I'm worried about the new format combined with governance discussions. As best I can tell 51 CPython committers have signed up for an account [I think that is a big number, btw] but only 17 have posted anything; That 17 is about 5 more people than put their name on a governance PEP. And maybe 5 people have half the total posts. This does not feel like a discussion at all.
I don't think it was deliberate, but it looks like the new format is actively discouraging everyone but those most deeply invested with the most free time from participating.
-Jack
On Tue, Oct 9, 2018 at 11:25 PM Jack Diederich jackdied@gmail.com wrote:
I'm worried about the new format combined with governance discussions. As best I can tell 51 CPython committers have signed up for an account [I think that is a big number, btw] but only 17 have posted anything; That 17 is about 5 more people than put their name on a governance PEP. And maybe 5 people have half the total posts. This does not feel like a discussion at all.
It can (reasonably) take months for a small-ish group to migrate to a new type of forum; large groups take longer.
I don't think it was deliberate, but it looks like the new format is actively discouraging everyone but those most deeply invested with the most free time from participating.
I doubt anyone intended to cut anyone out of discussions, but a new medium at this time just wasn't a good idea. It also didn't seem to work well when I first tried to sign up (the round-trip email never came through; yes, I checked my spam-box). Things like this make uptake even slower.
-Fred
On Tue, Oct 09, 2018 at 11:20:08PM -0400, Jack Diederich wrote:
I don't think it was deliberate, but it looks like the new format is actively discouraging everyone but those most deeply invested with the most free time from participating.
I'm actively discouraged by various visual effects on the Discourse site.
Fade-in, progress spinner, moving elements when scrolling, long load times.
There are recurrent discussions about attracting developers. As far as C developers are concerned, I doubt that this forum is going to attract any.
Stefan Krah
On Tue, Oct 9, 2018 at 8:24 PM Jack Diederich jackdied@gmail.com wrote:
I'm worried about the new format combined with governance discussions. As best I can tell 51 CPython committers have signed up for an account [I think that is a big number, btw] but only 17 have posted anything; That 17 is about 5 more people than put their name on a governance PEP. And maybe 5 people have half the total posts. This does not feel like a discussion at all.
I'm not participating in discussions on them because I have limited bandwidth. I'm waiting to be told we're ready to read PEPs and how to cast votes. ie: exactly the same way I behave with mailing lists.
-gps
What concerns me is that there are several long-time and/or prominent developers who are not even registered (*) on discuss.python.org. For example Benjamin Peterson, Larry Hastings, Raymond Hettinger, Stefan Krah, Terry Reedy.
I would be worried if a decision is taken without them.
(*) https://discuss.python.org/u
Regards
Antoine.
Le 10/10/2018 à 05:20, Jack Diederich a écrit :
I'm worried about the new format combined with governance discussions. As best I can tell 51 CPython committers have signed up for an account [I think that is a big number, btw] but only 17 have posted anything; That 17 is about 5 more people than put their name on a governance PEP. And maybe 5 people have half the total posts. This does not feel like a discussion at all.
I don't think it was deliberate, but it looks like the new format is actively discouraging everyone but those most deeply invested with the most free time from participating.
-Jack
python-committers mailing list python-committers@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-committers Code of Conduct: https://www.python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
Le jeu. 11 oct. 2018 à 10:30, Antoine Pitrou antoine@python.org a écrit :
What concerns me is that there are several long-time and/or prominent developers who are not even registered (*) on discuss.python.org. For example Benjamin Peterson, Larry Hastings, Raymond Hettinger, Stefan Krah, Terry Reedy.
I would be worried if a decision is taken without them.
Well, the PEP 8001 which explains how we will take a decision is still empty :-) https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8001/
Victor
On 10/11/2018 4:30 AM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
What concerns me is that there are several long-time and/or prominent developers who are not even registered (*) on discuss.python.org. For example Benjamin Peterson, Larry Hastings, Raymond Hettinger, Stefan Krah, Terry Reedy.
This provoked me to sign up and spend a few hours reading and practicing. It seems to mix features from github issues and StackOverflow questions. One main difference from the latter is using categories instead of tags.
If I wanted an IDLE category, should I post to Discourse Feedback? Could I be made the moderator, with full powers at least for that category?
tjr
On 12 Oct 2018, at 00:38, Terry Reedy tjreedy@udel.edu wrote:
On 10/11/2018 4:30 AM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
What concerns me is that there are several long-time and/or prominent developers who are not even registered (*) on discuss.python.org. For example Benjamin Peterson, Larry Hastings, Raymond Hettinger, Stefan Krah, Terry Reedy.
This provoked me to sign up and spend a few hours reading and practicing. It seems to mix features from github issues and StackOverflow questions. One main difference from the latter is using categories instead of tags.
If I wanted an IDLE category, should I post to Discourse Feedback?
Hi, Terry! Glad to see you. We are trying not to have too many top-level categories because it increases friction for first-comers. When you mentioned tags, I remembered that we can actually have those on Discourse, too. Maybe IDLE-specific topics could be tagged with "IDLE"? To show you how this works, I created a "governance" tag.
You can filter the main page by tags using a dropdown next to "all categories". If you don't see it, your browser probably cached the main page, hit Refresh. By filtering on the main page, you're getting all topics on discuss.python.org http://discuss.python.org/ which are tagged with "governance":
https://discuss.python.org/tags/governance https://discuss.python.org/tags/governance
You can also filter a specific category. These are topics tagged with "governance" in "Committers":
https://discuss.python.org/tags/c/committers/governance https://discuss.python.org/tags/c/committers/governance
I think tags are attractive because you could have IDLE, AsyncIO, Typing, and so on. Sometimes they overlap so you could have a few tags on a single topic. And depending whether it's a Committers, Users, or an Ideas discussion, the topic would belong to the right category. What do you think, Terry?
Could I be made the moderator, with full powers at least for that category?
Discourse does not currently allow per-category moderation yet. This is planned but not implemented yet:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-specific-moderators-phase-1-rfc/21900/... https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-specific-moderators-phase-1-rfc/21900/64
As for global moderation, our current hosted Discourse plan (that we are getting from Discourse.org http://discourse.org/ for free) allows up to five staff members (admins + moderators). We'd probably want a few more so I'll talk with Ernest to maybe bump this a bit.
- Ł
On Thu, 11 Oct 2018 at 01:30, Antoine Pitrou antoine@python.org wrote:
What concerns me is that there are several long-time and/or prominent developers who are not even registered (*) on discuss.python.org. For example Benjamin Peterson, Larry Hastings, Raymond Hettinger, Stefan Krah, Terry Reedy.
I believe Larry is currently busy so he might simply have not taken the time (and will be occupied into I believe November).
I will also note that Benjamin, Larry, and Raymond can be a bit quiet at times and so they may not have signed up yet because they have not had anything to say to compel them to create accounts (Stefan has already stated he doesn't like this idea so I'm assuming that might be why he has not signed up yet).
-Brett
I would be worried if a decision is taken without them.
(*) https://discuss.python.org/u
Regards
Antoine.
Le 10/10/2018 à 05:20, Jack Diederich a écrit :
I'm worried about the new format combined with governance discussions. As best I can tell 51 CPython committers have signed up for an account [I think that is a big number, btw] but only 17 have posted anything; That 17 is about 5 more people than put their name on a governance PEP. And maybe 5 people have half the total posts. This does not feel like a discussion at all.
I don't think it was deliberate, but it looks like the new format is actively discouraging everyone but those most deeply invested with the most free time from participating.
-Jack
python-committers mailing list python-committers@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-committers Code of Conduct: https://www.python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
python-committers mailing list python-committers@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-committers Code of Conduct: https://www.python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 11:55:32AM -0700, Brett Cannon wrote:
I will also note that Benjamin, Larry, and Raymond can be a bit quiet at times and so they may not have signed up yet because they have not had anything to say to compel them to create accounts (Stefan has already stated he doesn't like this idea so I'm assuming that might be why he has not signed up yet).
FTR, I have signed up, but Jack's original point still stands. Very few people apart from PEP stakeholders are participating, so merely signing up should not be considered an endorsement of Discourse. Even participating shouldn't, because folks might choose their battles, especially in a pre-election situation.
In order to get an overview if I'm the only one: I've searched for people's opinions on Discourse, and its reputation is far from spotless even among people who explicitly *want* a web forum.
Stefan Krah
On Fri, Oct 12, 2018, at 11:55, Brett Cannon wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2018 at 01:30, Antoine Pitrou antoine@python.org wrote:
What concerns me is that there are several long-time and/or prominent developers who are not even registered (*) on discuss.python.org. For example Benjamin Peterson, Larry Hastings, Raymond Hettinger, Stefan Krah, Terry Reedy.
I believe Larry is currently busy so he might simply have not taken the time (and will be occupied into I believe November).
I will also note that Benjamin, Larry, and Raymond can be a bit quiet at times and so they may not have signed up yet because they have not had anything to say to compel them to create accounts (Stefan has already stated he doesn't like this idea so I'm assuming that might be why he has not signed up yet).
Brett is exactly right about me. I'm following along on Discourse and this mailing list when I have the time. I plan to read the governance PEPs and vote when the time comes. But, I don't have anything useful to say.
At the sprint, I verbally supported Łukasz's plans to try out Discourse. Discourse isn't perfect and may feel uncomfortable, but we're also losing potential contributors because they find mailing lists uncomfortable.
Le 16/10/2018 à 06:22, Benjamin Peterson a écrit :
On Fri, Oct 12, 2018, at 11:55, Brett Cannon wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2018 at 01:30, Antoine Pitrou antoine@python.org wrote:
What concerns me is that there are several long-time and/or prominent developers who are not even registered (*) on discuss.python.org. For example Benjamin Peterson, Larry Hastings, Raymond Hettinger, Stefan Krah, Terry Reedy.
I believe Larry is currently busy so he might simply have not taken the time (and will be occupied into I believe November).
I will also note that Benjamin, Larry, and Raymond can be a bit quiet at times and so they may not have signed up yet because they have not had anything to say to compel them to create accounts (Stefan has already stated he doesn't like this idea so I'm assuming that might be why he has not signed up yet).
Brett is exactly right about me. I'm following along on Discourse and this mailing list when I have the time. I plan to read the governance PEPs and vote when the time comes. But, I don't have anything useful to say.
Thank you. My worries are appeased :-)
Regards
Antoine.
On 10/15/2018 09:22 PM, Benjamin Peterson wrote:
Brett is exactly right about me. I'm following along on Discourse and this mailing list when I have the time. I plan to read the governance PEPs and vote when the time comes. But, I don't have anything useful to say.
At the sprint, I verbally supported Łukasz's plans to try out Discourse. Discourse isn't perfect and may feel uncomfortable, but we're also losing potential contributors because they find mailing lists uncomfortable.
I also supported the trial of Discourse.
However, now that I have tried it, it will be a no from me. I find the presentation of threaded conversations in linear format to be confusing, figuring out what I have and have not read to be difficult, and the overall frustration to not be worth it. It definitely has some nice features, but I won't be using them because I won't be using Discourse.
-- ~Ethan~
On Oct 17, 2018, at 02:56, Ethan Furman ethan@stoneleaf.us wrote:
I find the presentation of threaded conversations in linear format to be confusing, figuring out what I have and have not read to be difficult, and the overall frustration to not be worth it.
Are there any linear-formatted communication methods that you find more comfortable? Or is the entire idea not workable for you?
Paul Moore also raised the issue you're mentioning around "figuring out what I have and have not read". Discourse is supposed to help with this with a timeline view and a "Back" button. So far the "Back" button behavior is to say the least surprising to us, if not just buggy. Some discussion here: https://discuss.python.org/t/is-this-really-better-than-a-mailing-list/57/19... https://discuss.python.org/t/is-this-really-better-than-a-mailing-list/57/19?u=ambv
I agree we need to address this for Discourse to be a proper upgrade over mailing lists.
- Ł
On Wed, Oct 17, 2018 at 02:30:33PM +0100, Łukasz Langa wrote:
I find the presentation of threaded conversations in linear format to be confusing, figuring out what I have and have not read to be difficult, and the overall frustration to not be worth it.
Are there any linear-formatted communication methods that you find more comfortable?
For discussing a single PEP honestly I'd find even Mediawiki - not any Wiki, exactly the one used at Wikipedia! - more suitable.
There'd need to be a tacit understanding that only the PEP author is allowed to edit.
Discourse gets more tolerable if one disables Javascript in uBlockOrigin and adds a filter for loading pictures.
But I can't login without Javascript, so it's not a great solution.
Stefan Krah
Le mer. 17 oct. 2018 à 03:56, Ethan Furman ethan@stoneleaf.us a écrit :
I also supported the trial of Discourse.
However, now that I have tried it, it will be a no from me. I find the presentation of threaded conversations in linear format to be confusing, figuring out what I have and have not read to be difficult, and the overall frustration to not be worth it. It definitely has some nice features, but I won't be using them because I won't be using Discourse.
I don't think that we should see mailing lists and Discourse as exclusive. There is maybe a middle ground, like keep some mailing lists, but slowly migrate some specific mailing lists to Discourse?
IMHO Discourse is more appropriate for python-ideas than for python-committers. python-committers is more for short discussions with few people. On python-ideas, there are more long discussions with many people who throw many new ideas in the middle of a thread.
We can also imagine to have Discourse and mailing lists who coexist, even if I know that Lukasz dislikes this idea :-)
Jonathan Corbet just wrote an article on LWN about Fedora and Python migrating to Discourse :-) "A farewell to email" https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/768483/1b32a21a6e30e1b7/
Victor
On 10/12/2018 11:55 AM, Brett Cannon wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2018 at 01:30, Antoine Pitrou <antoine@python.org mailto:antoine@python.org> wrote:
What concerns me is that there are several long-time and/or prominent developers who are not even registered (*) on discuss.python.org <http://discuss.python.org>. For example Benjamin Peterson, Larry Hastings, Raymond Hettinger, Stefan Krah, Terry Reedy.I believe Larry is currently busy so he might simply have not taken the time (and will be occupied into I believe November).
You kids! Yeah, I was just on a two-week trip to London, and I had a vacation right before that too. Right now I'm dealing with the aftermath of so much vacation. And next week I'm doing the PyWeek programming challenge:
https://pyweek.org/26/
I'll also admit I've been dragging my feet about setting up yet-another-online-account for yet-another-form-of-online-communication. (But this time! It'll solve all our problems! Finally, our conversational deliverance is at hand!)
//arry/
Le sam. 20 oct. 2018 à 01:58, Larry Hastings larry@hastings.org a écrit :
I'll also admit I've been dragging my feet about setting up yet-another-online-account for yet-another-form-of-online-communication. (But this time! It'll solve all our problems! Finally, our conversational deliverance is at hand!)
discuss.python.org now supports log in using GitHub since today :-)
Victor
One data point in all of this is Victor's PEP 8015. Here on the mailing list I seem to be the first and only person to reply since the PEP was posted on Monday. But over on Discourse there have been 3 people who have replied and there's already been some back-and-forth.
So with a sample size of one, it looks like Discourse isn't discouraging anyone, otherwise I would have assumed people who don't want to start with Discourse would have simply started a discussion here on the mailing list about Victor's PEP.
On Tue, 9 Oct 2018 at 20:24, Jack Diederich jackdied@gmail.com wrote:
I'm worried about the new format combined with governance discussions. As best I can tell 51 CPython committers have signed up for an account [I think that is a big number, btw] but only 17 have posted anything; That 17 is about 5 more people than put their name on a governance PEP. And maybe 5 people have half the total posts. This does not feel like a discussion at all.
I don't think it was deliberate, but it looks like the new format is actively discouraging everyone but those most deeply invested with the most free time from participating.
-Jack _______________________________________________ python-committers mailing list python-committers@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-committers Code of Conduct: https://www.python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
Brett Cannon brett@python.org writes:
One data point in all of this is Victor's PEP 8015. Here on the mailing list I seem to be the first and only person to reply since the PEP was posted on Monday. But over on Discourse there have been 3 people who have replied and there's already been some back-and-forth.
So with a sample size of one, it looks like Discourse isn't discouraging anyone, otherwise I would have assumed people who don't want to start with Discourse would have simply started a discussion here on the mailing list about Victor's PEP.
I don't think it is safe to interpret the current level of engagement there as a definitive endorsement of the tool.
I believed this discussion was *supposed* to be happening over there and *not* on the mailing list (the initial messages about it were worded very strongly). If others who want to have a say in the future governance of the project had the same impression, then I would expect them to sign up and use Discourse regardless of their opinion of the tool.
I don't dislike Discourse, but I would have rather used the mailing list for the governance discussion and used some other, less critical, topic as a trigger for experimenting with a new tool. If the trouble with the mailing lists is moderation, then some other list that requires more moderation work would have been a good candidate.
On Tue, 9 Oct 2018 at 20:24, Jack Diederich jackdied@gmail.com wrote:
I'm worried about the new format combined with governance discussions. As best I can tell 51 CPython committers have signed up for an account [I think that is a big number, btw] but only 17 have posted anything; That 17 is about 5 more people than put their name on a governance PEP. And maybe 5 people have half the total posts. This does not feel like a discussion at all.
I don't think it was deliberate, but it looks like the new format is actively discouraging everyone but those most deeply invested with the most free time from participating.
-Jack _______________________________________________ python-committers mailing list python-committers@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-committers Code of Conduct: https://www.python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
python-committers mailing list python-committers@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-committers Code of Conduct: https://www.python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
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Antoine Pitrou -
Benjamin Peterson -
Brett Cannon -
Doug Hellmann -
Ethan Furman -
Fred Drake -
Gregory P. Smith -
Jack Diederich -
Larry Hastings -
Stefan Krah -
Terry Reedy -
Victor Stinner -
Łukasz Langa