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[python-committers] python-committers is dead, long live discuss.python.org

Paul Moore p.f.moore at gmail.com
Sat Sep 29 06:03:59 EDT 2018 
On Sat, 29 Sep 2018 at 09:23, Łukasz Langa <lukasz at langa.pl> wrote:
>
>
> > On Sep 29, 2018, at 08:50, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> >
> > I hope it does, since otherwise python-committers is not only moving
> > to discourse, but also losing its functionality as forum for
> > core developers. We'd just have another python-dev or python-ideas
> > forum.
>
> I assume it's the faulty mailing list medium that made you miss my response to Barry where I say that this is indeed supported ;-)
>
> See, Discourse would already save you a paragraph of worry. Why don't you try it out for a while and see how it feels? I understand the power of habit but I promise you that there's plenty of things that make the adjustment worthwhile.

I mentioned something similar on Discourse, but I'm going to add a
comment here. This sort of dismissal of the validity of other people's
long-established workflows is not very helpful. I use email, It's not
because I've no idea how to use web forums, nor is it because I'm an
old fuddy-duddy. It suits my workflow. I use a *lot* of web forums, as
well as tools like Stack Overflow, reddit, Discord, etc. They simply
do not always suit my requirements as well as email. Some examples:

1. Pull technology rather than push. The fact that email is
*delivered* to me is a critical benefit for certain types of
interaction, and one that's far too easily dismissed by people who
promote pull solutions. It's baffling to me that such a fundamental
difference is routinely treated as "minor".
2. Email-forum interfaces are in my experience uniformly suboptimal.
I'm OK with the idea that I need to compromise and not expect people
who prefer a forum to do all the work, but nevertheless, seeing the
typical email response appear in a forum (with quoted text,
signatures, etc) is very disruptive to conversation flow.
3. Maintaining accounts for various bits of forum software is a pain
when you use as many devices as I do.
4. Browser tabs. Some of my devices are close to unusable *already*
because of the RAM usage of my browser with multiple tabs open. Is
someone going to suggest that there's a minimum hardware requirement
to participate?

Can we please consider that people have a lot of investment in email,
and being willing to try a new approach is a big commitment.
Responding to valid concerns with "just try it, you'll like it" is
pretty non-constructive.

Paul

PS I *am* trying Discourse out. I'm somewhat interested in a "better
than email" solution. So this is emphatically *not* a "do things my
way or I won't play" posting.
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