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

[Stefan Teleman via llvm-dev]

On Mon, Nov 18, 2019 at 11:55 AM David Chisnall via llvm-dev
<llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
> On 18/11/2019 16:39, Stefan Teleman via llvm-dev wrote:
> > I can't recall an instance when I had difficulty using, or was
> > intimidated by, email, for saying something on a mailing list.
>
> Subscribing to a mailing list, particularly one as high-traffic as
> LLVM-Dev, is a high friction activity.  I was contributing to LLVM for
> several years before I subscribed to llvm-dev, because I didn't want to
> deal with the traffic volume (filtering is a lot better now, but having
> to set up a mail filter adds another step for subscribing).  The only
> open source projects that I interact with via mailing lists are ones
> where I am already an contributor.

In other words, the friction coefficient is directly proportional to
the verbosity of the mailing list.

llvm-dev is very verbose. I.e. high "friction" coefficient. So are
cfe-dev and llvm-commits. O-Well. That's how they are.

I don't quite see how some sort of pretty Web UI will reduce the
friction coefficient. It might introduce a new, "annoyance"
coefficient, because of the added noise of pretty formatting, emojis,
color quoting, and all kinds of other extraneous - and unnecessary -
decorations that have very little to do with the information being
conveyed.

-- 
Stefan Teleman
stefan.teleman at gmail.com