On 09/28/2016 03:57 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
>
> 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.
>

Oh yes I do. After Envite burned out on it, I had to take a lot of my
own time to keep it alive, and in the end it stopped when I stopped
taking care of it because I simply couldn't take that time anymore.
You're welcome to revive it, but frankly, I'd rather see contents coming
from IRC and talk.do and git.do going to DNG rather than contents from DNG.

>>
>> Yes, very few people are using it.
>
> Perhaps this is the reason...
>
> http://lists.netisland.net/archives/plug/plug-2016-09/msg00113.html
>

Of all the points, I think only 13 applies to Discourse *when it is used
as a mailing list*.

For the rest, Steve, you're trying to say that Discourse is meant to
*replace* our mailing lists: but it's not.

We're really talking about forum software. I'm mentioning the mailing
lists only because the main argument against Discourse is that the Web
interface sucks, and so on. But using the Web interface is not
mandatory (except for setting up the account and choosing to use the
mailing list mode.)

Mailing list mode is certainly not perfect, but it still allows
Web-allergic people to use it by email. Since Gitlab also requires
Javascript, Discourse makes a good companion to it. But you can read it
without Javascript, and participate by email if so you choose. You can
also *not* use it, and it's fine.

>> - 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?
>

Yes it is: as I mentioned, it's very easy to select some posts and
reroute them into another existing or new topic. I've been using Web
forum software since 1993. The first one was a shitty CGI that allowed
almost synchronous discussion. Then I used WebX when it was still
usable, and then Caucus. Caucus evolved from email. It was used in
academy for courses and had many advanced features that still today are
missing to the mainstream forum software, such as programmable
conferences and topics, and a powerful markup language that makes BBcode
and such look like plastic toys. I remember converting the whole UI in
a way that would allow me to blaze through unread topics by hitting
alt-space on my keyboard 12 years ago. Discourse provides a similar
feature set that leaves other forum software decades behind.

> 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?
>

It can because it encourages good behavior and grants more power with
more personal investment: it's hard to behave badly as you're learning
more not only of its usage, but also of the local culture as you go, and
you can't do much without a little personal investment which makes it
quite an incentive not to misbehave.

I don't get how it inconveniences good citizens to accommodate the
thoughtless. Care to explain?

> My archives are local.
>

Glad it works for you. Have you tried finding anything in a search
engine only to end up reading empty forum threads with no relevant
answer? This is what I'm talking about. Not email archives.

> I don't think Discourse wants to have an archives contest with email.
>

I don't think it has to, but I do think a nicely maintained Discourse
forum would beat it hands down.

> If you mean current threads require patching up whole threads to
> understand, once again that's due exclusively to poster bad behavior.
>

You know we can't reform people's bad behavior. Or can we?

> 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.
>

Yes.

> Don't blame email
>

I don't. I use it every day and I love it. I don't intend to stop
using it anytime soon.

> 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
>

What problem is that?

>> - 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 doesn't. But it has a very good strategy against spammers. I didn't
see a single spammer in a Discourse forum so far. That's because
spammers don't want to spend the time necessary to get to the point
where their spam can make it to a topic, and then have to start from
scratch. Not worth it for them.

> 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
>

It's not about fixing actions of bad citizens, but about offering a way
to turn casual conversation into focused discussion, then collaborative
editing towards precise, accurate, usable contents that can end up in a
static website that can be installed, e.g., with apt-get install
devuan-www, to have quality offline documentation. The objective has
never been anything else.

It's not mandatory to participate, and it's not to replace anything. At
first I thought that at some point it could become a better solution
than Mailman, but it's not there yet, and that's not an objective for me
to replace Mailman.

>> 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.
>

If it did, there would be several ways to bring them back. But frankly,
do you see it happening? How many users do you envision subscribing and
participating to DNG without endlessly repeating previous conversations,
etc.? I hope that when we hit 1.0, we'll have too many users to handle
them on DNG alone, and I'll be happy to accommodate the thousands who
would never use a mailing list anyway, because they're post-email,
post-IRC people.

>> 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".
>

This is another topic. Jaromil thought we needed to move away from the
"Debian's Not Gnome" legacy. I don't think it's a bad idea: defining
Devuan in negative is not so helpful in the long term. We do have a
history, but I hope we're also contemplating making something of Devuan
that's not just "Debian without systemd". People seem to prefer using
DNG though (I've not seen subscription information for devuan-* lists.)

> 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.
>

We're not systemd, we're Devuan, and we're having this discussion, and I
really hope it's very clear by now that nothing is replacing what we
have. What I'm trying to do is anticipate what's coming, and what I see
coming is a successful universal base OS that fosters both solidity and
ease of customization.

==
hk

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