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

[Steve Dower]

On 13Feb2019 1112, Brett Cannon wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 2:55 AM Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com 
> <mailto:p.f.moore at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     On Tue, 12 Feb 2019 at 22:00, Antoine Pitrou <antoine at python.org
>     <mailto:antoine at python.org>> 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