[Distutils] Please don't impose additional barriers to participation

[Paul Moore]

On 28 October 2015 at 18:27, Ionel Cristian Mărieș <contact at ionelmc.ro> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 10:31 AM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
>>
>> I agree with Ben. Discussions on PEPs need to happen on mailing lists,
>> not hidden away on some issue tracker or PR ticket.
>
>
> I think some balance is needed here. Every so often discussions on the
> mailing list get so disorganized and slide into so many irrelevant things I
> can't afford to participate. I think the PR thing should at least be tried
> and MAL/Ben haven't provided any pertinent arguments against making a github
> account anyway.
>
> Plus the PyPA shown willingness to accommodate feedback from the
> mailinglist. I'd expect draft updates will be posted once in a while on
> distutils-sig for people who don't have a web browser or github account.

Note that I also prefer substantive discussions on the mailing list.
I'm happy to have simple edits (typos, wording clarifications, etc)
covered on the PR tracker, but for anything significant around the
intent of the PEP, motivating use cases, design decisions, etc, I find
the github tracker interface to be pretty awful. The lack of quoting
in typical discussions makes it harder to follow threads, the need to
switch from my mail client (where notifications will appear) to the
github interface if I want to contribute in the "correct" form (reply
by email works, but doesn't integrate cleanly in the "style" of the
tracker discussion for anything but short interjections) makes it
harder to contribute, and the fact that it's less conducive to
"lurking" than a mailing list are concrete reasons, not related to
wanting to use a github account, for preferring the mailing list.

Call me an old fogey for preferring last year's technology if you must :-)

Paul