[Python-ideas] Moving to another forum system where

[Rhodri James]

On 18/09/18 23:37, James Lu wrote:
> Other than that, my biggest issues with the current mailing system are:
> 
> * There’s no way to keep a updated proposal of your own- if you decide to change your proposal, you have to communicate the change. Then, if you want to find the authoritative current copy, since you might’ve forgotten or you want to join he current discussion, then you have to dig through  the emails and recursively apply the proposed change. It’s just easier if people can have one proposal they can edit themselves.

Believe it or not, I like the fact that you can't just edit posts.  I've 
lost count of the number of forum threads I've been on where comments to 
the initial post make *no sense* because that initial post is nothing 
like it was to start with.

(Also it makes it easier to quote people back at themselves :-)

>    * I’ve seen experienced people get confused about what was the current proposal because they were replying to older emails or they didn’t see the email with the clear examples.

As you said yourself, "you have to communicate the change."  Even in a 
forum or similar.  Just editing your post and expecting people to notice 
is not going to cut it.  And yes, there is a danger that even 
experienced people will get confused about what is being proposed right 
now, but I've seen that happen on forums too.  The lack of threading 
tends to help with that, but on the other hand it stifles breadth of debate.

> * The mailing list is frankly obscure. Python community leaders and package maintainers often are not aware or do not participate in Python-ideas. Not many people know how to use or navigate a mailing list.
>    * No one really promotes the mailing list, you have to go out of your way to find where new features are proposed.
>    * Higher discoverability means more people can participate, providing their own use cases or voting (I mean using like or dislike measures, consensus should still be how things are approved) go out of their way to find so they can propose something. Instead, I envision a forum where people can read and give their 2 cents about what features they might like to see or might not want to see.

-1.  (I'm British, I'm allowed to be ironic.)

Approximately none of this has anything to do with the medium.  If the 
mailing list is obscure (and personally I don't think it is), it just 
needs better advertising.  A poorly advertised forum is equally 
undiscoverable.

>     * More people means instead of having to make decisions from sometimes subjective personal experience, we can make decisions with confidence in what other Python devs want.

Um.  Have you read this list?  Mostly we can make decisions with 
confidence that people disagree vigorously about what they as Python 
devs want.

Besides, I've never met a mailing list, forum or any group of more than 
about twelve people that could make decisions in a timely manner (or at 
all in some cases), and I've been a member of a few that were supposed 
to.  Eventually some*one* has to decide to do or allow something, 
traditionally the BDFL.

> Since potential proposers will find it easier to navigate a GUI forum, they can read previous discussions to understand the reasoning, precedent behind rejected and successful features. People proposing things that have already been rejected before can be directed to open a subtopic on the older discussion.

Your faith in graphical interfaces is touching, but I've seen some 
stinkers.  It is no easier to go through the average forum's thousands 
of prior discussions looking for the topic you are interested in than it 
is to go through the mailing list archive (and frankly googling is your 
best bet for both).  People don't always do it here, but they don't 
always do it on any of the forums I'm on either, and resurrecting a 
moribund thread is no different to resurrecting a moribund topic.

-- 
Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd