[llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's discussions

Mon Nov 18 06:11:54 PST 2019

>
> |  mailing lists for longer-form discussions are unfamiliar, difficult,
> and often intimidating for newcomers
>
> Um… what?  While I know (via my own children) that folks nowadays use
> multiple avenues of communication, it’s **really** hard to imagine email
> as a **mechanism** being unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating.  Moving to a
> new mechanism wouldn’t alter the fact of the very large number of strangers
> participating, which to my mind would be the
> unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating part.
> --paulr

In my (18) personal opinion, I feel that email is a somewhat difficult
mechanism of communicating, simply because email requires a different and
often complex style of formulating an email and etiquette compared to the
instant messaging style of being able to send a few worded messages due to
the low cost of sending messages and editing messages. The person writing
an email would have to make sure that whatever they send is correct the
first time since there is no editing of send messages and the only way to
keep a history through email is by either the subject or what is quoted.

A few benefit of using Discord or other new mechanisms that I prefer to
have over just emailing list are code formatting, being able to group
people together (devs of x, list moderators, etc), and the ability to
casually talk about stuff other than just meta or code related issues.
Being able to communicate with other developers casually helps reinforce
that the other devs are also human and not just a bunch of coders behind a
computer screen that might judge you for every word you might say.

On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 8:49 AM Robinson, Paul via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

> |  mailing lists for longer-form discussions are unfamiliar, difficult,
> and often intimidating for newcomers
>
>
>
> Um… what?  While I know (via my own children) that folks nowadays use
> multiple avenues of communication, it’s **really** hard to imagine email
> as a **mechanism** being unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating.  Moving to a
> new mechanism wouldn’t alter the fact of the very large number of strangers
> participating, which to my mind would be the
> unfamiliar/difficult/intimidating part.
>
> --paulr
>
>
>
> *From:* llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org> *On Behalf Of *Chandler
> Carruth via llvm-dev
> *Sent:* Monday, November 18, 2019 2:48 AM
> *To:* llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>
> *Subject:* [llvm-dev] RFC: Moving toward Discord and Discourse for LLVM's
> discussions
>
>
>
> Hello everyone,
>
>
> *Short version: *I've set up an LLVM Discord server for real time chat
> (similar to IRC) and an LLVM Discourse server for forums (similar to email
> lists):
> https://discord.gg/xS7Z362
> https://llvm.discourse.group/
>
> Please join and use these new services. They are only partially set up and
> still very new, so don't hesitate to improve them and/or reach out to this
> thread with any issues you see or things you want to fix. Also, both
> services have dedicated feedback channels.
>
> Do feel free to use Discourse for technical discussions, although try not
> to create duplicate discussions (any more than you would between the lists
> and Bugzilla) and make sure the people you're having the discussion with
> are fine using Discourse instead of the email list. In case Discourse
> doesn't work out, we'll collect and archive everything so it isn't lost.
>
>
> *Longer version & more details: *During this year's Women in Compilers
> and Tools meeting, folks expressed very clearly that our communication
> systems cause a non-trivial amount of friction for new people trying to
> find out about, learn, or contribute to LLVM. Both IRC for chatting and
> mailing lists for longer-form discussions are unfamiliar, difficult, and
> often intimidating for newcomers. While I have long been a fan and
> resistant to change in these areas, the feedback from folks at WiCT was
> compelling and important for us as a community to address. Even if it means
> I have to let go of my precious IRC. ;]
>
> We talked to a bunch of people and looked at the options out there and the
> most promising ones were Discord for chatting and Discourse for longer-form
> discussions. Meike and I have set up both an initial Discord and Discourse
> server. You can find them here:
> https://discord.gg/xS7Z362
>
> https://llvm.discourse.group/
>
>
> There is still a lot of work to be done. Notably, it'd be great for folks
> to clean up and improve the summaries for each of the groups in Discourse,
> and I'll be asking various people to help moderate on both Discourse and
> Discord. If you'd like to help out with a specific set of improvements to
> these, don't hesitate to reach out to me or Meike and we can get you set
> up. Some specific things we're already working on:
>
>    - Getting Discord verified with a nice URL.
>    - Archives of mailing lists on Discourse so you can search in one
>    place, etc.
>
>
>    - See the plan here:
>       https://llvm.discourse.group/t/mirroring-and-archiving-llvm-mailing-lists-on-discourse/61
>
>
>    - Moving Discourse to forums.llvm.org.
>    - Documenting the best way to move to Discourse while preserving a
>    similarly email-focused workflow.
>
>
> We're just adding these for now, but I'd like people to seriously try
> using them. While IRC has served us fairly well, I think it is one of the
> bigger barriers to entry. Our email lists are more effective, but also have
> had serious infrastructure challenges over the years: a constant flow of
> spam, bouncing for several major email providers, etc. Discourse has very
> powerful email-based workflows available and I think we should seriously
> consider moving to Discourse long-term instead of the email lists.
>
> I also want to say thanks to all the folks at the WiCT workshop for giving
> me and others feedback. I was pretty set in my ways around these kind of
> things, but hearing the kinds of challenges this has posed to people less
> established in the community was a real eye opener. It takes a lot to speak
> up like this, and I really appreciate it. I hope this also helps start to
> address these long-standing issues. Also a huge thanks to Tanya for
> organizing the WICT workshop and Meike for helping drive this message home
> to me and doing a bunch of the work getting these things set up. I wouldn't
> have been able to do it without her help, especially around Discord bots.
>
> -Chandler
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