Traffic on ye olde dng@??? has gone down a lot.
Is it because of this new-fangled Discourse thing?

DaveT

On 28/09/16 21:38, hellekin wrote:
> 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
>