On 08/04/2024 11.31, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
On Mon, Apr 08, 2024 at 12:22:35AM +0200, Kevin Kofler via devel wrote:
Emmanuel Seyman wrote:
I've noticed a trend in proposed changes in the way Fedora works.
I am fed up of this salami tactic as well. When we complain about the new
stuff, we invariably get told "don't worry, you don't have to use it, it's
all optional", but the plan is always to make it mandatory later. See also
2FA that they are now trying to force on us, taking as an excuse an incident
that was demonstrably NOT stopped by 2FA.
They start off as as things packagers will not have to use if they do
not want to and, over time, become default/forced (Matrix vs IRC,
To be fair, part of the blame there is to be put on Libera.Chat that
unilaterally turned off their Matrix bridge. (Yes, they did give Matrix some
time to address the demands they had, but when Matrix told them it was not
feasible in such a short time frame, they just first suspended, then
permanently blocked the Matrix bridge.) But, and here is where I blame
Fedora, instead of just letting the chans on Libera.Chat die and moving
everything to Matrix, they should have moved the IRC chans to a network with
a working Matrix bridge, such as OFTC (or pretty much anything other than
Libera.Chat – I guess even Freenode under its new owners might be an
option), then we could still be happily using both technologies
interoperably. Instead, we get told to just use Matrix and shut up, which I
do not consider acceptable.
Discourse, ...).
There too, I do not see why some discussions are now being directed to
Discourse instead of the mailing list. And it is not even working. Most of
the pertinent feedback for new Changes still comes on this list, not on
Discourse. The developers use this list, Discourse is only for users who do
not know how to use a mailing list.
The massive & central problem with discourse (and it's amazing that it
still has not been fixed) is that there's no way to reliably get it to
send me an email when there's a new topic, or even when there's a new
message on an existing topic. As a result it's completely useless and
invisible to me.
Rich.
I am also not a fan to merge everything into one piece of centralized infra because discourse may develop into a big single point of failure.
But the email issue has **partly** been solved: I work with email for about a year with **limited** problems **when** it comes to keep informed about topics I am already involved in and also for topics that contain a tag that I am watching (major problem 2 below makes the "limited" in this case).
But once a new topic that is interesting for me is created, I need to set it to watched in discourse before I can rely on getting informed (which means I need to know about the topic), because of major problem 1:
Major problem 1: you cannot rely that people who open new topics always set the right tags. I guess it would take months if not longer before people get used to that and it would cause a lot of devastating confusion till then, if people get used to it at all (especially those who work mostly in other communities that do not centralize at discourse).
Major problem 2: people can change their posts, and nearly everyone gets used to that quickly, and you will NOT be informed by email if a post is changed.
Major problem 3: many people will have a hard time to get into setting the right properties in their discourse configuration so that it behaves in the "email"-like way. (e.g., you need to subscribe to related tags/topics as "watched", not only "tracked" or so -> **maybe this is related to your problem** ). I am not sure if that is comprehensible if people are not used to it.
(Major?) problem 4: afaik, it is still not possible to add openpgp signatures to emails (I am not sure if that was fixed in the meantime). We don't use that yet but at least the possibility to use that possibility on short notice if we want or need to is not possible. We trust in any case 100% on discourse's centralized crypto, integrity and availability.
Major problem 5: I still don't know a comprehensible way to add myself to a topic without becoming active on web discourse if the topic does not contain one of my subscribed tags. The same for creating new topics. If there is a way, I am quite sure it is not an intuitive one. In any case, if people can open a topic in a way I get not informed about, I can miss it.
Major problem 6: in urgent / intensive discussions, 5 minutes can contain several messages, and thus it will be not possible to discuss among email and web posts because email posts will be always 5 minutes late (and miss changed posts at all).
(Major?) problem 7: cross-community topics. I am not sure if that is used at the moment in devel. But if so, I think this is next to the centralized trust/crypto issue the one that cannot be solved effectively.
But since we are now an Enterprise customer of discourse, I could imagine that we have a better chance to get what we want if Matt submits a proposal? You might compare your issues to what has been already (partly) solved and consolidate your additional needs and forward them to Matt. There is some hope they consider our needs :)
Theoretically, it is possible to create a setting that "equals" email and web posts within a specific category (such as a "devel" category), and create a button for related users to automatically set their settings to the "email"-like way, at least in this category. Just some thoughts that might help if you want to try to get discourse "effectively compatible".
Chris
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