Chris Adams wrote: >>> Once upon a time, Matthew Miller said: I am proposing that over the course of 2023, starting with the Changes process, we move Fedora development conversations from this mailing list to the Discourse-based Fedora Discussion. >>> I feel this is a case of trading one group of people (email list users) >>> for a different group of people (web forum users). >> I don't think this is _really_ a "there are two kinds of people in the >> world..." situation. Of course there are some people who have preferences >> (strong or weak) for one or the other, and completely legitimate pros and >> cons to each. But I don't want to "trade" anyone. I'd like to bring everyone >> along. >> >> >>> I have seen this >>> done multiple times over the years, tried to follow a few times, and >>> always dropped off fairly rapidly. I'm solidly in the "email list >>> users" group. >> Is there anything which could be different this time which would make it >> better for you? > So I am trying to see how it works to follow those discussions via > email (sorry this is the only way, following via web simply doesn't > work for me). > > So I registered the account, added the email I want to get > notifications at, and selected a few topics. > > First impressions. > > ... Discourse docs say that it can be fully used like a mailing list, but it mention a "mailing list" mode that I can't find in Fedora Discourse profile preferences... is that feature available? Mattia ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 05:07:28PM +0200, Aleksandra Fedorova wrote: > No, not really. I advised you to look into it, because you may actually get > more from it personally, than you currently expect. I haven't proposed it to > become a required Fedora activity, I gave you the unsolicited advice. Which > maybe I shouldn't have. What kicked off this thread was a proposal to make "checking out" (and then actually utilizing) discussion.f.o a *required* activity to participate in Fedora development. > And now you try to tell me that "coolness" is defined by numbers. Sorry, I > don't agree. I don't need everyone in the world to work on Linux > distribution. I don't want majority of people to work on Linux distribution. > I don't even need "more than in Ubuntu" people to work on Fedora Linux > distribution. That is not the point at all, and it is not what makes things > cool. Numbers/engagement/etc was one of the justifications behind this proposal to ditch mailing lists, and my point was that "numbers" was a pretty worthless metric because of the very reasons you just listed. That said, I don't think anyone can reasonably disagree that the "coolness" factor strongly affects the numbers, because people follow the funding. Distros, like most(all) other infrastructure, were never "cool" in that big-picture context. I think that's a good thing, as it means those participating are more likely to have a genuine passion for it. > But with my Fedora Ambassador hat on I can tell you that the problem we see > right now is not that we don't have people coming to Fedora. We have a > problem helping people to connect to where the work is happening in a way > that they can contribute. Of course. But this also goes for those that are _already_ contributing. > And this includes both mentoring them to be able to contribute, but also > accepting the fact that new people can bring new ideas, and we should > provide them space to work on them and not just expect them to follow and do > what they were told to do. This also goes for those that are already contributing. It's not just about the new people. > The middle doesn't magically appear out of nowhere. It appears when you > build paths for newbies to grow into it. And it it sort of responsibility of > the current middle to grow the next one. I disagree; it's the _responsibility_ of the *leaders* to grow (and sustain!) the middle. Ultimately this comes down to defining the sort of culture the community is expected to have -- and the tools must be chosen to support/enable that culture. (It's not the middle's responsibility because they are acting mostly individually and mostly powerless; their main power comes from the ballot box, except in rare situations where someone rises up through sheer volume of meritocrous contributions) > We think the communication channels change is one of the initiatives which > helps with that. Mentorship is the other. Mentorship is necessary (from leaders to the middle, and the middle to the newbs) but doesn't scale well due to the mutual time committment necessary. - Solomon -- Solomon Peachypizza at shaftnet dot org (email&xmpp) @pizza:shaftnet dot org (matrix) Dowling Park, FL speachy (libra.chat) signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 12:07 PM Chris Adams wrote:
>
> So, I will say this is kind of a peeve of mine about server-based
> discussion systems (whether web or client like Slack/Discord): allowing
> people to edit messages, especially after people have replied to them,
> is a bad idea. Person 1 says "we should do XYZ", somebody replies "no
> XYZ is bad", and person 1 can go change their original message to say
> something completely different.
>
> It kind of goes back to who "owns" (and I don't mean in the legal sense)
> the content. When the content is held on a server, the server owner has
> an editorial control that can be problematic.
>
> Fixing typos sounds nice, but... just don't make typos, or proofread. :)
> --
> Chris Adams
>
>
Usually when people edit messages there's a notation that it was edited.
Some even note the number of times something has been edited, and by
whom, including when mods/admin edit it. I forget what options discourse
has for that. But also, when you are quoting someone on a forum, if they
go back and change their message, i dont recall ever seeing a forum where
it auto-updated the quote replies. So the person's original message will
still show, however that does cause a bit of confusion when a new reader
comes to the thread and sees a quote that doesn't match what they see in
that person's post. There was a forum somewhere that the edit message
would say "This post was edited by ${user} after replies by ${user2},
${user3}, ${user4}" which helped eliminate that... but I believe that may
have been something custom that the admin put in place.
Also there's usually a time limit in place for edits... I've seen it as low
as 30 seconds on some forums which negates some of this issue.
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Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 08:27:06AM -0400, Robert Marcano via devel wrote: > I forgot to add. Discourse is worse for mobile users, the "app" was > just an embedded web browser, the only thing efficient it did was to > get a notification and remembering your session, everything else is > worse that writing an email on a email client for phones. For what it's worth, I use Discourse on my phone all the time. As you say, the app is just a thin wrapper around the mobile web UI, but I like that UI well enough. And the wrapper is nice as a "hub" for various discourse sites, where I can see all of the notifications in one place. -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 08:45:31AM -0600, Jonathan Corbet wrote: > I will just make the point that, when you make this switch, you will be > missing people as well. Projects that switch to forum systems, to a > great extend, go dark for people who aren't immersed in them all the > time. Keeping up with fedora-devel takes very little of my time; > keeping up with Discourse instances is a much slower affair. What could we do to make that easier for you? -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
TLDR; I'm in the "please, not a web forum" camp, but I also feel like this is effectively a foregone conclusion, unfortunately. As a maintainer of a small number of packages, I follow devel to keep up with changes affecting the distribution and occasionally chime in or find areas where I can help in some way. I have gained an immense amount of knowledge about Fedora this way as well as a strong appreciation for the folks doing the heavy lifting. I've tried to use discourse a bit and find it to be like every other web forum -- heavy to load and frustrating to work with. My reasons match what a number of other folks here have already said. In particular, I don't like moving from an email discussion method where each participant can choose their own client and tools to work as they want to a web interface which is one-size-fits-all (or none, as often everyone loses something). I'd be among those who are simply less informed and engaged in the Fedora development community if things move to a web forum. If there are a lot more gains in doing so, I wish you well in the endeavor. Thanks, -- Todd signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/21/23 18:07, Chris Adams wrote: Once upon a time, Matthew Miller said: * also, to fix typos :) So, I will say this is kind of a peeve of mine about server-based discussion systems (whether web or client like Slack/Discord): allowing people to edit messages, especially after people have replied to them, is a bad idea. Person 1 says "we should do XYZ", somebody replies "no XYZ is bad", and person 1 can go change their original message to say something completely different. Hmm, interesting, seems like the platform is able to do a message based diff, so if you edit your message, history is actually visible! See for example this message from some of Matt's links I got open https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/future-of-encryption-in-fedora-desktop-variants/80397/65 There is a pencil with a number, click that, you can see a diff. So I don't think that I have to be that concerned that someone will want to radically change their messages. It kind of goes back to who "owns" (and I don't mean in the legal sense) the content. When the content is held on a server, the server owner has an editorial control that can be problematic. Fixing typos sounds nice, but... just don't make typos, or proofread. :)___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 11:07:16AM -0500, Chris Adams wrote: > Once upon a time, Matthew Miller said: > > * also, to fix typos :) > > So, I will say this is kind of a peeve of mine about server-based > discussion systems (whether web or client like Slack/Discord): allowing > people to edit messages, especially after people have replied to them, > is a bad idea. Person 1 says "we should do XYZ", somebody replies "no > XYZ is bad", and person 1 can go change their original message to say > something completely different. Sure that is possible, but lets not assume nor optimize for malicious engagement. We should be optimizing for honest engagement because our contributors are decent people. The vast majority of the time when people go back to edit messages it will be to correct mistakes/typos, or syntax errors in formatting text, and so a clear benefit. In the unlikely / rare event that someone did maliciously change the original message for some nefarious reason, other users can call them out, and in the worst case moderators could take action. I very much doubt that would happen enough to be a problem worth worrying about in a constructive community environment like Fedora. With regards, Daniel -- |: https://berrange.com -o-https://www.flickr.com/photos/dberrange :| |: https://libvirt.org -o-https://fstop138.berrange.com :| |: https://entangle-photo.org-o-https://www.instagram.com/dberrange :| ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 09:38:26AM +0300, Alexander Bokovoy wrote: > My main trouble with Discourse and other places where I try to help > people with answers to their questions is that forums promote a drive-by > questions without further engagement. This experience is opposite to > what forum proponents are claiming but I see it pretty consistently on > Discourse, on Stackoverflow sites, on Reddit and in many other places. I think some of that is natural in any support forum. The same thing happens on the Fedora Users' mailing list. > In my area, identity management and authentication, the topics are > complex enough to want to help others but lack of further engagement > simply kills any interest to use a particular discussion board. If > people asking questions aren't interested in getting the answers or even > tying in the ends for their own questions, it comes hard to keep an > interest in helping those people again and again. > > I can point you to one specific topic on Fedora Discourse as an example: > https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/fedora-login-bug-having-a-128-character-password-breaks-otp-and-will-lock-users-out-of-account/78960 Well, in that case, I think the person was primarily interested in getting access to their account back, not the underlying bug. Justin helped them find where to file a ticket, and presumably everything was resolved from their point of view. > I would have supposed that someone would follow-up, right? As a > FreeIPA maintainer in Fedora, as an upstream FreeIPA contributor and a > contact for security issues, I have never been contacted with either > details for what the thread claims to happen or never got any follow-up > on the thread to my comments. I really don't think that's a _tooling_ issue. > > This is an experience I want to avoid. If this is what Matthew is > proposing a Fedora development discussions to be, then sorry, this is > not an improvement. Well, no. It is not what I am proposing. -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 10:31:04AM +0300, Panu Matilainen wrote: > I actually quite like Discourse - for a forum software - from > experience related to various freetime activities. > > However, Discourse replacing mailing lists WILL be the end of > habitually skimming through everything that goes on devel (and a > whole bunch of other lists) to spot issues that might be of my > concern. The result will be in me being considerably less aware of > what goes around in Fedora, rpm related or not. You can get notifications of every post in tags you want to follow by email, and presumably skim them in the same way. Maybe there's something we could do to make that better for you -- can you help me understand what doesn't work well? We have another feature which might be of interest: we have enabled the "saved searches" plugin. You provide search queries, and whenever there is a new patch, you get a notification. (You can decide if you want these immediately, hourly, daily, or weekly.) https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/new-site-feature-saved-searches-get-notifications-if-a-new-post-matches/46892 -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Matthew Miller writes: > On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 08:45:31AM -0600, Jonathan Corbet wrote: >> I will just make the point that, when you make this switch, you will be >> missing people as well. Projects that switch to forum systems, to a >> great extent, go dark for people who aren't immersed in them all the >> time. Keeping up with fedora-devel takes very little of my time; >> keeping up with Discourse instances is a much slower affair. > > What could we do to make that easier for you? A decent NNTP feed (or set of feeds) would be wonderful :) Otherwise, I don't know. Invent a decent federated system that keeps the good parts of email while addressing the many bad parts? I guess I should give the Discourse email mode another try. It was painful last time, but it's been a little while and may have improved. But even if it's perfect, dealing with a lot of accounts on project-specific walled gardens is always going to increase the pain level. Perhaps I'm just not made for the world we have built... Thanks, jon ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 04:14:33PM +0200, Peter Boy wrote: > You put it very nicely. I have been desperately trying to follow new posts > under the tag #server via email notification. Total failure. I missed > everything. What could have made that go better? > A nice collection of "bells and whistles" just doesn't cut it yet. > Currently, it is far too unreliable for systematic and long-term > professional activities. > > And it is structured in an undercomplex way. Try to find something further > back in time. You must have a lot of boredom. A simple grouping by > year/month like the mailing lists is very comfortable in comparison. There isn't (as far as I know) a browsable year/month view, but you can limit searches with before and after: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/search?q=%23server-wg%20after%3A2021-01-01%20before%3A2021-02-01 -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 10:47:24AM -0400, JT wrote: > While there definitely was an increase in interaction with people, that > also came at a cost. Two or three devs having a conversation in a thread > would also have to deal with a dozen or so no- devs chiming in on the > situation and putting in their two cents. Time and again this would end up > being nothing more than a distraction, an argument, or causing a developer > to end up going to PMs to discuss the bug they were trying to resolve > instead of doing it openly. I don't want to do this prematurely, but we do have some options for handling this. We are (very soon now) going to have sync of FAS groups to Discourse. If we want or need to, we could limit posting in Project Discussion to people who are members of one or more FAS groups. -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 1:15 PM Matthew Miller wrote: > On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 10:47:24AM -0400, JT wrote: > > While there definitely was an increase in interaction with people, that > > also came at a cost. Two or three devs having a conversation in a thread > > would also have to deal with a dozen or so no- devs chiming in on the > > situation and putting in their two cents. Time and again this would end > up > > being nothing more than a distraction, an argument, or causing a > developer > > to end up going to PMs to discuss the bug they were trying to resolve > > instead of doing it openly. > > I don't want to do this prematurely, but we do have some options for > handling this. We are (very soon now) going to have sync of FAS groups to > Discourse. If we want or need to, we could limit posting in Project > Discussion to people who are members of one or more FAS groups. > > Oh nice, that'd definitely help prevent issues I dealt with before. ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 11:07:16AM -0500, Chris Adams wrote: > Once upon a time, Matthew Miller said: > > * also, to fix typos :) > > So, I will say this is kind of a peeve of mine about server-based > discussion systems (whether web or client like Slack/Discord): allowing > people to edit messages, especially after people have replied to them, > is a bad idea. Person 1 says "we should do XYZ", somebody replies "no > XYZ is bad", and person 1 can go change their original message to say > something completely different. Do you mean maliciously? In that case, it's a matter of asking people to not do that. Or do you mean that it makes the history of the conversation confusing? The history _is_ there — edited posts are marked as such and you can see the changes. I think in many cases it's fine for edited posts to reflect an updated understanding. If I post something and later realize I was confused, and so fix it, in a year no one will care about the initial mistake and it's more useful to have a "clean" post. (And any replies telling me I was wrong can be deleted, having served their purpose.) Of course, that kind of "timeline edit" isn't appropriate for something that's a big decision or where the hashing-it-out _matters_. But it's very useful for posts like https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/fedora-strategy-2028-a-topic-index-for-our-planning-process/46733 -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Once upon a time, Matthew Miller said: > On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 11:07:16AM -0500, Chris Adams wrote: > > Once upon a time, Matthew Miller said: > > > * also, to fix typos :) > > > > So, I will say this is kind of a peeve of mine about server-based > > discussion systems (whether web or client like Slack/Discord): allowing > > people to edit messages, especially after people have replied to them, > > is a bad idea. Person 1 says "we should do XYZ", somebody replies "no > > XYZ is bad", and person 1 can go change their original message to say > > something completely different. > > Do you mean maliciously? In that case, it's a matter of asking people to not > do that. I've seen it used that way, so that was my concern. > Or do you mean that it makes the history of the conversation confusing? The > history _is_ there — edited posts are marked as such and you can see the > changes. But that definitely mitigates that concern. Most sites I've seen only show you the edited version, with no history available (at least to regular users). -- Chris Adams ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/21/23 17:42, Matthew Miller wrote: On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 10:50:42AM +0200, Jarek Prokop wrote: also drives us towards more scattered communications. Our infamous mega-threads are not really effective for getting to community consensus, and tend to bring out the worst in us. Passionate people generate passionate discussion. The only thing you will gain by a forum is that at the point the message will not be deemed appropriate, it will probably be deleted or "beatified" by the mod team. The passion from our human nature will not go away with a platform change. That's true -- and I'm not looking to get rid of passion, or silence opinions. But when something is _really_ out of line (often written in the heat of the moment), it's better to have options to ... as you say, beautify* the conversation. That makes it better for other people participating, and better for the person who has a chance to make their point in a more constructive way. * also, to fix typos :) Oh, probably an important related feature I noticed after looking at Chris Adams' response, I had a small concern about people changing messages too radically, where the conversation will then lose meaning, the software actually supports history and colorful diffs. [snip] A discussion to a technical change, for me, will forever be in a ticket. No matter the "wider discussion platform" projects will always have bug trackers where one can create a ticket. Of course. That's not what I'm talking about. Consider for example this: https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/2817. That's not about the technical decision itself -- it's an branch of the conversation that should have been here. biased towards those for whom it is working just fine. But, core Fedora development discussion can’t be limited to that ever-shrinking group. Consider who isn’t here. The problems are real, and the trend isn’t in a good direction. But, is it shrinking due to a platform, or something other? I don't think Fedora contribution and activity overall are shrinking. And I'm quite convinced that the platform is part of it. It makes me want to try discourse out, not saying I'll stick around, I'm glad to hear that. I am, luckily, not paid to read forums with no threading. IMO, a stream of posts with mentions of previous posts is not threading. Threading begins and ends on new topic posts AFAICT on discourse. It's not presented as a tree, but there _are_ threads of replies. Heh, sounds like a fun side project to try to transform it into a tree structure. If you see something like "2 replies" under a particular post, you can click that and the view will be restricted to just those replies, which you can then follow further. Example:https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/future-of-encryption-in-fedora-desktop-variants/80397/83?replies_to_post_number=83 Finally, noticed what it does, it made me a bit confused as the first response was the same as in the "global" flow of the topic, but the message under it changed. I think that it should be better visible that they are actually replies. It seems to hide other replies and only show those that are part of the "thread". Do they accept RFEs? :) I think enhancing the visibility after I expand replies for the posts in the "thread" would be better. But also, yes — when something really diverges in Discourse, it should be a new topic. A moderator can move things after the fact (like I did with https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/getting-systemd-homed-working-properly-on-fedora-workstation/81004) but even better, when replying, you can create a linked topic. See https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/site-tip-create-linked-topics-for-deep-dives-or-tangents/34526 But I'd be happier if there was some tangible metric how to measure if we got more *related to the topic* engagement. I would hate to see 20 "+1" posts from "random" users counted towards "it is better now". That's reasonable. Do you have suggestions for a good metric? I'm afraid none that could be automated, but I am not one strong on metrics. I'll just throw out some ideas: 1. Number of unique contributors 2. How many unique posts these contributors interacted with 3. "quality" of the post. I think one could go by the length and verbosity of the post. E.g. "Yeah seems like a good change" is not as valuable as a deeper dive/analysis into a hypothetical problematic. (especially if we consider that the platform has +1 equivalents in reactions :)) 4. Number/frequency of interactions. Maybe a combination of 1. and 4. would have value. But we can worry about that a bit later than "right now". In Project Discussion, each different Fedora team can have its own tag, and you can subscribe to those that you’re interested in. Cross-posting is easy: tag a post with multiple teams. I'd be interested in having a kind of "crossroad sign", to direct me towards tags what I would care about from a packager perspective. Not happy about this change, but it wou
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 08:24:14AM +0300, Benson Muite wrote: > However, it doesn't seem like we can hack on it to better suite > community needs, for example to have the same functionality as mailing > lists[2]. It is not standards driven and is primarily developed by one > company - something that follows Apache way[3] or has a community > governance process would be better in the long term for a large project > with many contributors who have technical expertise. We definitely _can_ hack on it to better fit community needs. Changes might not automatically get accepted, but we've got a good relationship and I don't expect any kind of antagonism if we have something important. On 2) https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-discourse-mailing-list-mode-incorrectly-personally-addresses-all-email/738 in particular... that's just the Cmake forum admin saying that the particular thing doesn't exist, not a Discourse dev saying they won't take a change. Although on that specific change Discourse attaches List-Id and other standard email headers (as well as some specific X-Discourse headers) to each message. Changing the To: line to be some list address could be done with a plugin, but might actually have negative consequences for reliable delivery. > Email clients offer significant customizability that a one size fits all > web interface cannot provide. Mailing list mode for Discourse is > helpful, but not at the same level as email lists, where once one has "Mailing list mode" was a specific thing in earlier versions of Discourse — it sent a notification for every message posted. This is kind of like going to Hyperkitty and saying "subscribe me to all 600 lists". I don't recommend that. Instead, choose specific tags that you want to subscribe to, just as you would subscribe to individual mailing lists. I have a post about this and Fedora Discussion specifically: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/navigating-fedora-discussion-tags-categories-and-concepts/3 -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 11:02:15AM -0500, Chris Adams wrote: > I really can't imagine a change for me (and I apologize if that sounds > really "grumpy old man"... which I guess it starting to apply to me, > since I was in college when a friend told me about some guy in Finland > saying "hey Minix people..."). It really comes down to how I use a > computer I guess; I am highly keyboard-focused, and I haven't seen a web > forum yet that can handle that. Some have a few keyboard shortcuts, but > they rarely fill the whole use and often are not well-maintained. Accessiblity is important to Fedora, and I take this seriously. For Discourse, hit the ? key to bring up the page describing keyboard shortcuts. If you find something you can't do, I'll report it as a priority bug. > Email lets me have full control of how I consume it. I can sort it my > way, save what I want and delete the rest, flag things for more review, > etc. Web forums force me to consume their content their way, and then > when I maybe have a way to deal with it, they change things. Also, I > can easily edit email posts in vi until I get my message the way I want > (for example, this paragraph started out as a sentence further down the > message :) ). It's true that the composer is a web thing rather than your own editor (although there's browser plugins for that...). And it's also true that the software changes and not necessarily on your timeline. But with that in mind: * Discourse does let you compose and save draft messages * There's a handy "bookmark" feature which I use all the time. You can give a reason for bookmarking something so you remember later, and give it a future time to notify you. > I tried loading https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/ in Lynx, but it's > way too "busy" to be able to visually browse it, and of course it has > the "best viewed with JavaScript enabled" tag, which is usually > kiss-of-death for Lynx users (in fact, I couldn't see a way to log in or > post/comment). I'm actually pretty impressed with how decent it is in elinks for a modern website. I do think you need Javascript to post, though. (And our elinks does not seem to be built with such support, which probably isn't sufficient anyway, alas.) -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 21/04/2023 18:52, Matthew Miller wrote: "Mailing list mode" was a specific thing in earlier versions of Discourse — it sent a notification for every message posted. This is kind of like going to Hyperkitty and saying "subscribe me to all 600 lists". I don't recommend that. Instead, choose specific tags that you want to subscribe to, just as you would subscribe to individual mailing lists. It's still a thing in current versions, it just doesn't seem to be available in the Fedora installation. It also doesn't have to send you everything as you can mute those things you don't want to include. Having to positively opt in to certain tags seems like a terrible idea as you're bound to miss lots of things when people create new tags that you don't even know exist. I'd much rather get everything by default and then opt out of the things I'm not interested in. Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://compton.nu/ ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Am 21.04.23 um 16:15 schrieb Solomon Peachy via devel: On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 11:42:20AM +0200, Aleksandra Fedorova wrote: In all seriousness, I would advise you to hang out at the current discussion.fedoraproject.org and feel the vibe a bit. You kinda just demonstrated my point -- "hanging out at and feel the vibe" is going to take time, attention, and distruption. Absolutely. The proposal is harmful to Fedora and likely based on the distorted view of somebody lacking of expericence on practical distribution work. Ralf ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, 21 Apr 2023 at 14:07, Ralf Corsépius wrote: > > > Am 21.04.23 um 16:15 schrieb Solomon Peachy via devel: > > On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 11:42:20AM +0200, Aleksandra Fedorova wrote: > > >> In all seriousness, I would advise you to hang out at the current > >> discussion.fedoraproject.org and feel the vibe a bit. > > > > You kinda just demonstrated my point -- "hanging out at > > and feel the vibe" is going to take time, attention, and distruption. > > Absolutely. > > The proposal is harmful to Fedora and likely based on the distorted view > of somebody lacking of expericence on practical distribution work. > > I am going to say that comment is Wrong in multiple ways. Both Matthew and Aleksandra have done deep and practical distribution work. You may not like their proposal, and it may not be how you or I find communication to be useful, BUT making comments about a person's abilities is out of line. > Ralf > ___ > devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org > To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org > Fedora Code of Conduct: > https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > List Archives: > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org > Do not reply to spam, report it: > https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue > -- Stephen Smoogen, Red Hat Automotive Let us be kind to one another, for most of us are fighting a hard battle. -- Ian MacClaren ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, 2023-04-21 at 11:00 -0400, Solomon Peachy via devel wrote: > On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 04:55:00PM +0200, Emmanuel Seyman wrote: > > I agree there's a huge lack of netiquette in Fedora's mailing lists, > > with wholesale quoting, top-posting, subjects not being updated, etc but > > changing mediums seems far more expensive than asking people to post > > emails that are easier to read. > > Not to mention these problems won't go away just because it's now hosted > on a web page.. Well, not because it's hosted on a web page, but a more structured system *does* address a lot of these problems. A lot of what you're referring to as "netiquette" is really about putting the onus on each individual user to do stuff that a more sophisticated system could handle for them, and a system like discourse *does* handle those. You can't top-post on discourse. Renaming topics works in a much saner way. You can deal with 'cross-posting' in a much saner and more flexible way. Quoting is always a problem everywhere, but that's only *one* thing, at least. :D -- Adam Williamson (he/him/his) Fedora QA Fedora Chat: @adamwill:fedora.im | Mastodon: @ad...@fosstodon.org https://www.happyassassin.net ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, 2023-04-21 at 09:11 +, Michael J Gruber wrote: > > In any case, we have quite a fragmentation right now with the MLs, > forum (discourse), IRC, Matrix, plus tickets on various platforms > (bz, dist-git, pagure, gitlab) some of which offer teams and > discussions, too. Choice is good, fragmentation is not because it > makes it hard to know: > - Where can I reach whom? > - Where can I discuss what? This is true, but I think it's interestingly worth noting we've pretty much *always* had the same fragmentation. For instance, as I recall, back when I joined in 2009, we had: * Mailing lists * Forum (fedoraforum - this is/was not official, but commonly used, and illustrates a point that if people want some form of communication, they'll use it, even if we don't have an "official" one; see also Fedora discord and Fedora telegram) * IRC (the addition of Matrix hasn't fragmented things much really, as IRC and Matrix are bridged in both directions) * Bugzilla * Trac (playing the approximate current role of Pagure issues) * Various platforms for "upstreams", like Sourceforge (playing the current role of Pagure source tracking, gitlab, github etc.) * Usenet (alt.os.linux.fedora. This is *still* around, and some wonderful genius whose hand I want to shake has set up a bot that forwards Fedora Magazine posts to it. The last post by someone other than a bot was from "nw", on January 20. Until today. Now it's from me!) I'm not sure it's possible to achieve zero- or low-fragmentation. Fragmentation just seems to...*happen*. If you build one system that does everything it's too big and unwieldy and people use more targeted systems for 'simplicity'. -- Adam Williamson (he/him/his) Fedora QA Fedora Chat: @adamwill:fedora.im | Mastodon: @ad...@fosstodon.org https://www.happyassassin.net ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 11:37:20AM -0400, Simo Sorce wrote: > So I registered the account, added the email I want to get > notifications at, and selected a few topics. > > First impressions. > > It is absolutely confusing to figure out how to watch topics. > If you select a category and a topic you do not get the notification > bell to watch them. > If you select just a topic you get it. > Topics are all in random order. When you select some topic by searching > you sometimes are then proposed a different one (? renames ?) A terminology thing: I think what you are calling "topics" discourse calls "tags". Each discussion or thread is what discourse calls a "topic". Watches are by category, by tag, or by individual topic. > > I found no way to watch all, and let my client sort it out ... which > would need client filtering, because the stupid gmail filtering can't > handle header fields (#@#%$@#). Watching at the category level is probably the closest thing here. That is, watch Project Discussion and News & Announcements at least. That will include all topics under those categories regardless of tag. As for Gmail, see https://gist.github.com/tpopela/e2f17bf8eac15bee734b993e170f4dfa. I'm trying to get Tomas to write a Discourse post about that. > They come several minutes (at least 5 minutes, as the email is *sent* > that much later, and the sent date is set to when the email is sent, > not to when the post is made) after the actual message is posted in > discourse, I do not care much, I generally read asynchronously as well, > but it is sometimes annoying not to be able to establish the real time > a post was made. Oh that's interesting. I'll bring that up. The five minute delay is actually a site-wide configuration option: it gives time for the poster to make any quick typo fixes, add tags they forgot, etc. before the mail is sent. (The default is 10.) > The only way to know who posted is by looking at the From field, where > the description of the notification email address is changed to include > the display name of the poster. That is a bit confusing at times. > > There is no formatting in the mail that tells me who is someone > replying to, or which message in the thread it was being replied to (I > disabled sending me the whole thread with each notification, I may re- > enable it). Do you have "Include an excerpt of replied to post in emails" checked? Does that help? > The test part so far is otherwise decently rendered, and for image > posts it is clear enough that there is something to look at in the html > part. *however* the images are not embedded in the email, so all that > information is unavailable offline or for archival (and in my > configuration requires to actively pull images as I configured my > client to not pull 3rd party content automatically for privacy and > security reasons). Reasonably enough. There might be an option to embed images -- I'll look. For what it's worth, the images should all (and only) come from the dedicated CDN site for our hosting, and there's no linked tracking on our side or Discourse's. There's probably logs somewhere, though. -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 07:39:17PM +0200, Jaroslav Prokop wrote: > >>I am, luckily, not paid to read forums > >>with no threading. IMO, a stream of posts with mentions of previous > >>posts is not threading. Threading begins and ends > >>on new topic posts AFAICT on discourse. > > > >It's not presented as a tree, but there _are_ threads of replies. > > Heh, sounds like a fun side project to try to transform it into a > tree structure. If you want to make Jonathan Corbet happy, make that tree structure be then served via NNTP. :) > >Example:https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/future-of-encryption-in-fedora-desktop-variants/80397/83?replies_to_post_number=83 > Finally, noticed what it does, it made me a bit confused as the > first response was the same as in the "global" flow of the topic, > but the message under it changed. I think that it should be better > visible that they are actually replies. > > It seems to hide other replies and only show those that are part of > the "thread". Do they accept RFEs? :) They do -- post at https://meta.discourse.org/. > I think enhancing the visibility after I expand replies for the > posts in the "thread" would be better. This particular thing could possibly be done via a theme component (see https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-the-theme-component-category/232731), which is a kind of lightweight plugin for the client-side. (These are very easy to install into a given site, unlike weightier server-side plugins.) Or maybe even just some CSS. What exactly did you have in mind? -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, 2023-04-21 at 14:27 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote: > On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 11:37:20AM -0400, Simo Sorce wrote: > > So I registered the account, added the email I want to get > > notifications at, and selected a few topics. > > > > First impressions. > > > > It is absolutely confusing to figure out how to watch topics. > > If you select a category and a topic you do not get the notification > > bell to watch them. > > If you select just a topic you get it. > > Topics are all in random order. When you select some topic by searching > > you sometimes are then proposed a different one (? renames ?) > > A terminology thing: I think what you are calling "topics" discourse calls > "tags". Each discussion or thread is what discourse calls a "topic". Sorry, I did mean tags. > Watches are by category, by tag, or by individual topic. > > > > > I found no way to watch all, and let my client sort it out ... which > > would need client filtering, because the stupid gmail filtering can't > > handle header fields (#@#%$@#). > > Watching at the category level is probably the closest thing here. That is, > watch Project Discussion and News & Announcements at least. That will > include all topics under those categories regardless of tag. > > As for Gmail, see > https://gist.github.com/tpopela/e2f17bf8eac15bee734b993e170f4dfa. > I'm trying to get Tomas to write a Discourse post about that. I've seen this before and it is a total monstrosity that works for those that use the Web UI, but for those that pulls from IMAP like me just makes everything worse, as those scripts run with delay, no thanks. I expect they will also break suddenly whenever gmail decides to change something, so I am not investing my time in that at all. Note that I use gmail only because I am forced to, so I have no desire in further exploring the matter, personally speaking, I have other tools to cope with filtering if I need to. > > > They come several minutes (at least 5 minutes, as the email is *sent* > > that much later, and the sent date is set to when the email is sent, > > not to when the post is made) after the actual message is posted in > > discourse, I do not care much, I generally read asynchronously as well, > > but it is sometimes annoying not to be able to establish the real time > > a post was made. > > Oh that's interesting. I'll bring that up. The five minute delay is actually > a site-wide configuration option: it gives time for the poster to make any > quick typo fixes, add tags they forgot, etc. before the mail is sent. (The > default is 10.) > > > The only way to know who posted is by looking at the From field, where > > the description of the notification email address is changed to include > > the display name of the poster. That is a bit confusing at times. > > > > There is no formatting in the mail that tells me who is someone > > replying to, or which message in the thread it was being replied to (I > > disabled sending me the whole thread with each notification, I may re- > > enable it). > > Do you have "Include an excerpt of replied to post in emails" checked? > Does that help? I have it, it seem it does nothing, as no excerpt is added. > > The test part so far is otherwise decently rendered, and for image > > posts it is clear enough that there is something to look at in the html > > part. *however* the images are not embedded in the email, so all that > > information is unavailable offline or for archival (and in my > > configuration requires to actively pull images as I configured my > > client to not pull 3rd party content automatically for privacy and > > security reasons). > > Reasonably enough. There might be an option to embed images -- I'll look. > For what it's worth, the images should all (and only) come from the > dedicated CDN site for our hosting, and there's no linked tracking on our > side or Discourse's. There's probably logs somewhere, though. The privacy statement is about why I do not configure my client to download in general, not referred to discourse specifically. Point is the image is not embedded, so you need to be online to be able to pull at all whenever you read the message. It also means if the CDN removes/renames that content at some point in the future, the message sitting in my mailbox is now broken. > -- > Matthew Miller > > Fedora Project Leader > ___ > devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org > To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org > Fedora Code of Conduct: > https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > List Archives: > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org > Do not reply to spam, report it: > https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue -- Simo Sorce RHEL Crypto Team Red Hat, Inc ___ devel maili
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 20. 04. 23 23:20, Matthew Miller wrote: I propose that we transition devel list, and eventually most of our mailing lists, to Fedora Discussion (our Discourse-powered forum). Python recently transitioned from a mailing list (python-dev) to Discourse (discuss.python.org). Challenges I don't know how to deal with: 1. Python discussions are no longer at the same place as all the other discussions (my Thunderbird). This is a big one for me. I cannot primarily use the Discourse web interface on discuss.python.org because I simply won't go there. I suppose that if Fedora switches the devel mailing list to Discourse, I will have to go there, considering how often I post to the devel list. However, In suspect some more casual contributors will not go there adn we'll lost them or they will loose track od what's happening in Fedora. A partial solution to this is to use the "mail list mode" and disable topics I don't care about. Which is possible, but brings me to... 2. When I read the content in the web app, it does not mark the related emails read. I can either read everything via email (which frankly has a worse readability than the web app) or go read it on web and than manually mark my emails as read. So far, this has been tedious for me so far and I repeatedly give up and mark the entire Python Discourse folder as read when the number reaches 10k unread emails. Even if I read everything via email, I cannot reply there so I still need to visit the thing in the web app to participate. 3. When I choose to use the mailing list approach, I can no longer distinguish "regular" email notifications (somebody replied to my comment or mentioned me) from the rest of the email traffic from the forum. This will apply to others as well; e.g. when I send an email to devel now, I can CC people I know need to see it -- on Discourse I can mention them, but they might not notice that if they receive an email of everything anyway. So far, when Python switched from mailing list to Discourse I've noticed this: Once I participate in a certain discussion, it somewhat works, as long as I remember to go check it out occasionally. But OTOH I miss out almost everything I don't actively participate in. --- Perhaps I am a greybeard, but I am pretty much scared of this change in Fedora. You say we miss people now. I say we will miss them then. Unfortunately, I don't know how to solve that. Maybe my fear is not justified, but it is real. -- Miro Hrončok -- Phone: +420777974800 IRC: mhroncok ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 11:54:09AM -0400, JT wrote: > So I'm interested by what you bring up here. Have you run into situations > where someone wanted to contribute to development but was unwilling to use > a mailing list? With a community as big as Fedora and with a multitude of I talk to a lot of people about getting involved in Fedora. "Sign up for this mailing list and introduce yourself" is a big drop-out point. -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 07:05:05PM +0100, Tom Hughes via devel wrote: > >"Mailing list mode" was a specific thing in earlier versions of Discourse — > >it sent a notification for every message posted. This is kind of like going > It's still a thing in current versions, it just doesn't seem to be > available in the Fedora installation. It's hidden from the settings UI by default in new installs. Looks like it is still there as an option to enable, but I really do think it's kind of a trap. If the category watch thing doesn't work for you (and others) for some reason, I can re-consider. If so, I might rename it to "email me everything that isn't muted" instead of "mailing list mode", though > It also doesn't have to send you everything as you can mute those > things you don't want to include. That will at least keep you from getting thousands of Copr posts. :) > Having to positively opt in to certain tags seems like a terrible > idea as you're bound to miss lots of things when people create new > tags that you don't even know exist. I'd much rather get everything > by default and then opt out of the things I'm not interested in. In that case, subscribing by category should do the trick. Categories are not light-weight, so we're unlikely to create new ones without fanfare. It's not just one checkbox, but there are only a handful of main ones anyway. -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 08:53:26PM +0200, Miro Hrončok wrote: > 1. Python discussions are no longer at the same place as all the > other discussions (my Thunderbird). This is a big one for me. I > cannot primarily use the Discourse web interface on > discuss.python.org because I simply won't go there. I suppose that I mentioned somewhere else around here that I use the Android "Discourse Hub" app as a way to keep up with this — I see notifications from Python, Home Asssitant, Flatpak, etc., even though I don't visit those sites daily. I kind of miss this on the desktop. I wonder if a web app that does the same thing would help you too? As more and more projects use Discourse, that could become a sort of nexus for all of these gardens that Jonathan Corbet mentions. > > 2. When I read the content in the web app, it does not mark the > related emails read. I can either read everything via email (which > frankly has a worse readability than the web app) or go read it on > web and than manually mark my emails as read. So far, this has been > tedious for me so far and I repeatedly give up and mark the entire > Python Discourse folder as read when the number reaches 10k unread > emails. Even if I read everything via email, I cannot reply there so > I still need to visit the thing in the web app to participate. We have reply-by-email enabled. It is also possible to enable new topics by email, but that's vulernable to impersonation (and spam) so if we enable that there probably will be a moderation step. > 3. When I choose to use the mailing list approach, I can no longer > distinguish "regular" email notifications (somebody replied to my > comment or mentioned me) from the rest of the email traffic from the > forum. This will apply to others as well; e.g. when I send an email > to devel now, I can CC people I know need to see it -- on Discourse > I can mention them, but they might not notice that if they receive > an email of everything anyway. Can you use the Feedback-ID header to distinguish and highlight those personal notifications? > So far, when Python switched from mailing list to Discourse I've noticed this: > > Once I participate in a certain discussion, it somewhat works, as > long as I remember to go check it out occasionally. But OTOH I miss > out almost everything I don't actively participate in. > > --- > > Perhaps I am a greybeard, but I am pretty much scared of this change in > Fedora. > > > You say we miss people now. I say we will miss them then. > Unfortunately, I don't know how to solve that. Maybe my fear is not > justified, but it is real. Thank you. I appreciate the real-world feedback from the Python experience. What about, instead of mailing list mode, enabling the Activity Summary email, and setting it to daily instead of weekly? That gives a reminder (and hopefully something interesting) but keeps the web site as primary for actual notifications and for keeping track of what's read and not read. -- Matthew Miller Fedora Project Leader ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Not quoting anything in particular, just my opinion and a +1. Being a solid Gen X'er I'm comfortable in both worlds. I will say that I've found the large volume of emails between Fedora and MythTV (though it's slowed in the last few years) occasionally overwhelming. The first thing I do almost every morning (still in my PJs with a cup of coffee) is to go through all the threads, archive what I'm not interested in, but keep just in case, and read the others. In my work world I frequently find myself in Discourse (or similar) forums, and I find it easy enough to find what I'm looking for, or if there's new threads or replies to threads I've posted to (usually at the top). A few months ago I spent a few hours cleaning up old emails in gmail because google (the search engine) lies. I perfected a query to only return list emails older than 1 year but even though I checked "include all emails" it would only delete about 500 at a time. Took a while to work through my 10+ year history as a packager 500 emails at a time! The reality is the future potential contributors are used to tools like Discourse. That's fine. I'll adapt. Thanks, Richard ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/21/23 20:44, Matthew Miller wrote: On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 07:39:17PM +0200, Jaroslav Prokop wrote: I am, luckily, not paid to read forums with no threading. IMO, a stream of posts with mentions of previous posts is not threading. Threading begins and ends on new topic posts AFAICT on discourse. It's not presented as a tree, but there _are_ threads of replies. Heh, sounds like a fun side project to try to transform it into a tree structure. If you want to make Jonathan Corbet happy, make that tree structure be then served via NNTP. :) Sounds like a challenge! I'll put it on my personal project backlog ;) Example:https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/future-of-encryption-in-fedora-desktop-variants/80397/83?replies_to_post_number=83 Finally, noticed what it does, it made me a bit confused as the first response was the same as in the "global" flow of the topic, but the message under it changed. I think that it should be better visible that they are actually replies. It seems to hide other replies and only show those that are part of the "thread". Do they accept RFEs? :) They do -- post athttps://meta.discourse.org/. I think enhancing the visibility after I expand replies for the posts in the "thread" would be better. This particular thing could possibly be done via a theme component (see https://meta.discourse.org/t/about-the-theme-component-category/232731), which is a kind of lightweight plugin for the client-side. (These are very easy to install into a given site, unlike weightier server-side plugins.) Or maybe even just some CSS. What exactly did you have in mind? I think it is a bug in UI/UX. I click "replies", I see *something* changed in the layout, but I have trouble identifying what exactly. Visually, if there are more than 2 or even 1 reply, then I just see with peripheral vision something had changed, but when I look closer I have trouble seeing a difference, IOW, I have trouble identifying what I did when I clicked the button. Either moving the replies a bit to a side or maybe adding something more visual, like a blue stripe on the threaded replies would be helpful IMO. I can play around with the plugin, see what feels how, and come back to Discourse with suggestions, thanks for the resources! (Firstly I'll have to confirm with a more "vanilla" install, to see if the problem might be my default dark mode environment Discourse switched into, that's a problem for monday me though :) ) Regards, Jarek ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Hi Matthew, On Thu Apr 20, 2023 at 17:20 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote > As it is, devel list is too much for many people to follow — people > we’d like to have around. I disagree. I find mailing lists much easier to deal with. They're all in one place, they're synced between my devices, and I can use whatever client I like. I can start writing a message on my phone, save it as a draft, and send it from my laptop. I can filter messages to my heart's content. Everything is threaded and I can choose to ignore the threads I'm uninterested in. It's easy to skim the list and I can do so on my terms, as opposed to being pushed towards a _centralized_, single point of failure, javascript-heavy, bulky web frontend. I understand that Discourse has functionality for interacting via email, but that's fundamentally not its purpose, and it's apparent that email users are second class citizens. With mailing lists, most messages are sent as plain text email that displays properly in my TUI email client, and they're easy to quote and splice to reply to the parts in which I'm interested. I can both create new threads AND reply to existing ones. > It covers many different things at once, yet > also drives us towards more scattered communications. > Our infamous > mega-threads are not really effective for getting to community > consensus, and tend to bring out the worst in us. How is this inherent to email? IMO, this correlates two unrelated things. I don't think it's fair to blame people's poor interpersonal communication on email. > I know this is a big change, but, hear me out… I'll do my best, but I'll warn that I'm resistant change and am content with current mailing lists. If anything, I think we need to provide Fedora Infra more resources to properly maintain and keep up to date our Mailman instance. > We’re missing people > > > A Mastodon post from long-time Fedora contributor Major Hayden got me > thinking: > > > How do people make so much time available for mailing list > > discourse? > > > > Once I ensure my team has the technical guidance they need > > and I work through the tasks of work that I owe other > > people, I take a look at the mailing list and say: "Oh my > > gosh, what the heck happened here?" Then the discussion > > goes further off the rails while I'm typing out a reply and > > my reply is no longer relevant. > > > > — https://tootchute.com/@major/109666036733834421 Again, I acknowledge this problem, but you've failed to demonstrate how this is inherent to mailing lists. > And… some people aren’t here because — in > contrast with our “Friends” foundation, it isn’t always a nice place to > be (and mailing lists don’t provide many tools for moderation, except > the big hammer of outright bans). Well, you can delete messages from the ML archives in the same way you can delete forum comments, but people who sign up for notifications will still receive a copy. > And that’s just one example. Take a look back at any mega-thread, and > you’ll find similar — and worse. When things get heated, the only way > to intervene is by adding more. There are often long subthreads of two > people going back and forth on tangents. Then, other conversation > branches duplicate that, or refer across. Classical email tools don’t > actually handle this kind of thing very well at all. In my experience, > it only really works if you keep up with the conversation in almost > real time, which has its own problems even when that’s possible. My email client has much better support for threading than Discourse does. I can easily toggle between threaded mode and flattened latest first mode. This is easier to navigate than Discourse's flat list. Email allows you to chose the best experience for you from a multitude of clients. > We’re scattered in actual practice > -- > > Devel list may be the center, but we have _hundreds_ of Fedora mailing > lists. A dozen or so are reasonably active (Test, Legal, ARM…) but most > are inactive or dead. Some are just meeting reminders over and over — > for meetings that aren’t even active anymore. It’s easy to make but > hard to _unmake_ a mailing list. Yeah, I think the mailing lists could use more organization and cleanup. > For lists that are active, the split is confusing — when should > something be on the packaging list rather than devel? What happens when > something is related to both Cloud and Server, or Workstation and KDE? > One can post to both lists, but if someone replies and isn’t subscribed > to both, the conversation gets split. Yeah, this can be confusing. I think the solution is organization and cleanup, not completely shutting down mailing lists. > With “devel” as the main list, conversations about marketing, design, > events, and so on don’t really have a central place. (The Mindshare > list never really caught on.) That makes these important activities > feel even more disconnected and secondary in stat
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 8:25 PM Chris Adams wrote: > > Once upon a time, Matthew Miller said: > > I am proposing that over the course of 2023, starting with the Changes > > process, we move Fedora development conversations from this mailing list to > > the Discourse-based Fedora Discussion. > > I feel this is a case of trading one group of people (email list users) > for a different group of people (web forum users). I have seen this > done multiple times over the years, tried to follow a few times, and > always dropped off fairly rapidly. I'm solidly in the "email list > users" group. > > Web forums far from fit how I use communication tools. For example, I'm > highly keyboard driven and dislike lots of things that force me to use a > mouse. I use mutt to read email, which works great. I have email > filters to organize and save things, I can flag messages for later > review/reference, and more. > > Web forums also seem in my experience to be much more casual > interaction, where people come and go for long stretches of time, much > more than email lists. If I just don't click on your bookmark for a day > or two, it's out of mind quickly and I might not come back for weeks or > months (or ever, which is usually the case). And then even if I do come > back, now I'm pretty much too far behind to ever catch up. That cuts both ways. If I just don't click on [email filter folder] for a day or two, it's out of mind quickly and I might not come back for weeks or months. And then even if I do come back, now I'm pretty much too far behind to ever catch up. > > I guess you're hoping for enough overlap between email and web forum > users to keep an active developer community... I wish you luck with > that. > > -- > Chris Adams > ___ > devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org > To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org > Fedora Code of Conduct: > https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > List Archives: > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org > Do not reply to spam, report it: > https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue -- Carl George ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 4:05 PM Maxwell G wrote: > > What evidence shows that the group is ever shrinking? I often see Self > Introduction posts and new people interacting with project. I suppose > that whether they continue interacting afterwards is another question. I'm glad you asked. Earlier this week I decided to avoid doing other work by putting together some quick charts of devel list participation. Here's the number of unique participants per month from 2004–2022: https://bcotton.fedorapeople.org/images/devel-participation-monthly.png And for a less-noisy version, the median of the monthly numbers per year: https://bcotton.fedorapeople.org/images/devel-participation-mean.png There are a lot of questions left unanswered by this quick analysis, but there's a clear trend in fewer participants over time. In fact, last month had the second smallest participant count (tied with October 2022). Of course, these charts don't show _why_, but they do support the assertion that folks are dropping out of the conversation faster than others are joining. -- Ben Cotton He / Him / His Fedora Program Manager Red Hat TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 12:24 AM Benson Muite wrote: > > On 4/21/23 04:24, Chris Adams wrote: > > Once upon a time, Matthew Miller said: > >> I am proposing that over the course of 2023, starting with the Changes > >> process, we move Fedora development conversations from this mailing list to > >> the Discourse-based Fedora Discussion. > > > > I feel this is a case of trading one group of people (email list users) > > for a different group of people (web forum users). I have seen this > > done multiple times over the years, tried to follow a few times, and > > always dropped off fairly rapidly. I'm solidly in the "email list > > users" group. > Discourse is very nice. It is open source, uses a reasonable license > [0] (though [1] would be better), and is great for casual interactions > that maybe spread out over time. Would highly recommend it for moderate > size community discussion. > > However, it doesn't seem like we can hack on it to better suite > community needs, for example to have the same functionality as mailing > lists[2]. It is not standards driven and is primarily developed by one > company - something that follows Apache way[3] or has a community > governance process would be better in the long term for a large project > with many contributors who have technical expertise. > > Email clients offer significant customizability that a one size fits all > web interface cannot provide. Mailing list mode for Discourse is > helpful, but not at the same level as email lists, where once one has > gained sufficient knowledge, interaction can be done from the comfort of > the client of your choice. As such, simply adopting it because it can be > deployed may leave out many contributors, in particular those who drive > development forward. Mailing lists are not perfect, but it is not clear > Discourse is a good replacement for the devel list. As Matthew stated, Ben has measured it and fewer people are participating on the mailing list over time. We are already leaving out many contributors. Those conversations are largely moving to issue trackers, which are also not perfect but are clearly more appealing than email for many people. Discourse has the potential to be a more attractive alternative than both email and issue trackers. To me this seems like a solid strategy for reversing the trend and getting more people participating in development discussions. > > 0) https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/LICENSE.txt > 1) https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html > 2) > https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-discourse-mailing-list-mode-incorrectly-personally-addresses-all-email/738 > 3) https://apache.org/theapacheway/ > ___ > devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org > To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org > Fedora Code of Conduct: > https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > List Archives: > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org > Do not reply to spam, report it: > https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue -- Carl George ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 3:39 PM Ben Cotton wrote: > On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 4:05 PM Maxwell G wrote: > > > > What evidence shows that the group is ever shrinking? I often see Self > > Introduction posts and new people interacting with project. I suppose > > that whether they continue interacting afterwards is another question. > > I'm glad you asked. Earlier this week I decided to avoid doing other > work by putting together some quick charts of devel list > participation. Here's the number of unique participants per month from > 2004–2022: > https://bcotton.fedorapeople.org/images/devel-participation-monthly.png > > And for a less-noisy version, the median of the monthly numbers per year: > https://bcotton.fedorapeople.org/images/devel-participation-mean.png And on discourse you could have pasted these pictures directly in without having to upload them somewhere... ;) > There are a lot of questions left unanswered by this quick analysis, > but there's a clear trend in fewer participants over time. In fact, > last month had the second smallest participant count (tied with > October 2022). Of course, these charts don't show _why_, but they do > support the assertion that folks are dropping out of the conversation > faster than others are joining. > I think this is especially concerning because Fedora seems to be more popular than ever. If we had a way to measure that and include it in the graph (devel participants as a % of users?) I have a feeling the slope would be much more negative. Not that it proves Discourse would change that, but still... Thanks, Richard ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 04:38:28PM -0400, Ben Cotton wrote: > There are a lot of questions left unanswered by this quick analysis, > but there's a clear trend in fewer participants over time. In fact, > last month had the second smallest participant count (tied with > October 2022). Of course, these charts don't show _why_, but they do > support the assertion that folks are dropping out of the conversation > faster than others are joining. One obvious question: How does "sending mail to -devel" correlate with any other "contributing to Fedora" metric? Eg numbers of folks with Fedora accounts, number of packagers (or active packagers), git commiters/commits, and so forth? Or even numbers of installations, which to this way we can only kinda hand-wave about? (I wonder how that also correlates to the likes of Debian?) We also might be a victim of our own success here; things generally _work_ quite well, so there's not as much to go on about as there once was, and our various upstreams are increasingly driving our headliner features rather than the other way around. So people simply don't _need_ to participate in "developing Fedora" like they once did to ensure their interests were represented, and instead get to focus more fully on the stuff they build on top. That's a good thing, I think, but it also takes away what was probably the primary participation funnel. - Solomon -- Solomon Peachypizza at shaftnet dot org (email&xmpp) @pizza:shaftnet dot org (matrix) Dowling Park, FL speachy (libra.chat) signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
* Matthew Miller: > Big threads are … bad, actually > --- > > When we have something to talk about, it tends to explode into a big > thread. The thing in January with FESCo’s frame pointers decision > (https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/RNJZUX3ZI34DIX6E4PVDKYQWCOFDQ4UY/#RNJZUX3ZI34DIX6E4PVDKYQWCOFDQ4UY) > is a good example of things going badly. > > Most of the conversation was under the subject “Schedule for Tuesday's > FESCo Meeting (2023-01-03)”, because everything started as a reply to > that. That’s pretty easy to overlook. It’s possible for replies to > change the subject when replying, but that can’t be done > retroactively, and then isn’t consistent (and it breaks threading in > Gmail, too). > > Then, things got rather hostile, making it hard to have a reasonable > conversation about the issues (both technical and procedural). And > then, things went in circles without adding anything new. > > This could have all gone a lot better. You brought up fairly concrete examples, but I don't see how the platform matters in those cases. Someone would need to shut down or delete (parts of) conversations more or less arbitrarily, even if they are not actively harmful as such, simply because they create too much work for others to follow. Surely that's not something you are willing to do? > For lists that are active, the split is confusing — when should > something be on the packaging list rather than devel? What happens when > something is related to both Cloud and Server, or Workstation and KDE? > One can post to both lists, but if someone replies and isn’t subscribed > to both, the conversation gets split. Do Fedora mailing lists reject mail from non-members, and redirect follow-ups? If they do that, that's the first thing you could fix. Then such discussions no longer would get split. > Not just Fedora > --- > > There’s a big trend towards Discourse in open source projects overall. > Python and Gnome have both migrated entirely from their mailing lists. > Ansible is working on it. Plus, there’s Rust, Kubernetes, Nextcloud, > Flathub, Grafana, Home Assistant, KDE, and I’m sure many others. All these instances are isolated. It's not possible to cross-post. This makes cross-project collaboration increasingly difficult because instead of Cc:ing another list, perhaps with a summary of the discussion so far, you have to create a completely new topic somewhere else, and then someone has to copy over summaries manually. (If I recall correctly, that currently doesn't work well with Fedora lists because they reject posts from non-members.) Personally, I have accounts on many, many Discourse instances, but I don't think there is a single one I read somewhat regularly. I find the mailing list mode and the notifications rather unpredictable. Maybe an alternative client could help (nndiscourse?), but as far as I understand it, there's no real API, so that's kind of hard? > First, I’d like to move the Changes discussion. They will still be > posted to devel-announce, but responses directed to Project Discussion > in a new #changes tag. Ben tells me that this is a FESCo decision, > which seems reasonable. There's already a Fesco ticket for each change, why not use that for discussion? > Other teams who want to keep mailing lists can, but I’d like to move > those too, and eventually I think we’ll want to shut them down too — or > perhaps convert them to announcement lists. What about scm-commits? Thanks, Florian ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On Fri, 2023-04-21 at 23:20 +0200, Florian Weimer wrote: > > > For lists that are active, the split is confusing — when should > > something be on the packaging list rather than devel? What happens when > > something is related to both Cloud and Server, or Workstation and KDE? > > One can post to both lists, but if someone replies and isn’t subscribed > > to both, the conversation gets split. > > Do Fedora mailing lists reject mail from non-members, and redirect > follow-ups? Many lists *hold* mail from non-members, because mailing lists get tons of spam. So the mail won't get through until an admin approves it. That might happen right away...or it might happen in two days, when the mail is no longer relevant. We can't really just let all mails from non- members through because...spam. -- Adam Williamson (he/him/his) Fedora QA Fedora Chat: @adamwill:fedora.im | Mastodon: @ad...@fosstodon.org https://www.happyassassin.net ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/21/23 23:20, Florian Weimer wrote: * Matthew Miller: Big threads are … bad, actually --- When we have something to talk about, it tends to explode into a big thread. The thing in January with FESCo’s frame pointers decision (https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/RNJZUX3ZI34DIX6E4PVDKYQWCOFDQ4UY/#RNJZUX3ZI34DIX6E4PVDKYQWCOFDQ4UY) is a good example of things going badly. Most of the conversation was under the subject “Schedule for Tuesday's FESCo Meeting (2023-01-03)”, because everything started as a reply to that. That’s pretty easy to overlook. It’s possible for replies to change the subject when replying, but that can’t be done retroactively, and then isn’t consistent (and it breaks threading in Gmail, too). Then, things got rather hostile, making it hard to have a reasonable conversation about the issues (both technical and procedural). And then, things went in circles without adding anything new. This could have all gone a lot better. You brought up fairly concrete examples, but I don't see how the platform matters in those cases. Someone would need to shut down or delete (parts of) conversations more or less arbitrarily, even if they are not actively harmful as such, simply because they create too much work for others to follow. Surely that's not something you are willing to do? For lists that are active, the split is confusing — when should something be on the packaging list rather than devel? What happens when something is related to both Cloud and Server, or Workstation and KDE? One can post to both lists, but if someone replies and isn’t subscribed to both, the conversation gets split. Do Fedora mailing lists reject mail from non-members, and redirect follow-ups? If they do that, that's the first thing you could fix. Then such discussions no longer would get split. Not just Fedora --- There’s a big trend towards Discourse in open source projects overall. Python and Gnome have both migrated entirely from their mailing lists. Ansible is working on it. Plus, there’s Rust, Kubernetes, Nextcloud, Flathub, Grafana, Home Assistant, KDE, and I’m sure many others. All these instances are isolated. It's not possible to cross-post. This makes cross-project collaboration increasingly difficult because instead of Cc:ing another list, perhaps with a summary of the discussion so far, you have to create a completely new topic somewhere else, and then someone has to copy over summaries manually. (If I recall correctly, that currently doesn't work well with Fedora lists because they reject posts from non-members.) Personally, I have accounts on many, many Discourse instances, but I don't think there is a single one I read somewhat regularly. I find the mailing list mode and the notifications rather unpredictable. Maybe an alternative client could help (nndiscourse?), but as far as I understand it, there's no real API, so that's kind of hard? I could find an API docs, and I could retreive posts.json from our Fedora instance https://docs.discourse.org/ So the question is, what is a "real API" that you would consider OK? For a post, there is create, update, delete, retrieve and even list the latest. IMHO that's as CRUD as one can be :D. So, there is even a REST API? At least retrieval can go unauthenticated... Regards, jarek ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
Matthew Miller writes: I don't think this is _really_ a "there are two kinds of people in the world..." situation. Of course there are some people who have preferences (strong or weak) for one or the other, and completely legitimate pros and cons to each. But I don't want to "trade" anyone. I'd like to bring everyone along. I reread the thread-starter. I did not get that impression. What I read was: we'd like to replace the mailing list with discourse. That's it. There was some mention of discourse's mail integration, but it was clearly "mark the checkbox" type of thing. > I have seen this > done multiple times over the years, tried to follow a few times, and > always dropped off fairly rapidly. I'm solidly in the "email list > users" group. Is there anything which could be different this time which would make it better for you? I do not believe that any web-based discussion forum would ever be comparable to a mailing list, The two environments are worlds apart, and irreconcilable, that's simply the way it is. They work in fundamentally different ways. I typed and deleted about two paragraphs' worth of my explanations why web-based forums are not a replacement for mailing list, I changed my mind and concluded that this kind of advocacy won't matter much. In the end, whatever happens, happens. The chips will fall where they may. pgp2iGznVzZc3.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
Re: It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new
On 4/21/23 20:52, Matthew Miller wrote: > On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 08:24:14AM +0300, Benson Muite wrote: >> However, it doesn't seem like we can hack on it to better suite >> community needs, for example to have the same functionality as mailing >> lists[2]. It is not standards driven and is primarily developed by one >> company - something that follows Apache way[3] or has a community >> governance process would be better in the long term for a large project >> with many contributors who have technical expertise. > > We definitely _can_ hack on it to better fit community needs. Changes might > not automatically get accepted, but we've got a good relationship and I > don't expect any kind of antagonism if we have something important. > Good working relationship is ok for small projects. Discourse has grown and adapted because of this. Discourse is fantastic as a forum which is not read on a daily basis but periodically as the need arises. Need stability and a governance model for critical infrastructure. Web first philosophy kills productivity that a primarily text driven workflow has for many people. > On 2) > https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-discourse-mailing-list-mode-incorrectly-personally-addresses-all-email/738 > in particular... that's just the Cmake forum admin saying that the > particular thing doesn't exist, not a Discourse dev saying they won't take a > change. > > Although on that specific change Discourse attaches List-Id and other > standard email headers (as well as some specific X-Discourse headers) to > each message. Changing the To: line to be some list address could be done > with a plugin, but might actually have negative consequences for reliable > delivery. > > >> Email clients offer significant customizability that a one size fits all >> web interface cannot provide. Mailing list mode for Discourse is >> helpful, but not at the same level as email lists, where once one has > > "Mailing list mode" was a specific thing in earlier versions of Discourse — > it sent a notification for every message posted. This is kind of like going > to Hyperkitty and saying "subscribe me to all 600 lists". I don't recommend > that. Instead, choose specific tags that you want to subscribe to, just as > you would subscribe to individual mailing lists. > > I have a post about this and Fedora Discussion specifically: > > https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/navigating-fedora-discussion-tags-categories-and-concepts/3 > This is helpful. Wish it were a magazine article. Those get read. ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
