Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Giampaolo Rodola' 
On Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 10:59 PM Antoine Pitrou  wrote:

>
> Le 11/02/2019 à 20:00, Barry Warsaw a écrit :
> > On Feb 11, 2019, at 09:48, Victor Stinner  wrote:
> >>
> >> tl; dr How can we decide if we should stop using mailing list or if we
> >> should stop using discuss.python.org?
> >
> > Point of order: I think we need a PEP for this decision.  Such a PEP
> would organize and consolidate the arguments both pro and con of the three
> choices.  It should also cover whether the current Discourse experiment
> translates to larger mailing lists like python-dev, -ideas, and -list (for
> which I personally have uncertainty about).
>
> Same uncertainty here.  I don't think Discourse works well for long
> threads.
>
> Here is a 161-message Discourse thread (at the time of this writing):
> https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-517-backend-bootstrapping/789
>
> I know I can browse easily through a 161-message mailing-list or
> newsgroup thread using a traditional threaded view, read what I want,
> come back later to read the rest, etc.  But Discourse's linear
> presentation pretty much kills that ability.  It doesn't even allow
> *seeing* the structure of the discussion.
>

What bothers me about medium/long threads (say > 20 messages) is an "expand
all" button, showing the full conversation (upon which I may then want to
use CTRL+F). The only way to do that is by scrolling the page all the way
up or down, and in a long discussion like that one it takes a long time. If
you start at the middle of the discussion, say here:
https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-517-backend-bootstrapping/789/80
...you have to do both (scroll up, reach the top, scroll down, reach the
bottom - only then you'll have the full thread).

-- 
Giampaolo - http://grodola.blogspot.com
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Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Giampaolo Rodola' 
On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 11:01 AM Giampaolo Rodola' 
wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 10:59 PM Antoine Pitrou 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Le 11/02/2019 à 20:00, Barry Warsaw a écrit :
>> > On Feb 11, 2019, at 09:48, Victor Stinner  wrote:
>> >>
>> >> tl; dr How can we decide if we should stop using mailing list or if we
>> >> should stop using discuss.python.org?
>> >
>> > Point of order: I think we need a PEP for this decision.  Such a PEP
>> would organize and consolidate the arguments both pro and con of the three
>> choices.  It should also cover whether the current Discourse experiment
>> translates to larger mailing lists like python-dev, -ideas, and -list (for
>> which I personally have uncertainty about).
>>
>> Same uncertainty here.  I don't think Discourse works well for long
>> threads.
>>
>> Here is a 161-message Discourse thread (at the time of this writing):
>> https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-517-backend-bootstrapping/789
>>
>> I know I can browse easily through a 161-message mailing-list or
>> newsgroup thread using a traditional threaded view, read what I want,
>> come back later to read the rest, etc.  But Discourse's linear
>> presentation pretty much kills that ability.  It doesn't even allow
>> *seeing* the structure of the discussion.
>>
>
> What bothers me about medium/long threads (say > 20 messages) is an
> "expand all" button
>

I meant "[the lack of] an "expand all" button (sorry).

Giampaolo - http://grodola.blogspot.com
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Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Paul Moore 
On Tue, 12 Feb 2019 at 22:00, Antoine Pitrou  wrote:
> Here is a 161-message Discourse thread (at the time of this writing):
> https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-517-backend-bootstrapping/789

As someone directly involved in that discussion, with a strong need to
understand all of the points being made, that's a great example of
both the benefits and the flaws of the discourse model.

> I know I can browse easily through a 161-message mailing-list or
> newsgroup thread using a traditional threaded view, read what I want,
> come back later to read the rest, etc.  But Discourse's linear
> presentation pretty much kills that ability.  It doesn't even allow
> *seeing* the structure of the discussion.

I don't use a threaded mail client (I use gmail's web interface) so I
don't get any of the benefits of threading from a mailing list. So to
that extent, Discourse's lack of threading is no different for me, and
shouldn't affect my ability to follow the discussion. But it *does*,
and in practice, it's substantially worse than a traditional mailing
list. (Note: this is only a comment about long, complex discussions
like this one, for shorter threads the Discourse view is fine).

The problem isn't, IMO, so much the lack of threading as the lack of
*context*. We're all used to (and frustrated by) mailing list threads
that are 90% quoted text. But Discourse goes to the other extreme, of
having very *little* context - no thread structure, a tendency towards
minimal quoting, and an *extremely* non-obvious "reply" UI (you can
"reply" to any message, or to the thread as a whole, but the
distinction is almost invisible, and doesn't support "replying to"
*part* of a long comment.

Also, the lack of any "mark unread" functionality makes it easy to
lose track of where you're up to - I popped into that discussion to
check some facts for this post, and found myself needing to read a
number of quite detailed messages, as otherwise they would no longer
show as "unread" for me, and I'd risk losing my place in the
discussion. I know there are bookmarks, but they don't match my mental
model which is "I saw these posts, but haven't *read* them".

Anyway, I remain generally happy with Discourse for lower-traffic
lists that have relatively short threads. Medium sized ones (like
packaging replacing distutils-sig) I'm not certain about yet, but I
think "probably no worse" is as far as I'd go right now. For groups
like python-dev or (worse still) python-ideas I feel like they would
be a terrible fit. There's also the interaction effect - high traffic
in one category pushes out information about what's new in *other*
categories, and there's no "list of categories with a count of unread
messages" view to mitigate it.

tl;dr; I don't think discourse scales particularly well to long,
complex discussions, but I think it's less about threading than about
other aspects of the UI. At the end of the day, managing long, complex
discussions is *hard* and I think Discourse is optimised for different
parts of the spectrum than mailing lists. But while the day to day
volume of traffic might be shorter threads, the massive, complex,
rambling threads are the lifeblood of Python development (much as we
might all hate them ;-)) and we need to be cautious about making
decisions for those cases based on evidence from other, simpler,
situations.

Paul
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Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Brett Cannon 
On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 2:55 AM Paul Moore  wrote:

> On Tue, 12 Feb 2019 at 22:00, Antoine Pitrou  wrote:
> > Here is a 161-message Discourse thread (at the time of this writing):
> > https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-517-backend-bootstrapping/789
>
> As someone directly involved in that discussion, with a strong need to
> understand all of the points being made, that's a great example of
> both the benefits and the flaws of the discourse model.
>

Can I ask if that entire thread is on topic, or is there a reasonable point
in that discussion where side conversations could have been broken off into
a separate topic(s)? When email threads tend to reach that length there
have been side discussions that could have become their own topic if
someone thought to change the subject and Discourse allows for having an
admin break posts off at any point and I'm curious if it would have been
helpful and people simply didn't think about it (I know I don't always
think of it immediately yet).

-Brett


>
> > I know I can browse easily through a 161-message mailing-list or
> > newsgroup thread using a traditional threaded view, read what I want,
> > come back later to read the rest, etc.  But Discourse's linear
> > presentation pretty much kills that ability.  It doesn't even allow
> > *seeing* the structure of the discussion.
>
> I don't use a threaded mail client (I use gmail's web interface) so I
> don't get any of the benefits of threading from a mailing list. So to
> that extent, Discourse's lack of threading is no different for me, and
> shouldn't affect my ability to follow the discussion. But it *does*,
> and in practice, it's substantially worse than a traditional mailing
> list. (Note: this is only a comment about long, complex discussions
> like this one, for shorter threads the Discourse view is fine).
>
> The problem isn't, IMO, so much the lack of threading as the lack of
> *context*. We're all used to (and frustrated by) mailing list threads
> that are 90% quoted text. But Discourse goes to the other extreme, of
> having very *little* context - no thread structure, a tendency towards
> minimal quoting, and an *extremely* non-obvious "reply" UI (you can
> "reply" to any message, or to the thread as a whole, but the
> distinction is almost invisible, and doesn't support "replying to"
> *part* of a long comment.
>
> Also, the lack of any "mark unread" functionality makes it easy to
> lose track of where you're up to - I popped into that discussion to
> check some facts for this post, and found myself needing to read a
> number of quite detailed messages, as otherwise they would no longer
> show as "unread" for me, and I'd risk losing my place in the
> discussion. I know there are bookmarks, but they don't match my mental
> model which is "I saw these posts, but haven't *read* them".
>
> Anyway, I remain generally happy with Discourse for lower-traffic
> lists that have relatively short threads. Medium sized ones (like
> packaging replacing distutils-sig) I'm not certain about yet, but I
> think "probably no worse" is as far as I'd go right now. For groups
> like python-dev or (worse still) python-ideas I feel like they would
> be a terrible fit. There's also the interaction effect - high traffic
> in one category pushes out information about what's new in *other*
> categories, and there's no "list of categories with a count of unread
> messages" view to mitigate it.
>
> tl;dr; I don't think discourse scales particularly well to long,
> complex discussions, but I think it's less about threading than about
> other aspects of the UI. At the end of the day, managing long, complex
> discussions is *hard* and I think Discourse is optimised for different
> parts of the spectrum than mailing lists. But while the day to day
> volume of traffic might be shorter threads, the massive, complex,
> rambling threads are the lifeblood of Python development (much as we
> might all hate them ;-)) and we need to be cautious about making
> decisions for those cases based on evidence from other, simpler,
> situations.
>
> Paul
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Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Antoine Pitrou 

Le 13/02/2019 à 20:12, Brett Cannon a écrit :
> 
> 
> On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 2:55 AM Paul Moore  > wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 12 Feb 2019 at 22:00, Antoine Pitrou  > wrote:
> > Here is a 161-message Discourse thread (at the time of this writing):
> > https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-517-backend-bootstrapping/789
> 
> As someone directly involved in that discussion, with a strong need to
> understand all of the points being made, that's a great example of
> both the benefits and the flaws of the discourse model.
> 
> 
> Can I ask if that entire thread is on topic, or is there a reasonable
> point in that discussion where side conversations could have been broken
> off into a separate topic(s)?

Well, you can legitimately ask but I'm entirely unable to answer, for
the simple reason that Discourse doesn't allow me to visually recognize
discussion branches and therefore potential "side conversations" ;-)

(also the fact that such breaking off requires on manual moderator labor
makes it potentially less efficient, but YMMV)

Regards

Antoine.
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Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Steve Dower 

On 13Feb2019 1112, Brett Cannon wrote:



On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 2:55 AM Paul Moore > wrote:


On Tue, 12 Feb 2019 at 22:00, Antoine Pitrou mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
 > Here is a 161-message Discourse thread (at the time of this writing):
 > https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-517-backend-bootstrapping/789

As someone directly involved in that discussion, with a strong need to
understand all of the points being made, that's a great example of
both the benefits and the flaws of the discourse model.


Can I ask if that entire thread is on topic, or is there a reasonable 
point in that discussion where side conversations could have been broken 
off into a separate topic(s)? When email threads tend to reach that 
length there have been side discussions that could have become their own 
topic if someone thought to change the subject and Discourse allows for 
having an admin break posts off at any point and I'm curious if it would 
have been helpful and people simply didn't think about it (I know I 
don't always think of it immediately yet).


My feeling (as I followed the entire discussion from the start) is that 
the side discussions all tied back, rather than diverging permanently. 
So at best it would be "you 2-3 go and discuss this part separately and 
come back when you agree", which as we know is often followed up by "you 
other 2-3 re-discuss everything they already discussed since you weren't 
part of the side discussion".


So in this case, I don't think it would have benefited from being split 
out. In fact, I think it worked best in the linear form because when 
someone (typically either Paul or Thomas) declared a summary, it 
basically forced all the branches to converge.


It's a long discussion because it has no clear answer and the concerns 
are on the level of "what weird things will the entire world do if we 
offer this", which can't be tested. As far as asynchronous, online-only 
options go, I'm not convinced that any other approach would have worked 
better.


Cheers,
Steve
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Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Paul Moore 
On Wed, 13 Feb 2019 at 19:56, Steve Dower  wrote:
>
> On 13Feb2019 1112, Brett Cannon wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 2:55 AM Paul Moore  > > wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 12 Feb 2019 at 22:00, Antoine Pitrou  > > wrote:
> >  > Here is a 161-message Discourse thread (at the time of this writing):
> >  > https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-517-backend-bootstrapping/789
> >
> > As someone directly involved in that discussion, with a strong need to
> > understand all of the points being made, that's a great example of
> > both the benefits and the flaws of the discourse model.
> >
> >
> > Can I ask if that entire thread is on topic, or is there a reasonable
> > point in that discussion where side conversations could have been broken
> > off into a separate topic(s)? When email threads tend to reach that
> > length there have been side discussions that could have become their own
> > topic if someone thought to change the subject and Discourse allows for
> > having an admin break posts off at any point and I'm curious if it would
> > have been helpful and people simply didn't think about it (I know I
> > don't always think of it immediately yet).
>
> My feeling (as I followed the entire discussion from the start) is that
> the side discussions all tied back, rather than diverging permanently.
> So at best it would be "you 2-3 go and discuss this part separately and
> come back when you agree", which as we know is often followed up by "you
> other 2-3 re-discuss everything they already discussed since you weren't
> part of the side discussion".

Precisely this. I don't know *how* I would have split off a separate
sub-thread in Discourse if needed (it's easy enough in email by
changing the subject, I presume it's not much harder in Discourse?)
but I don't think there was any obvious point at which that would have
helped rather than hindering. And as the goal of the whole thread was
to reach a consensus on a change to PEP 517, if we *had* split things
up, there would have been the problem of pulling the subthreads
together again later.

> So in this case, I don't think it would have benefited from being split
> out. In fact, I think it worked best in the linear form because when
> someone (typically either Paul or Thomas) declared a summary, it
> basically forced all the branches to converge.

I can't speak for Thomas, but I think I would have done exactly the
same in mailing list form. As I said elsewhere, I don't think the
difficulties are particularly about linear vs threaded forms.

> It's a long discussion because it has no clear answer and the concerns
> are on the level of "what weird things will the entire world do if we
> offer this", which can't be tested. As far as asynchronous, online-only
> options go, I'm not convinced that any other approach would have worked
> better.

When trying to do those summaries, and trying to catch up now (I've
been unable to follow the discussion closely for a week or two) I'd
say the Discourse format made it a bit harder. But that's *not* linear
vs threaded, it's more about things like how quoting works and how
comments are linked back to what they are referring to. (On the other
hand, rich text, and not having to deal with email mangling of quoting
structure, help a lot).

Big discussions like this one are hard *whatever* medium is used. I
don't think Discourse is *bad*, I just don't think it's noticeably
*better* than email. And my major concern is that I don't think
Discourse will scale well to high-traffic categories with substantial
numbers of this sort of discussion (and worse, I think the existence
of high-traffic categories could have a detrimental effect on more
moderately-sized ones). But I think it's too early to tell for sure.

Back to the original question, about the committers list:

1. I think the committers traffic is the right sort of size for
Discourse, and works OK.
2. I think Discourse is bad for "quick turnaround" things like votes,
because it's too easy for people not to see the discussion until it's
too late (and no, I don't think formally posted voting periods will
help much there). It *may* be possible to alter people's expectations
to make the slower turnaround acceptable - it's not like (say) a core
developer vote has to be resolved particularly quickly, after all.
3. I don't think any conclusions we draw based on the committers
category should be assumed to scale to larger lists (whether in terms
of number of messages, number of participants, length or complexity of
threads, or anything else).

Paul
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Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Gregory P. Smith 
On Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 1:59 PM Antoine Pitrou  wrote:

>
> Le 11/02/2019 à 20:00, Barry Warsaw a écrit :
> > On Feb 11, 2019, at 09:48, Victor Stinner  wrote:
> >>
> >> tl; dr How can we decide if we should stop using mailing list or if we
> >> should stop using discuss.python.org?
> >
> > Point of order: I think we need a PEP for this decision.  Such a PEP
> would organize and consolidate the arguments both pro and con of the three
> choices.  It should also cover whether the current Discourse experiment
> translates to larger mailing lists like python-dev, -ideas, and -list (for
> which I personally have uncertainty about).
>
> Same uncertainty here.  I don't think Discourse works well for long
> threads.
>
> Here is a 161-message Discourse thread (at the time of this writing):
> https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-517-backend-bootstrapping/789
>
> I know I can browse easily through a 161-message mailing-list or
> newsgroup thread using a traditional threaded view, read what I want,
> come back later to read the rest, etc.  But Discourse's linear
> presentation pretty much kills that ability.  It doesn't even allow
> *seeing* the structure of the discussion.
>

Neither does my email client.  It never will, nor can we require mailing
list participants to use any specific type of email client.

If we want to enforce an *interface* on people, IMNSHO that is what
something like Discourse is for.  It levels the playing field and provides
modern features way beyond 1900s style email listserv communication while
still allowing interaction via email.

To wit, I also agree with the flat-by-design link posted further down
thread.  Scrollwheel skimming further it looks like what I've said
reinforces points already made by Paul and others.

I don't personally find that _anything_ works well for long threads.  I'm
not convinced that problem is solvable for more than a minority fraction of
participants.  So lets not try ourselves, but lets not reject change
because it doesn't solve that problem.  Look at the existing problems it
_does_ solve and seek to address and understand new problems it creates.
That'd all be part of a Discourse related PEP.

Remember, we could still be using cvs.  Lets not be that project.

-gps
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Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Barry Warsaw 
On Feb 12, 2019, at 18:01, Ned Deily  wrote:
> 
> On Feb 12, 2019, at 20:36, Barry Warsaw  wrote:
>> On Feb 12, 2019, at 13:59, Antoine Pitrou  wrote:
>> I know I can browse easily through a 161-message mailing-list or
>>> newsgroup thread using a traditional threaded view, read what I want,
>>> come back later to read the rest, etc.  But Discourse's linear
>>> presentation pretty much kills that ability.  It doesn't even allow
>>> *seeing* the structure of the discussion.
>> That’s pretty much my same, biggest gripe about long GitHub issues and PRs. 
>> ;)
> 
> But you realize that this a feature, not a bug? :)
> 
> https://blog.codinghorror.com/web-discussions-flat-by-design/

Unfortunately, that post doesn’t talk about all the problems with flat 
discussions, and there are many.  So if we have to, we can agree that both have 
advantages and disadvantages, both have their proponents and detractors, and 
very likely both are appropriate to some forums and discussions and 
inappropriate (or ineffective) for others.  Or maybe more succinctly: both are 
terrible. ;)

That tells me either that the problem is fundamentally unsolvable due to the 
nature of online discussions, or we’re asking the wrong questions.

As far as software darwinism is concerned, we can also admit that top posting 
has won, but not necessarily because it’s superior (in fact, IMHO it’s not).  
It’s just that mobile and webmail has taken over and either because of laziness 
or U/I difficulties, inline replies are too difficult.

We live with plenty of inferior technology for reasons that aren’t entirely 
based on actual efficiency and ease of use.  Techmology! (with apologies to Ali 
G).

-Barry



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Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Antoine Pitrou 

Le 13/02/2019 à 21:31, Gregory P. Smith a écrit :
> 
> I know I can browse easily through a 161-message mailing-list or
> newsgroup thread using a traditional threaded view, read what I want,
> come back later to read the rest, etc.  But Discourse's linear
> presentation pretty much kills that ability.  It doesn't even allow
> *seeing* the structure of the discussion.
> 
> Neither does my email client.  It never will, nor can we require mailing
> list participants to use any specific type of email client.

Apparently you're saying that just because you can't/don't want to use a
more appropriate tool, other people shouldn't be able too.  That sounds
ridiculous to me.  Use an inferior tool if you want, but don't force
other people to.

> Remember, we could still be using cvs.  Lets not be that project.

Well, you're the one using an inferior e-mail client while better
options are available, IIUC.  Perhaps you are part of those CVS-liking
people? ;-)

Regards

Antoine.
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Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Gregory P. Smith 
On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 12:50 PM Antoine Pitrou  wrote:

>
> Le 13/02/2019 à 21:31, Gregory P. Smith a écrit :
> >
> > I know I can browse easily through a 161-message mailing-list or
> > newsgroup thread using a traditional threaded view, read what I want,
> > come back later to read the rest, etc.  But Discourse's linear
> > presentation pretty much kills that ability.  It doesn't even allow
> > *seeing* the structure of the discussion.
> >
> > Neither does my email client.  It never will, nor can we require mailing
> > list participants to use any specific type of email client.
>
> Apparently you're saying that just because you can't/don't want to use a
> more appropriate tool, other people shouldn't be able too.  That sounds
> ridiculous to me.  Use an inferior tool if you want, but don't force
> other people to.
>

I also use vi (vim, not nvi, i'm not *that* level of cool). ;)

-gps
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Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Paul Moore 
On Wed, 13 Feb 2019 at 20:50, Antoine Pitrou  wrote:
> Apparently you're saying that just because you can't/don't want to use a
> more appropriate tool, other people shouldn't be able too.  That sounds
> ridiculous to me.  Use an inferior tool if you want, but don't force
> other people to.

That;'s a common complaint in these discussions and it has some merit.
However, Gregory also said (in a very relevant comment that you
unfortunately omitted):

>> If we want to enforce an interface on people, IMNSHO that is what something 
>> like Discourse is for

The question here is fundamentally, whether we do want to enforce an
interface on people. If we do, then there will be some losers (people
with effective and highly tuned email workflows, like yourself) and
some winners (for example, people like me who cannot in practical
terms use anything other than a web interface). The judgement is
whether the benefit to, and number of, the winners outweighs the
disadvantages to, and the numbers of, the losers. (And the more
abstract question of whether restricting users' choice is a good or a
bad thing, but I'm going to pass on that).

I don't know the answer. As a "winner", my feeling is that the
advantage to me is marginal for longer more complex discussions, and
reasonable for shorter discussions. So I don't feel that I'm much of a
data point.

Paul
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Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Victor Stinner 
Can the mailing list admin please move this sub-discussion about
thread vs flat into a new thread? I explicitly asked to please not
discuss advantages and disadvantages of mailing list vs Discourse
here:

"Please don't start a thread about the advantages and disavantages of
mailing lists and Discourse. It has been discussed multiple times.
There is a dedicated section on discuss.python.org!"

I only asked *how can we take a decision*?

:wink:

Victor

Le mer. 13 févr. 2019 à 21:33, Barry Warsaw  a écrit :
>
> On Feb 12, 2019, at 18:01, Ned Deily  wrote:
> >
> > On Feb 12, 2019, at 20:36, Barry Warsaw  wrote:
> >> On Feb 12, 2019, at 13:59, Antoine Pitrou  wrote:
> >> I know I can browse easily through a 161-message mailing-list or
> >>> newsgroup thread using a traditional threaded view, read what I want,
> >>> come back later to read the rest, etc.  But Discourse's linear
> >>> presentation pretty much kills that ability.  It doesn't even allow
> >>> *seeing* the structure of the discussion.
> >> That’s pretty much my same, biggest gripe about long GitHub issues and 
> >> PRs. ;)
> >
> > But you realize that this a feature, not a bug? :)
> >
> > https://blog.codinghorror.com/web-discussions-flat-by-design/
>
> Unfortunately, that post doesn’t talk about all the problems with flat 
> discussions, and there are many.  So if we have to, we can agree that both 
> have advantages and disadvantages, both have their proponents and detractors, 
> and very likely both are appropriate to some forums and discussions and 
> inappropriate (or ineffective) for others.  Or maybe more succinctly: both 
> are terrible. ;)
>
> That tells me either that the problem is fundamentally unsolvable due to the 
> nature of online discussions, or we’re asking the wrong questions.
>
> As far as software darwinism is concerned, we can also admit that top posting 
> has won, but not necessarily because it’s superior (in fact, IMHO it’s not).  
> It’s just that mobile and webmail has taken over and either because of 
> laziness or U/I difficulties, inline replies are too difficult.
>
> We live with plenty of inferior technology for reasons that aren’t entirely 
> based on actual efficiency and ease of use.  Techmology! (with apologies to 
> Ali G).
>
> -Barry
>
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Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Barry Warsaw 
On Feb 13, 2019, at 15:13, Victor Stinner  wrote:
> 
> I only asked *how can we take a decision*?

We start with a PEP, then the SC will make a determination based on this PEP 13 
Mandate:

"Establish appropriate decision-making processes for PEPs”

which is still a work in progress.  I think for the short term, we just 
continue the status quo.  It’s not ideal to have two forums for the same 
community, but it’s not such a burden that it needs immediate resolution, IMHO.

-Barry



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Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Steven D'Aprano 
On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 12:13:35AM +0100, Victor Stinner wrote:
> Can the mailing list admin please move this sub-discussion about
> thread vs flat into a new thread? I explicitly asked to please not
> discuss advantages and disadvantages of mailing list vs Discourse
> here:

Sadly, when you start a public discussion, you cannot control the 
direction that others take that discussion. You can only go with the 
flow, or resist, with as much grace as you can manage.


> "Please don't start a thread about the advantages and disavantages of
> mailing lists and Discourse. It has been discussed multiple times.
> There is a dedicated section on discuss.python.org!"

So, only those using Discourse are allowed to discuss the pros and cons 
of using Discourse? That might be a bit biased.


> I only asked *how can we take a decision*?

The more important question is "is now the right time to make a 
decision?"



-- 
Steven
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Re: [python-committers] Can we choose between mailing list and discuss.python.org?

2019-02-13 Thread Victor Stinner 
Le jeu. 14 févr. 2019 à 01:25, Steven D'Aprano  a écrit :
> On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 12:13:35AM +0100, Victor Stinner wrote:
> > Can the mailing list admin please move this sub-discussion about
> > thread vs flat into a new thread? I explicitly asked to please not
> > discuss advantages and disadvantages of mailing list vs Discourse
> > here:
>
> Sadly, when you start a public discussion, you cannot control the
> direction that others take that discussion. You can only go with the
> flow, or resist, with as much grace as you can manage.

Sorry, I was joking ;-) I perfectly know that people cannot resist to
share their opinion about mailing lists and Discourse. I just wanted
to troll because Discourse admins allows to move a part of a
discussion into a new topic, thing not possible in a mailing list.

Victor
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