[PATCH] D121078: Replace links to archived mailing lists by links to Discourse forums

Tue Mar 8 14:28:41 PST 2022

tonic added a comment.

In D121078#3367950 <https://reviews.llvm.org/D121078#3367950>, @aaron.ballman wrote:

> In D121078#3367289 <https://reviews.llvm.org/D121078#3367289>, @tonic wrote:
>
>> In D121078#3366825 <https://reviews.llvm.org/D121078#3366825>, @aaron.ballman wrote:
>>
>>> In D121078#3366025 <https://reviews.llvm.org/D121078#3366025>, @tonic wrote:
>>>
>>>> In D121078#3365542 <https://reviews.llvm.org/D121078#3365542>, @SimplyDanny wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> In D121078#3363856 <https://reviews.llvm.org/D121078#3363856>, @aaron.ballman wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I think we need to retain *some* references to the existing mailing list archives. The migration to Discourse worked fairly well, but there were still data migration issues.  For example:
>>>>>
>>>>> Do you have some prominent places in mind where the archives should be mentioned? For me as someone who just started to get a bit more involved into LLVM, the archives are not very helpful. There is no way to search for threads as far as I know. That means it is very hard to find anything specific. That is why I actually came up with this change in the first place: Getting rid of references to the "old' mailing lists which are just not helpful for beginners.
>>>
>>> Oh, I think these changes are *fantastic*, so I'm happy we're updating the stale references to point to the more modern place to go. Thank you for that!
>>>
>>> There are ways to search the archives (as Tanya mentioned, you can use a google site search over them), but you have to know they exist to know to do that, which is why I'd like to retain some mention of them until the migration moves over *all* of the historical data. It's not super handy for most folks, so I don't think we need a *prominent* place for this. But it is handy for those of us who have to do a fair amount of historical digging around to see how we came to the conclusions we came to (not a common activity, but it is not uncommon for folks on standards committees to be asked "why does your implementation do X?" and need to go looking).
>>
>> AFAIK, we have never had  link to the archives and instructed people to go search them aside from the link on the Mailman list info page.
>
> This patch removes the links to where the archives can be found. I have instructed people to go search those archives on multiple occasions as part of ISO standards work.
>
>> In addition, knowing they exist is also something that was not super obvious to many people who have not used Mailman. I want to avoid adding references to archives in all of these places because it defeats all the work to go and update the locations to have to go back and do it again.
>
> I know you want to avoid all mentions of mailman. I want to avoid losing information that is still relevant for the foreseeable future. The places I want to see updated already list mailman for the commits lists, so I don't agree that my request adds a material burden for the future.
>
>> It is also confusing to newcomers to the project.
>
> This is why I suggested using a footnote to make it much more clear that this is a secondary option. Not everyone in the project is a newcomer, but we still need to support them. I'm not at all tied to this solution of using footnotes if you have a suggestion for a less intrusive approach to accomplish the same goal.
>
>>> I think the least distracting thing we could do would be to put a superscript footnote after any link to a particular discourse forum which goes to an anchor at the bottom of the page to a footnote saying something like what I recommended below. This should keep the focus for most people on going to Discourse, it shouldn't be overly distracting or confusing to people new to the docs, but it still retains useful information that some folks need.
>>>
>>>> You do not need to worry about this.
>>>
>>> In your opinion, that may be true; in mine, this is still a concern.
>>
>> I don't think its fair to ask this person to be the one to add links to the archives and handle the situation. They are being put in the middle of an argument.
>
> The author changed a bunch of links in good ways but also did so in a way that loses information in a few places that I don't wish to see lost. You disagree. That's fine and is very normal part of patch review. It's not an argument for reviewers to find consensus among themselves when there are disagreements.
>
>>>> Your change is updating the locations people are to ask for help.
>>>
>>> The change is also touching `Mailing List & Forums` content, which are not specifically about asking for help (they can also be for reading instead of writing).
>>
>> Again, we have never told people to search the archives. There isn't even a "Search" box on the archives.
>
> I ask folks to search the archives. I think Discourse should cover the vast majority of those situations without issue. However, not knowing that we have more complete archives elsewhere does not help those folks for whom the questions are not "it'd be nice to know" but are "I need to know." These are the people I want to continue to support.
>
> I've added comments to the few places I'd like to see a change, which hopefully makes my request more clear. I am carefully trying to avoid adding this extra information to the places we're documenting people to go for discussion; I think those should continue to only point to Discourse. But the places where we have quick links for more useful information are where I think we should retain some unobtrusive mention of the complete archives.

Without going through every single comment here (which is not to dismiss them, but I am not sure its helpful to respond to each one as I think we both want to work towards a resolution), I will propose an alternative solution that I hope has some common ground and addresses both of our concerns.

I hear you are concerned about is:

- The archives may be missing information and therefore someone will not find the information they are looking for. You would like some reference to the archives to exist.

(You can correct me of I am wrong)

I am concerned about:

- Where communication happens and where to find past communication to be confusing to newcomers
- Creating more work in the future to remove more references to the mailing lists that have moved to discourse.  It is a lot of work to keep documentation up to date, so the fewer spots we have outdated information, the better.
- Creating new patterns of behavior to use Discourse as the first reference versus the mailing list archives

I would propose that we add information to Discourse that informs users of the migration issue we are working through and that *if* they encounter a topic that seems incomplete, that they can cross reference with the mailing list archives. This can be added to the banner that is displayed when users join Discourse until we decide it is no longer needed or it can be added in the FAQ/About or as an stand alone announcement on the forum itself.

I believe this solution will meet both our needs. Please let me know what you think.

Repository:
  rG LLVM Github Monorepo

CHANGES SINCE LAST ACTION
  https://reviews.llvm.org/D121078/new/

https://reviews.llvm.org/D121078