On Wed, 28 Sep 2016 08:08:37 +0000
hellekin <hellekin@???> wrote:

===============================================================
> On IRC #devuan: <golinux> hellekin: Can we PLEASE move on from
> Discourse. Very few people are using it and those who are loathe it
> for the most part. It's holding back Devuan's community growth!
===============================================================


> Let me state it one last time, by email, so that it can be read by
> everyone and we can have a discussion about it, instead of a
> persistent and frankly annoying counter-productive attitude regarding
> talk.devuan.org.
>
> No, we're not moving on from Discourse.

Yeah, I'd meant to discuss this but forgot.

For me, discourse is nothing but silliness. The discourse summary and
discourse Digest emails I occasionally get are hard to read, boring,
and appear to be HTML formatted. HTML formatted? Saaaay whaaaaat???

Does anyone remember the great, text formatted, human created Devuan
Weekly News? It's sad to think the Devuan Weekly News was supplanted by
Discourse Digest.

>
> Yes, very few people are using it.

Perhaps this is the reason...

http://lists.netisland.net/archives/plug/plug-2016-09/msg00113.html



>
> Yes, *some* people insist on loathing it, and although I have tried to
> address every single of their arguments, they keep coming at it
> without even trying (e.g., to *not* use the Web after their account is
> registered.) Maybe there's some missing documentation about how to
> use Discourse as a mailing list only.

Does this sound at all familiar? We've been using a system for a couple
decades, it still works well, everyone can understand it, we've all
adapted it to fit just right into our workflow.

Now comes this new software to solve a few edge case problems most of
us never perceived at all. The new software seems to have replaced the
Devuan Daily News with some infathomable thing. The new software is
touted as a repository for our discoveries, so now I need to search it
instead of the local email archives I search every day.

>
> I don't think anybody here as much to say against mailing list apart
> from the well-known issues:
>
> - threads casually explode as people's MUA don't keep the thread
> reference (e.g., when replying from a digest)

Decades old solution: Pipe digest violators to /dev/null. Or in the few
instances where they actually have something to say, filter them to
their own folder (I have one DNG person I do that with).

> - multiple threads talk about the same thing, adding "where?" to the
> archaeology of remembering what was said.

The preceding happens often on forums. Is Discourse really any
different?

> - titles are not consistent within a thread (drifts happen before the
> title is changed)

People shouldn't hijack, and changes of subject should be accompanied
by actual subject changes. I don't see how Discourse could ameliorate
bad behavior among posters. And even if it could, why inconvenience
good citizens to accommodate the thoughtless?

> - archives are very much an accumulation of dead letters that require
> reading sometimes entire threads to figure out pertinent content.

My archives are alive, and I can usually find what I'm looking for in
seconds to minutes. My archives are local. I have local archives of
lists that went to heaven years ago, and can find specific content on
them. I don't think Discourse wants to have an archives contest with
email.

If you mean current threads require patching up whole threads to
understand, once again that's due exclusively to poster bad behavior.
If everyone deleted all quoted context EXCEPT that pertenant to the
answer, and typed their answer/response directly below the last
poster's question/assertion, everything would be perfectly clear.

Don't blame email for militant top-posters, no-delete dweebs who leave
whole threads as quoted context, and sloppy-thinkers who reply with
*no* quoted context. Blame the careless posters. And those of us who
don't like stuff like that can simply filter out the offenders.

And of course there's this: There are very few offenders on the DNG
list. We're worrying about a problem that doesn't exist, and a simple
instruction on how to post clearly without screwing up descendants of
your post would nip any future problem in the bud.

> - mailing lists can get invaded by trolls

So can forums. I doubt Discourse has a mental telepathy module that can
read a person's thoughts when they sign up. It's trivial to remove
someone's posting rights from a Mailman list. Just ask Don Armstrong :-)

> - etc.

So what we're doing is adding this big new software thing to fix the
actions of bad citizens. I have a simpler fix:

http://troubleshooters.com/linux/init/killfile.htm


[snip Discourse's elegance list]
[snip Discourse=heavy, slow javascript]
[snip 3 points]


> Which brings me to the last argument: "It's holding back Devuan's
> community growth!"
>
> Really, golinux, do you think it does?

I certainly think it would if it took posts away from DNG.

> FriendsOfDevuan has a wiki
> that is mentioned in the official documentation page on
> devuan.org/os/documentation while it's not operated by the VUA, so be
> my guest and make a popular forum that will help grow the Devuan
> community. I think the two objectives are orthogonal, and certainly
> not incompatible.
>
> I know you've been arguing the talk.do was a threat to the mailing
> lists. Yet, officially, DNG has been replaced by devuan-discuss and
> devuan-announce mailing lists, which see seldom traffic so far.

And I think that "official" designation should be walked back. I have
nothing against alternatives, but unless there's a clear winner (and
there isn't in this case and if there were it would be DNG), please
don't declare one "official".

> That
> means we're not in an univocal world where "the VUA decide" and "the
> community follows". I urge you to look around and watch the hilarious
> Ethereum fork story that unfolded this summer. In fact, we can just
> *propose ways*, and some people will understand and participate, and
> some will prefer keeping using what's there *and there is no problem
> at all with that*. We live in a complex, multipolar world, where *one
> vision does not exclude other visions*.

We're all hoping that one vision doesn't exclude other visions, but in
fact that's not guaranteed, as the events of 2014 proved.

SteveT

Steve Litt
September 2016 featured book: Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting
http://www.troubleshooters.com/28