On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 10:50:42AM +0200, Jarek Prokop wrote:
>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.
Passionate people generate passionate discussion.
The only thing you will gain by a forum is that at the point
the message will not be deemed appropriate, it will probably
be deleted or "beatified" by the mod team. The passion from our
human nature will not go away with a platform change.
That's true -- and I'm not looking to get rid of passion, or silence
opinions. But when something is _really_ out of line (often written in the
heat of the moment), it's better to have options to ... as you say,
beautify* the conversation. That makes it better for other people
participating, and better for the person who has a chance to make their
point in a more constructive way.
* also, to fix typos :)
[snip]
A discussion to a technical change, for me, will forever be in a
ticket.
No matter the "wider discussion platform" projects will always have
bug trackers where one can create a ticket.
Of course. That's not what I'm talking about. Consider for example this:
https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/2817. That's not about the technical decision
itself -- it's an branch of the conversation that should have been here.
>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.
But, is it shrinking due to a platform, or something other?
I don't think Fedora contribution and activity overall are shrinking. And
I'm quite convinced that the platform is part of it.
It makes me want to try discourse out, not saying I'll stick
around,
I'm glad to hear that.
I am, luckily, not paid to read forums
with no threading. IMO, a stream of posts with mentions of previous
posts is not threading. Threading begins and ends
on new topic posts AFAICT on discourse.
It's not presented as a tree, but there _are_ threads of replies. If you see
something like "2 replies" under a particular post, you can click that and
the view will be restricted to just those replies, which you can then follow
further.
Example:
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/future-of-encryption-in-fedora-des...
But also, yes — when something really diverges in Discourse, it should be a
new topic. A moderator can move things after the fact (like I did with
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/getting-systemd-homed-working-prop...)
but even better, when replying, you can create a linked topic. See
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/site-tip-create-linked-topics-for-...
But I'd be happier if there was some
tangible metric how to measure if we got more *related to the topic*
engagement.
I would hate to see 20 "+1" posts from "random" users counted
towards "it is better now".
That's reasonable. Do you have suggestions for a good metric?
>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.
I'd be interested in having a kind of "crossroad sign", to direct me
towards tags what I would care about
from a packager perspective. Not happy about this change, but it
would make my experience a bit better...
There's a big _index_ at
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/tags, but
that's probably bit much (while at the same time not containing enough
description). What would this "sign" ideally look like to you?
>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.
If I was a volunteer that's the thing I'd remember once in a blue
moon that it even exists.
But I guess that's just person to person :).
There _are_ email notifications, and you can interact by replying to them.
(You can even +1 or <3.)
There is also a "digest" mail sent automatically if you're not active,
showing active topics possibly of interest, which can serve as a
more-frequent-than-blue-moon reminder. (You can turn this off, of course.)
As a person in my early 20s, I hate how everything is becoming web
centric
and no one can convince me to feel otherwise. While I am hearing from
varying people around me, how it must be bad using email, it provides
client-side filtering unparalleled by any platform that I used in the
past.
It's fine, but it's no NNTP. That was really the best. :)
Do take a look at
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/guide-to-interacting-with-this-sit...
It's not perfect, but it's better than most other forum software's email
interfaces.
I enjoyed Fedora being on mailing lists, nothing ever came close to
the
threading of emails. I was not getting lost in threads of conversation
while still being under the umbrella topic, no need to open who knows how
many links to read all tangents.
I appreciate your perspective, feedback, and willingness to try this out!
--
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader