On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 4:21 PM Matthew Miller <mattdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > It’s time to transform the Fedora devel list into something new > =============================================================== > > My first post on this list was over 19 years ago. (It was about > Bugzilla. I was a fan!) Ever since those early days, devel list has > been the heart and center of Fedora activity. Now, I hope to convince > all of us here that it’s time for something different. > > As it is, devel list is too much for many people to follow — people > we’d like to have around. It covers many different things at once, yet > also drives us towards more scattered communications. Our infamous > mega-threads are not really effective for getting to community > consensus, and tend to bring out the worst in us. > > I propose that we transition devel list, and eventually most of our > mailing lists, to Fedora Discussion (our Discourse-powered forum). > > I know this is a big change, but, hear me out… I love this idea. > > > We’re missing people > -------------------- > > A Mastodon post from long-time Fedora contributor Major Hayden got me > thinking: > > > How do people make so much time available for mailing list > > discourse? > > > > Once I ensure my team has the technical guidance they need > > and I work through the tasks of work that I owe other > > people, I take a look at the mailing list and say: "Oh my > > gosh, what the heck happened here?" Then the discussion > > goes further off the rails while I'm typing out a reply and > > my reply is no longer relevant. > > > > — https://tootchute.com/@major/109666036733834421 > > I know many Fedora folks, old-school and new, for whom devel list is > just too much. Some of it is the sheer volume, but this “off the rails” > tendency is real — threads drift, get into back-and-forth debates about > particular details, etc. And… some people aren’t here because — in > contrast with our “Friends” foundation, it isn’t always a nice place to > be (and mailing lists don’t provide many tools for moderation, except > the big hammer of outright bans). > > Ben Cotton recently did some basic analysis on devel list traffic over > time, and there’s a clear trend: fewer people are participating, even > though the number of different threads goes up. I don’t think this is > because of any decline in Fedora contributors overall — I think it’s > that conversations are happening elsewhere. All of these points ring true for me. I often find myself just avoiding the devel list entirely. > > > Big threads are … bad, actually > ------------------------------- > > When we have something to talk about, it tends to explode into a big > thread. The thing in January with FESCo’s frame pointers decision > (https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/thread/RNJZUX3ZI34DIX6E4PVDKYQWCOFDQ4UY/#RNJZUX3ZI34DIX6E4PVDKYQWCOFDQ4UY) > is a good example of things going badly. > > Most of the conversation was under the subject “Schedule for Tuesday's > FESCo Meeting (2023-01-03)”, because everything started as a reply to > that. That’s pretty easy to overlook. It’s possible for replies to > change the subject when replying, but that can’t be done > retroactively, and then isn’t consistent (and it breaks threading in > Gmail, too). > > Then, things got rather hostile, making it hard to have a reasonable > conversation about the issues (both technical and procedural). And > then, things went in circles without adding anything new. > > This could have all gone a lot better. > > And that’s just one example. Take a look back at any mega-thread, and > you’ll find similar — and worse. When things get heated, the only way > to intervene is by adding more. There are often long subthreads of two > people going back and forth on tangents. Then, other conversation > branches duplicate that, or refer across. Classical email tools don’t > actually handle this kind of thing very well at all. In my experience, > it only really works if you keep up with the conversation in almost > real time, which has its own problems even when that’s possible. > > > We’re scattered in actual practice > ---------------------------------- > > Devel list may be the center, but we have _hundreds_ of Fedora mailing > lists. A dozen or so are reasonably active (Test, Legal, ARM…) but most > are inactive or dead. Some are just meeting reminders over and over — > for meetings that aren’t even active anymore. It’s easy to make but > hard to _unmake_ a mailing list. > > For lists that are active, the split is confusing — when should > something be on the packaging list rather than devel? What happens when > something is related to both Cloud and Server, or Workstation and KDE? > One can post to both lists, but if someone replies and isn’t subscribed > to both, the conversation gets split. > > With “devel” as the main list, conversations about marketing, design, > events, and so on don’t really have a central place. (The Mindshare > list never really caught on.) That makes these important activities > feel even more disconnected and secondary in status — and they > shouldn’t be. > > Many groups have actually moved away from lists to using tickets for > team conversations — both those non-engineering functions > and development. Design Team has a mailing list, but mostly for > announcements: the work happens in tickets. Workstation largely uses > their Pagure tracker. And CoreOS conversations happen almost entirely > in tickets on Github. > > Tickets are made for tracking specific, actionable tasks, and that kind > of tracking is part of why teams use them over mailing lists — but > Fedora teams use them for open development conversations too. I think > that’s largely a symptom of mailing lists not being enough for what we > need. The trackers have media support, editing for typos or updates, > reactions for simple agreement, tagging people, and granular > subscriptions. They are effectively “off-label use” mini-forums that > teams can quietly move to using without the sort of conversation I > expect this message to generate. This is true for EPEL conversations. They tend to happen in IRC/Matrix and Pagure tickets. They also happen on the epel-devel list, but I feel a sense of dread when someone suggests moving a conversation from one of the other places to the list, for all the reasons Matthew mentioned. > > > > Airplane diagram, survivorship bias > ----------------------------------- > > Since I’m posting this to devel list, I do expect a lot of push-back. > Maybe I’ll be surprised and more of y’all are already with me on this > and just waiting for something to happen. But overall I expect a tough > crowd. > > You’ve probably heard the story about bullet holes in airplanes > returning from missions and the accompanying diagram — find it athere > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias if that’s new to you. > > The set of remaining regular participants on this list is naturally > biased towards those for whom it is working just fine. But, core Fedora > development discussion can’t be limited to that ever-shrinking group. > Consider who isn’t here. The problems are real, and the trend isn’t in > a good direction. > > > > Devel List is too many different things! > ---------------------------------------- > > We use it for Change discussion (resulting in those > not-actually-so-great big threads). > > We use it for introductions and onboarding — we’re usually pretty good > at that, actually (but it adds to the overall load of following the > list). We’re not very consistent, though. > > We discuss packaging: guidelines, help on different topics, > coordination on specific work. There’s unclear overlap with the > packaging list, though, which is a bit confusing. > > We talk about higher-level Fedora OS development topics that don’t fit > anywhere else. For example, this on installer environment size: > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/thread/75TIBSA2PT6YZJQ3YSDIMA3FWXHQI7YP/ > Sometimes, these are FESCo topics (which FESCo heroically struggles to > keep here rather than on Pagure tickets…). > > Sometimes, people talk about a particular interest in the hopes of > forming a Special Interest Group. Often that does result in a new SIG > launching — sometimes with a brand-new mailing list which then ends up > getting only a few posts ( and a whole lot of spam years later). But > this really suffers from the survivorship problem: many people who > might be interested will never notice. > > We have release process announcements — mostly to devel-announce, but > then occasionally replies and discussion here. Blocker bugs and other > test-list and QA topics are cross-posted, as part of the release cycle. > > And then there are a lot of robo-messages: reports, reminders, etc. > These are really valuable to a few people, but add a lot more to wade > through for everyone else trying to keep up. > > There are certainly others, as well. > > In short… there probably shouldn’t just be one thing. But, the > cross-posting problem makes it hard to split up as a mailing list. > > > > Enter Discourse > --------------- > > If you’ve talked with me about anything related to any of this in the > past ten years, you probably already know that I like Discourse. It’s > good software made by cool people. And, it’s entirely open source, with > a SaaS business model but with real, usable releases. (No open core, no > “open source theoretically but good luck”.) And, we have it in > production in Fedora already, at https://discussion.fedoraproject.org, > with categories for announcements, user help, project discussion, and > social conversation — as well as special categories for dedicated > workflows. > > In Project Discussion, each different Fedora team can have its own tag, > and you can subscribe to those that you’re interested in. Cross-posting > is easy: tag a post with multiple teams. > > Topics can be renamed, if needed, or split out into side-conversations. > The long tangents from these conversations can actually be interesting > on their own without distracting from the main topic. Moderation tools > allow us to handle posts that are outside of expected Fedora > contributor behavior, with varying levels of action as appropriate. > > You can use markdown formatting, including images (with easy addition > of alt text for people for whom images are a barrier). You can edit > your posts to fix typos or correct mistakes. There are polls and lots > of other useful features. > > And, you can interact with it all by email. That interface isn’t > perfect, but it’s way better than any other forum software I’ve seen. > (I’ve written a guide: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/25960) > At the same time, your individual email address is hidden, so it won’t > be a spam magnet (or a target for off-list harassment, a problem we > unfortunately have with devel list). > > That said, it is web-first software. (Or mobile, if that’s your thing.) > That requires some adjustment, I know. I hope opening up a Fedora > Discussion tab – or keeping one open — becomes an easy habit. I went with Discourse over a mailing list when I posted my EPEL 10 proposal back in November. In addition to the aforementioned drawbacks of email, I was specifically interested in being able to use markdown tables and being able to add info to the original post over time. I have enjoyed interacting with that Discourse thread quite a bit, and have no regrets about focusing the conversation there instead of the mailing list. https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/epel-10-proposal/44304 > > > Not just Fedora > --------------- > > There’s a big trend towards Discourse in open source projects overall. > Python and Gnome have both migrated entirely from their mailing lists. > Ansible is working on it. Plus, there’s Rust, Kubernetes, Nextcloud, > Flathub, Grafana, Home Assistant, KDE, and I’m sure many others. > > > Concrete proposal > ----------------- > > I’m not suggesting we shut down devel list next week. And I think we’ll > have some mailing lists for quite a long time. But, I think it’s time > to start moving some specific things, with the eventual goal of closing > every mailing list we can. > > > First, I’d like to move the Changes discussion. They will still be > posted to devel-announce, but responses directed to Project Discussion > in a new #changes tag. Ben tells me that this is a FESCo decision, > which seems reasonable. > > Second, I think other FESCo-related conversations should move. I hope > this will reduce the urge to have back-and-forth exchanges in the > tickets. For the Fedora Council, I set up a bot which automatically > creates a discussion topic when a ticket is filed, leaving the ticket > just for votes and recording of outcome. FESCo could use something > similar. > > Third, I’ll add a tag for general Fedora OS development conversation. > Maybe “#devel”, but if someone has more narrow suggestions, I’ll take > them. > > Fourth, I’d like to update our documentation, process, and expectations > for newcomers — say hello on Discussion (and Fedora Chat, if you like) > rather than a mailing list. (I’d like to close the Fedora Join list at > this point.) > > Fifth, all packaging-related discussions (including the separate > packaging mailing list). We already have a #package-maintainers tag > with some existing discussion. > > Sixth, automated posts, as much as we can. These should go to dedicated > Workflow categories, where people who want can watch them but where > they won’t overwhelm human interactions. People who want can watch > them, and it’s easy to quote-reply into a new linked topic in the > Project Discussions category. > > And finally… shut down the devel list itself. Perhaps at the end of > 2023? > > We should also shut down all of the little lists that haven’t had > anything but spam in the last two years. We could maybe do that sooner. > We should stop creating new lists now — we can create new Discussion > tags instead. > > I expect the announcement lists to stay for the foreseeable future > (although we might feed them from Discourse rather than the other way > around). Other lists which are patches, commit messages, and other > automations might stick around for a while — but really might be better > served by a log aggregation and analysis system or something else. > > Other teams who want to keep mailing lists can, but I’d like to move > those too, and eventually I think we’ll want to shut them down too — or > perhaps convert them to announcement lists. > > > Next steps > ---------- > > I know this is a big change. I’ve been thinking of writing this message > for a long time. I’d really like to convince everyone that it’s the > right thing — or at least, an acceptable one. > > > What about specific decisions related to my proposal? For each: > > Because altering the Changes process is a FESCo decision, I’ll file a > ticket about that shortly. > > FESCo moving their own other conversations is, of course, also a FESCo > decision. > > Assuming the first moves forward, I will create the general #devel tag > (or other name we come up with) when I create the #change-proposal tag. > > Moving the packaging list is a Packaging Committee decision. > > Automated posts can be moved at any time. I can work with the people > who own the generation of those reports to figure out a good answer for > each. > > The outcome for other team lists is up to each team. > > And, I think shutting down devel overall is ultimately a Fedora Council > decision. > > For right now, though: let’s discuss — on the list! > > -- > Matthew Miller > <mattdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Fedora Project Leader > _______________________________________________ > devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue -- Carl George _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
