Oh wow, Google Groups is actually a much better interface. Any better forum software needs a system where people can voluntarily leave comments or feedback that is lower-priority. I'm not sure if Discourse has this, actually. Reddit comments are extremely compact as are Stack Overflow comments.
I was going to propose that the PSF twitter account post a link to https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/python-ideas/, but I was worried that getting more subjective personal experiences might undesirably decrease the signal-to-noise ratio. On Wed, Sep 19, 2018 at 12:48 AM Franklin? Lee < [email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 8:21 PM James Lu <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Is that really an issue here? I personally haven't seen threads where > > > Brett tried to stop an active discussion, but people ignored him and > > > kept fighting. > > Not personally with Brett, but I have seen multiple people try to stop > the “reword or remove beautiful is better than ugly in Zen of Python.” The > discussion was going in circles and evolved into attacking each other’s use > of logical fallacies. > > I disagree with your description, of course, but that's not important > right now. > > Multiple people *without any authority in that forum* tried to stop a > discussion, and failed. Why would it be any different if it happened > in a forum? Those same people still wouldn't have the power to lock > the discussion. They could only try to convince others to stop. > > If the ones with authority wanted to completely shut down the > discussion, they can do so now. The only thing that a forum adds is, > when they say stop, no one can decide to ignore them. If no one is > ignoring them now, then locking powers don't add anything. > > > Other than that, my biggest issues with the current mailing system are: > > > > * There’s no way to keep a updated proposal of your own- if you decide > to change your proposal, you have to communicate the change. Then, if you > want to find the authoritative current copy, since you might’ve forgotten > or you want to join he current discussion, then you have to dig through > the emails and recursively apply the proposed change. It’s just easier if > people can have one proposal they can edit themselves. > > * I’ve seen experienced people get confused about what was the current > proposal because they were replying to older emails or they didn’t see the > email with the clear examples. > > I agree that editing is a very useful feature. In a large discussion, > newcomers can comment after reading only the first few posts, and if > the first post has an easily-misunderstood line, you'll get people > talking about it. > > For proposals, I'm concerned that many forums don't have version > history in their editing tools (Reddit being one such discussion > site). Version history can be useful in understanding old comments. > Instead, you'd have to put it up on a repo and link to it. Editing > will help when you realize you should move your proposal to a public > repo. > > > * The mailing list is frankly obscure. Python community leaders and > package maintainers often are not aware or do not participate in > Python-ideas. Not many people know how to use or navigate a mailing list. > > * No one really promotes the mailing list, you have to go out of your > way to find where new features are proposed. > > * Higher discoverability means more people can participate, providing > their own use cases or voting (I mean using like or dislike measures, > consensus should still be how things are approved) go out of their way to > find so they can propose something. Instead, I envision a forum where > people can read and give their 2 cents about what features they might like > to see or might not want to see. > > Some of these problems are not about mailing lists. > > Whether a forum is more accessible can go either way. A mailing list > is more accessible because everyone has access to email, and it > doesn't require making another account. It is less accessible because > people might get intimidated by such old interfaces or culture (like > proper quoting etiquette, or when to switch to private replies). > Setting up an email interface to a forum can be a compromise. > > > * More people means instead of having to make decisions from > sometimes subjective personal experience, we can make decisions with > confidence in what other Python devs want. > > I don't agree. You don't get more objective by getting a larger > self-selected sample, not without carefully designing who will > self-select. > > But getting more people means getting MORE subjective personal > experiences, which is good. Some proposals need more voices, like any > proposal that is meant to help new programmers. You want to hear from > people who still vividly remember their experiences learning Python. > > On the other hand, getting more people necessarily means more noise > (no matter what system you use), and less time for new people to > acclimate. > > > Since potential proposers will find it easier to navigate a GUI forum, > they can read previous discussions to understand the reasoning, precedent > behind rejected and successful features. People proposing things that have > already been rejected before can be directed to open a subtopic on the > older discussion. > > A kind of GUI version already exists, precisely because this is a > public mailing list. Google Groups provides a mirror of the archives. > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/python-ideas > It's searchable, and possibly replyable. You can even star > conversations (but not hide them). If it isn't listed on some > python.org page, maybe it should be. > > Personally, when I want to find past discussions, I use Google with > the keyword `site:https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/` > <https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/>. I > know a lot of people don't know about that, though. Maybe it can be > listed on one of the python.org pages. > > As for subtopics, I haven't seen such things. I've seen reply > subtrees, but either they don't bump the topic (giving them little > visibility), or they do bump the topic (annoying anyone as much as a > new topic). I don't know if there is a good compromise there. >
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