Hello Matthew, everyone, The TL;DR version of my thoughts and suggestions on this topic: implement the improvements suggested so far as best as possible, so that the people who want to interact with Discourse through their mail reader can do so with little to no friction. Clearly define and document the new tags, what type of information should go where and who needs to subscribe to which tag. Redefine our information channels in a saner way, that reflects our consumption and use of that information. Document on the docs website how subscriptions, filtering etc. work in the Discourse UI for each use case. Avoid further community fragmentation by switching cold turkey once the organization of the site and the mailing features are on par with what people have come to expect from mailing lists. Turn on the requirement of adhesion to a fas group for people who can post on the new channels. Longer version: Like most of the people who have chimed in so far, I too have strong opinions and feelings about such a transition. I joined the mailing list almost a decade ago and I have been following it for much longer. I am subscribed to a number of lists, I set up my filters ages ago and over time, as the project and my involvement with it changed, I adapted those filters with minimal effort. I can certainly sympathize with all the people who are far more active than I am and who interact with Fedora first and foremost through these lists, even though I don't go so far as to run an NNTP server or type my replies in vi (admittedly, that was fun for a while). Since this transition is more or less a settled issue, as far as I can understand, I would like to make some suggestions as to how this could be as painless as possible for everyone. Before that though, I'd like to take a moment to point out something that has been very lightly touched upon, the nature of the medium (e-mail) and its non-technical aspects. I think most people are acquainted with the formalisms and the urgency/importance attributed to different means of communication. We don't feel the same way about a written letter we found in our mailbox, a phone call, an e-mail, an instant message, an SMS or a forum post. E-mail commands a certain "decorum" close to that of a written letter. Perhaps this is the reason why certain people find it daunting to engage with the project through the mailing lists. At the same time and while we're no strangers to heated exchanges and a far cry from literary correspondence, the etiquette dictated by the medium does create a safe space for its users. We all pretty much understand and adhere to the rules associated with this kind of written communication and have certain expectations when we use it and even more so given our relationship to Fedora. This is not the case with a forum and certainly not the case with all the people who will go on d.f.o. For this reason I strongly suggest that the "Project Discussion" category or whatever subcategory our particular subcommunity ends up on, is indeed walled off from the rest of the website. I do not need the noise, the rudeness and the abuse that I often found on ask.fedoraproject.org (which is now a part of d.f.o) to flood over these channels. The requirement on people belonging to a specific fas group before they can post should be on from day one and exceptions made only when they are warranted. On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 11:21 PM Matthew Miller <mattdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > We’re scattered in actual practice > ---------------------------------- This is not necessarily or always a bad thing, nor is it a problem that can be solved by the transition to Discourse. I thought I had a fairly good grasp of most of Fedora's activities and communities until I saw the organizational chart posted by Marie Nordin a while back and I realized that about a third of Fedora was terra incognita to me. Then again, we cannot all afford the time nor do we have the skills and proclivities required to be involved with everything. The devel ML has been a good "firehose" of information for people who work on packaging and development and everything tangentially tied to these. It's only natural that the stream of information will get fragmented down the road, but we've mostly had a "bird's eye view" of the issues of interest to us through this channel and we could (usually) follow up on whatever place a particular discussion unfolded, be it bugzilla, a pagure ticket or whatever. The "announce" ML could become an "announce" category for all things Fedora, which might be of interest to people from different subcommunities, while keeping it relatively low-traffic. E.g. voting for the default wallpaper for the next Fedora release is something that would fit that description, whereas a release party in Paraguay or the move to Python 3.12 would not. If the mailing lists and Discourse are being used simultaneously, we will end up even more scattered than we are now. If the concerns voiced so far can be addressed and solutions implemented in Discourse in a way that does not disrupt people's work flows and does not pose a significant burden to switch (essentially reinventing Hyperkitty in the opposite direction), then I think it would do us good to switch immediately. > > Devel List is too many different things! > ---------------------------------------- This is a good opportunity to untangle the mess and redefine what type of information should go to which channel, keeping in mind the interests of the intended audience. It won't make any sense to split up devel discussions over 20 different tags to all of which all of us will be subscribed to again. Reports, reminders, notifications of blocker bugs, etc. are all things potentially interesting to the devel audience and easily filtered as long as they maintain a constant formatting. Can we have nested tags maybe? While it might not make sense to have a 1-1 transition of mailing lists to tags, the tags should be well thought-out in advance; it should be made clear what goes where and who must subscribe to what. Clear, take-you-by-the-hand documentation on how these things should be set up on the Discourse interface is absolutely vital. > 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. Absolutely vital to every devel(-announce) subscriber, it would make for a great nested tag, if that were an option. > 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. How will the current devel audience keep track of these discussions? > 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.) Newcomers should be connected to the people in the communities which they intend to join. Graphics artists should introduce themselves in #fedora-design (made-up name, don't know if it exists), packagers in #devel, people wishing to do PR work in #marketing and so on. If the introductions are done elsewhere, no one (relevant) will ever meet them, at least those on devel. (We have a Fedora Join ML???) > Fifth, all packaging-related discussions (including the separate > packaging mailing list). We already have a #package-maintainers tag > with some existing discussion. As long as it's clear and documented, splitting that off from devel would be ok, but are the audiences different? > 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. For many people, this type of information is important some of the time. It would be preferable to have it available and easy to filter out and/or delete, rather than keeping it out of sight and out of mind. _______________________________________________ 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
