<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 6:48 PM Victor Stinner <<a href="mailto:vstinner@redhat.com">vstinner@redhat.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Hi,<br>
<br>
tl; dr How can we decide if we should stop using mailing list or if we<br>
should stop using <a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a>?<br>
<br>
<br>
<a href="https://discuss.python.org/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://discuss.python.org/</a> is getting more and more categories:<br>
packaging, users, ideas, committers, core workflow, etc. Slowly, more<br>
and more existing mailing lists get their category on<br>
<a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a>.<br>
<br>
Problem: Nobody decided if a topic should always be started on<br>
<a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a> or the "related" mailing list. I just started "Vote<br>
to promote Cheryl Sabella as a core developer" thread on the<br>
Committers category of <a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a>. I'm not sure that everybody<br>
"migrated" to <a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a>, so sometimes I like to send an email<br>
"hey, by the way, have a look at this thread on <a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a>:<br>
(...)" to ensure that everybody will see my message. For a vote to<br>
promote a contributor it's important that everybody is aware that a<br>
vote is open (but everyone is free to decide to vote or to abstain).<br>
<br>
There is also a high risk of having a topic discussed twice on mailing<br>
list and <a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a>. I will happen on controversal changes<br>
(PEPs), trust me :-)<br>
<br>
More generally, I dislike having too many communication channels for<br>
the same thing :-( (I'm not talking about Zulip/IRC vs mail/Discourse,<br>
Zulip/IRC is a different way to discuss, and ways are useful/needed.)<br>
<br>
"PEP 8100 -- January 2019 steering council election" says "Of the 96<br>
eligible voters, 69 cast ballots." The Python core developers group of<br>
GitHub has currently 96 members:<br>
<br>
<a href="https://github.com/orgs/python/teams/python-core/members" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://github.com/orgs/python/teams/python-core/members</a><br>
<br>
But I only count 72 members on <a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a>:<br>
<br>
<a href="https://discuss.python.org/groups/committers" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://discuss.python.org/groups/committers</a><br>
<br>
I count 27 core devs who didn't vote for PEP 8100 and 24 who are not<br>
on <a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a> yet.<br>
<br>
<br>
I see the following options:<br>
<br>
(A) Close the mailing list: make it read-only, but keep archives. Ask<br>
all mailing of the mailing list to move to <a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a>.<br>
<br>
(B) Close <a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a>. Ok, it was nice, but it's time to move<br>
back to mailing list. <a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a> becomes read-only.<br>
<br>
(C) Do nothing: keep mailing list and <a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a><br>
<br>
We can make the same choice for all "categories" / "mailing lists", or<br>
we can have a different choice (ML vs Discourse) per category /<br>
mailing list.<br>
<br>
Please, don't start a long serie of "+1" or "-1". My question here is:<br>
how can we take a decision? Should we ask the fresh Steering Committee<br>
to take a definitive decision?<br>
<br>
Please don't start a thread about the advantages and disavantages of<br>
mailing lists and Discourse. It has been discussed multiple times.<br>
There is a dedicated section on <a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a>!<br>
<br>
<a href="https://discuss.python.org/c/site-feedback" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://discuss.python.org/c/site-feedback</a><br>
<br>
IMHO we had enough time to "experiment" Discourse. The 10 governance<br>
PEPs have been mostly discussed there: PEP 8000, 8001, 8010, 8011,<br>
8012, 8013, 8014, 8015, 8016, 8100. We saw many threads with more than<br>
50 messages. Search for threads about voting methods for example :-)<br>
We had enough time to see advantages and drawbacks of Discourse. We<br>
started to see "real" moderation (handle trolls / CoC incidents). I<br>
also saw the nice Discourse feature "start a new thread": move some<br>
messages into a new topic.<br>
<br>
Right now, I mostly care about python-committers mailing list vs<br>
Committers category on <a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a>. But we will quickly have a<br>
similar question for python-dev mailing list vs <whatever on<br>
<a href="http://discuss.python.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">discuss.python.org</a>> (I asked to create a new category, it's not<br>
created yet).<br>
<br>
It's not easy for me to not give my opinion on the topic :-) But<br>
again, my only question here is: how can we take a decision? Who will<br>
take the decision?<br></blockquote></div><div><br></div><div>IMO since the people who are gonna use these communication channels are mostly gonna be core developers (or is Users category also included in the migration plan?) I think the council should take into account how core-devs feel about this first. Opinions may have changed over the course of the last 3 months, but there was a poll back in November showing how many of us were not happy to abandon the mailing lists:<br></div><div><a href="https://discuss.python.org/t/how-do-you-find-discourse-so-far/429">https://discuss.python.org/t/how-do-you-find-discourse-so-far/429</a></div><div>...and that does not include the 24 core devs who never joined discuss. So at the very least I would appreciate having a new poll to understand whether/how things changed in the meantime. FWIW my main concern about discuss remains the long term archival topic described here: <br></div><div><a href="https://discuss.python.org/t/discourse-archive-and-backup/637">https://discuss.python.org/t/discourse-archive-and-backup/637</a><br></div><div></div><br><div>-- </div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>Giampaolo - <a href="http://grodola.blogspot.com" target="_blank">http://grodola.blogspot.com</a></div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div></div>