[Overload-sig] Experimenting on real-world groups with potential solutions

[Guido van Rossum]

I'm sold. Let's start by moving this very sig to Discourse, or at least by
setting up a parallel Discourse instance where we can discuss this and
experiment.

If anyone has a different system they want to promote let's do that too.
E.g. maybe we should migrate to MM3 as another experiment.

I would also be happy to set up a GitHub tracker named python/overload-sig,
but I'm not sure I'd personally learn anything new from that (though others
may, and I might find it less useful for the kind of discussions we're
having here than for discussing software features and bugs).

On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 10:09 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:

>
> On Jun 23, 2016, at 12:31 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>
> Note the focus on topics here. I am wishing for a UI that keeps the
> discussions more organized. I think that as long as people's model is a
> mailing list with a smart UI, it's not going to satisfy me. I think that
> what I'm looking for must be modeled in people's minds as a database for
> discussions with a high-quality web UI, and personalized email integration.
>
>
> From my experience thus far with discourse, this is basically what it is.
> Originally they didn’t even allow starting new topics via email only
> replying to existing topics (although I think they have since changed this
> so it’s optional based on configuration). Thinking of it like a more
> discussion focused Github Issue tracker is probably a reasonable mental
> model for how it functions in practice.
>
> I think it has a number of features and (for lack of a better word)
> “patterns" that will help reduce the trend for endless cycling and the
> “deluge” of email, such as:
>
> * Topic based workflow that includes built in support for moderation.
>     * Close a topic to new replies when it’s obvious that discussion is
> not productive.
>     * Move topics to the correct category (e.g. move from python-dev to
> python-list) instead of having 12 people reply “wrong list!”.
>     * The ability to automatically allow long term, good users to move up
> in “level” to gain additional privileges to help moderate the community
> (similar to StackOverflow).
>
> * Features to reduce the need for new messages and reduce repetition .
>     * Notification *while* you’re writing that new posts have been added
> so you can scroll down and read them to see if someone else already said
> what you were going to say.
>     * Ability to multi quote in a single response in a structured way, and
> compose those multi quotes as you read (adding a reply is done inline as
> you read down the thread, and you can click a button to quote another post
> as you read down further).
>     * Mentioned above, but writing a response is done inline as you read
> the post (it floats on the bottom of the UI) so you can compose while you
> read, and keep composing until you read the entire thread, instead of
> firing off multiple email responses to multiple people.
>     * “Likes” on posts to remove mindless +1’s (I thought this was silly
> when Github introduced it, but I now quite like it).
>     * A suggestion of possible duplicated topics when posting a new topic
> to try and guide people towards previous or ongoing discussions instead of
> rehashing the same thing over and over again.
>    * A “Summarize” topic button that filters the topic down to the "most
> interesting posts as determined by the community” (I don’t know how well
> this actually works in practice).
>
> * Features to make inter-related discussions work better.
>    * Ability to split a topic into two different topics.
>    * Interlinking between posts in different topics as well as quotes and
> the like.
>
>
> ——
>
> Now, all of the above is theoretically achievable with a traditional
> mailing list, but I think that discourse offers a better medium for
> achieving those things. Largely for one main reason: Mailing lists push the
> burden of achieving all of that onto each and every individual
> participating in the discussion whereas discourse (and other “forum”-esque
> software) tends to push the burden of that onto the software itself. This
> is made even more difficult with the disparate workflows and clients that
> people are actually using which ends up causing strife as different tools
> interpret things differently.
>
> For instance, if you want to split a discussion out into a different
> thread, you have to change the subject of the new thread and make a post,
> possibly quoting the old post in that. However you’re relying on social
> convention that people aren’t going to keep responding to that split
> discussion in the original thread. This sort of works but it also sort of
> doesn’t, particularly when dealing with mail clients that will render the
> new thread as part of the sub thread causing people to not realize that it
> was ever split out to begin with.
>
> Another example is say you want to redirect someone who errantly posts to
> python-dev instead of python-list. Currently the typical workflow for this
> is they post incorrectly, and they get somewhere between 1 and 10 people
> responding with the same message that they need to take that to
> python-list. Only one reply was needed but because email doesn’t offer a
> way to mark a topic as closed, there’s no way to prevent additional email,
> versus something like discourse where you can actually physically move the
> topic along with a message saying that it was posted in the wrong location.
>
> Now, historically forums have worked by having a finite set of moderators
> whose job it is to do this sort of janitorial work, however discourse
> functions more like StackOverflow [1] where the community itself moderates
> the forums and people gain moderation power over time as they demonstrate a
> positive interaction with the community at large. I think this could work
> very well for us since it’s basically the model we use for bugs.python.org
> (except there we don’t even require people to build up reputation, if you
> get an account you can munge the state of issues however you want). The
> exact specifics how fast someone gains reputations and what powers they
> gain are of course, configurable. I think this is a powerful way to deal
> with a lot of these problems though, and it allows centralizing these
> actions (like moving a topic) instead of relying on all users to sort of
> agree in a sort of hive mind for how to deal with particular threads.
>
>
> [1] Which shouldn’t be surprising, given Jeff Atwood is involved in both.
>
> —
> Donald Stufft
>
>
>
>


-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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