[llvm-dev] Discourse category for the AMDGPU target

[David Blaikie via llvm-dev]

On Tue, Aug 4, 2020 at 2:22 PM Nicolai Hähnle <nhaehnle at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 7:00 PM David Blaikie <dblaikie at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't have much personal interest here - but my understanding was
> > that there was/is a fair bit of pushback to fragmenting the
> > communications channels to discord before there's a more general
> > buy-in to switch over across the project? (perhaps I'm misremembering
> > the previous threads about discourse, though - and we have already
> > pretty significantly fragmented on the chat-like medium between IRC
> > and Discord)
>
> Discourse is really more of an alternative to mailing lists, not to chat.

Right - I mentioned that that by analogy here.

In any case, the main thread that discussed this previously is here:
http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2019-November/136880.html
(including links to the live/in-use Discord and Discourse)

I'm not sure what discussion went into MLIR using discourse - whether
it got in sideways by being the way the project already interacted
before it came under the LLVM umbrella. But I have some concerns about
the fragmentation there.

Perhaps most of the push back is about the existing LLVM lists and
doesn't apply as much to new subcommunities, but I have my
doubts/concerns about fragmenting the tools used to interact with LLVM
communities like this - making it  harder for folks to move between
different subcommunities when contributing across the boundaries.

> For what it's worth, the alternatives we've looked at were:
>
> 1. Just use llvm-dev. This avoids the fragmentation you mention, but
> it was considered undesirable for several reasons:
> 1.1. Most people watching llvm-dev wouldn't be interested, and we
> don't want to increase the noise unnecessarily.
> 1.2. Some people in the relevant audience expressed that they prefer
> not to subscribe to llvm-dev due to its volume, or are worried that
> the topics they're interested in would be drowned out in the general
> noise.
> 1.3. Some people in the relevant audience expressed that posting to
> llvm-dev can be scary.
>
> 2. Create a new mailing list amdgpu-dev at lists.llvm.org. I think the
> relevant audience would be mostly fine with that, but there were two
> perceived advantages to the Discourse path:
> 2.1. If a topic in the amdgpu discussion space come up that turns out
> to be interesting to somebody who is not usually following that space,
> then the barrier to jumping into that topic is lower on Discourse --
> there aren't any issues with posting to a mailing list that one isn't
> subscribed to.
> 2.2. We believe that maintaining a new mailing list is a higher burden
> for the LLVM project (I'm happy to be corrected on that point).
>
> Are you saying that you think we should use one of those alternatives,
> or do you have yet another alternative in mind?
>
> Cheers,
> Nicolai
>
>
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 9:36 AM Nicolai Hähnle via llvm-dev
> > <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > We’ve been having discussions over the last few weeks with
> > > stakeholders both inside and outside of AMD about where we could best
> > > have a dedicated and open discussion space for topics around the
> > > AMDGPU target. The conclusion was that we’d like to try the use of a
> > > category in the LLVM Discourse group, which is mostly used for MLIR
> > > discussion so far.
> > >
> > > I have started a Discourse topic with more detail, as that seemed
> > > rather fitting:
> > > https://llvm.discourse.group/t/category-for-the-amdgpu-target/1480
> > >
> > > However, this obviously affects the broader LLVM community, hence this
> > > e-mail on llvm-dev. If people are generally okay with such a move, we
> > > would ask the Discourse admins to please create that new category.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > Nicolai
> > >
> > > --
> > > Lerne, wie die Welt wirklich ist,
> > > aber vergiss niemals, wie sie sein sollte.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > LLVM Developers mailing list
> > > llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
> > > https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
>
>
>
> --
> Lerne, wie die Welt wirklich ist,
> aber vergiss niemals, wie sie sein sollte.