[cfe-dev] [llvm-dev] Mailing List Status Update

[Brian Cain via cfe-dev]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 3:16 PM Kevin P. Neal via cfe-dev <
cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 12:58:22PM -0700, David Blaikie via cfe-dev wrote:
> >>    On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 12:53 PM Chris Lattner via cfe-dev
> >>    <[1]cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>    Hi Philip,
> >>    First, despite the similar names, Discord is very different than
> >>    Discourse.  Here Iâm only commenting about Discourse, I have no
> >>    opinion about Discord.
> >>    In this case, I think we need to highly weight the opinions of the
> >>    people actively mainlining the existing systems.  It has become
> clear
> >>    that the priority isnât âcontrol our own listsâ, it is âmake sure
> they
> >>    stay upâ and âget LLVM people out of maintaining themâ.
> >>    The ongoing load of maintaining these lists (including moderation)
> and
> >>    of dealing with the security issues that keep coming up are carried
> by
> >>    several individuals, not by the entire community.  Iâm concerned
> about
> >>    those individuals, but Iâm also more broadly concerned about *any*
> >>    individuals being solely responsible for LLVM infra.  Effectively
> >>    every case weâve had where an individual has driving LLVM infra turns
> >>    out to be a problem.  LLVM as a project isnât good at running web
> >>    scale infra, but we highly depend on it.
> >>    It seems clear to me that we should outsource this to a proven
> >>    vendor.  Your concerns about discourse seem very similar to the
> >>    discussion about moving to Github (being a single vendor who was once
> >>    much smaller than Microsoft).  I think your concerns are best
> >>    addressed by having the IWG propose an answer to âwhat is our plan if
> >>    Discourse-the-company goes sideways?"
>
> >    Might also be worth some details on: "Why is Discourse more suitable
> >    than a hosted mailman solution?" - if the main goal is to get LLVM
> >    individual contributors out of maintaining infrastructure, moving to a
> >    hosted version of the current solution seems lower friction/feature
> >    creep/etc? (though I realize moving between solutions is expensive,
> and
> >    it may be worthwhile gaining other benefits that Discourse may provide
> >    while we address the original/motivating issue of maintenance)Â
>
> I notice that Discord gets maybe 50-100 messages a day, IRC perhaps a
> little less, but Discourse gets almost none. It's a very low daily number.
> The mailing lists that I'm on (just clang and llvm) get 500+ messages a
> day.
>
> Are we really going to replace email with Discourse when we can see that
> almost nobody likes using Discourse?
>
>
>
Metcalfe's law - people are going to tend to use the medium that they are
able to reach the audience on, but not necessarily because it's superior.
Mailing lists have the benefit of long-term incumbency.

I think I would prefer maintaining the status quo but if I woke up tomorrow
and the conversation had moved to Discourse I would join it there.
Regardless of whether it had moved by mandate or popular adoption.  I
suspect others may feel similar and therefore the traffic is not a good
metric of preference.

-- 
-Brian
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