Re: Fedora should replace mailing lists with Discourse

[John Florian <jflorian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2018-10-17 13:41, Gerald B. Cox wrote:

On Wed, Oct 17, 2018 at 10:31 AM Jason L Tibbitts III <tibbs@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>>>>> "GBC" == Gerald B Cox <gbcox@xxxxxx> writes:

GBC> People keep saying it isn't sufficient or it doesn't work.  I've
GBC> been using it for 3 days and looks and acts like a normal mailing
GBC> list.

And I've been using it since the RT project switched a couple of years
ago.  And... it doesn't really look and act like a normal mailing list.
Putting aside the issues with formatting of messages which is discussed
elsewhere in this thread, certainly it generates messages and accepts
replies and so technically it's a mailing list.  But as a medium for
discussion which involves email, it simply doesn't work out.  the system
appears to either foster or encourage changes which result in the
delivered messages being less useful than messages from a mailing list.

The fundamental problem is that web forums tend to make less use of
quoting.  The end result is similar to top-posting, but in the other
direction.  Instead of complete "context" that's primarily useless, the
result is no context at all.  So you have to browse the rest of the
thread in your email program (which thankfully is still possible) or
click over to the web site.  Neither is ideal.

So, really, you've used it for a couple of days, have declared it fine,
and then boldly declared "Fedora should replace mailing lists with
Discourse".  But I've used it for a bit longer, and my experience has
simply been negative.  The discourse system simply does not serve to
foster email-based discussion.

Yes, I've only used it for a few days - but I disagree with your wholesale assumption regarding

context.  There have been countless times when I've started reading a topic mid discussion for

various reasons and I have no idea what the original point was.  I then either have to trudge through

my mail archives or go to the website and search through the entire topic to understand what is going on.

IMO, it's easier to do that with discourse than with the mailing list.

I've never used Discourse other than to do a very quick perusal these last few days when this came up.  I am quite familiar with the forum model however.  How does Discourse handle posts you've already read in a thread that's still active.  With things like reddit or LWN, you get to read it over and over and over again if you really want to see whats new now.  With my mail client, it's extremely easy and effective to put it into threaded mode and highlight the unread (or filter out the already read).  With that, I can usually follow along very easily.  Yes, sometimes I need to go back in the thread to get context.  But its rare that I'll go back to a thread on a forum to find new comments later on once I've read many already.  That's like watching a movie, getting a third of the way through it and realizing you've seen it before.

Now for historical review where a thread is dead, something like Discourse would be great due to the cleanliness of not having repeated context.  But that's an entirely different use-case and not the primary one.

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