[Python-Dev] Google Wave as a developer communication tool

[Terry Reedy]

Ben Finney wrote:
> Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> writes:
> 
>> I watched and was greatly impressed by the video demo of Google's new
>> Wave collaborative communication system. I believe it would/will help
>> with some of the chronic problems we (and others) have.

Example: if PEPs were waves, then responses could either be entered as 
live edits (with permission) or comments immediately following the 
relevant text (as with email/newsgroups) visible to all.  Much easier 
than current situation.  Edits are marked in red shading for those who 
have previously seen document.  Many have complained that it is hard to 
read multiple versions of a PEP since so much is new and there is no 
indication of what is new to the particular reader.

> I watched that too. It appears to be heavily reliant on *very* fast
> internet access for participants in a wave. That's far from universal in
> the Python community, let alone the internet at large.

Even a slow connection would make participation in PEPs better than today.

And being able to get a version of the docs that hi-lites "what's new 
for you" would also be very nice.

> It also appears to be heavily reliant on the wave's existence at a
> single point of failure (the hosting server): if that one point becomes
> unreliable, all participants are hosed.

We have that problem already with the tracker, which does occasionally 
go down for a bit.  And the svn host? (One reason to move to distributed 
system.)

> Neither of these problems exist with email (or NNTP).

But do for an email list, like this one.  Or a wiki.

Terry Jan Reedy