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

Sat Jun 5 06:47:53 PDT 2021

On Sat, Jun 5, 2021, 1:19 AM Mehdi AMINI <joker.eph at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Jun 3, 2021 at 3:20 PM James Y Knight via llvm-dev <
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
>> I've just tried out discourse for the first time. It is not clear to me
>> how to use it to replace mailing lists. It has a setting "mailing list
>> mode", which sounds like the right thing -- sending all messages via email.
>> Except that option is global -- all messages in all categories on the llvm
>> discourse instance. Which definitely isn't what I want at all. I don't want
>> to subscribe to MLIR, for example.
>>
>> In general, I'd say I'm pretty uncomfortable with switching from a
>> mailing list to discourse. Discourse seems entirely reasonable to use for
>> end-user-facing forums, but I'm rather unconvinced about its suitability as
>> a dev-list replacement.
>>
>
> Can you elaborate why or what aspect makes it unsuitable? We've been using
> this exclusively without a  "dev list" for MLIR and it is working perfectly
> well as far as I can tell. I believe Swift does the same thing as well.
>

My first concern is that it does not appear to be actually usable via email
in the same way the existing collection of mailing lists is. I wonder
if these others primarily interact with it through the website, rather than
via email? It certainly seems like a reasonable web forum, even if not a
reasonable mailing list service.

I have not used discourse enough to really have a firm opinion on whether
(or why) it would be a bad idea to switch from an email workflow to a
webforum workflow using the discourse website. Possibly that could be OK
(although, at this point, unconvinced), but it *would* be a major change in
workflow, and is not what the original pitch was.

Thanks,
>
> --
> Mehdi
>
>
>
>> Other communities (e.g. python) seem to have a split, still: mailing
>> lists for dev-lists, and discourse for end-user-facing forums.
>>
>> I'd also note that Mailman3 provides a lot more features than what we're
>> used to with mailman2, including the ability to interact/post through the
>> website.
>>
>> Maybe someone can convince me that I'm just being a curmudgeon, but at
>> this point, I'd say we ought to be investigating options to have Someone
>> Else manage the mailman service, and keep using mailing lists, rather than
>> attempting to switch to discourse.
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 1, 2021 at 4:50 PM Tom Stellard via cfe-dev <
>> cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> We recently[1] ran into some issues with the mailing lists that caused
>>> us to disable automatic approval of subscriptions.  Over the past few
>>> months, the LLVM Foundation Board of Directors have been investigating
>>> solutions to this issue and are recommending that the project move its
>>> discussion forum from mailman to Discourse[2].
>>>
>>> The proposed migration plan is to move the discussion lists (e.g *-dev,
>>> *-users lists) to Discourse as soon as possible.  The commit email lists
>>> (*-commits lists) will remain on mailman until a not-yet-determined date
>>> in the future, after which they will be replaced by something else.
>>> Some commit lists alternatives include Discourse and GitHub commit
>>> comments (but there may be others).
>>>
>>> Here are the reasons why the LLVM Foundation Board of Directors is
>>> recommending this change:
>>>
>>> - The LLVM project discussion lists cannot be adequately maintained by
>>> our
>>>    current volunteer infrastructure staff and without changes we run the
>>>    risk of a major outage.
>>>
>>> - We are able to make this change without significant impact to user's or
>>>    developer's daily workflows because Discourse supports email
>>> subscriptions
>>>    and posting (NOTE: if you are concerned that your workflow may be
>>> impacted
>>>    by this change, please contact the Infrastructure Working Group[3], so
>>>    they can help test your workflow with Discourse.)
>>>
>>> - Discourse gives us additional features that will benefit the community:
>>>    - Easy to signup and subscribe to categories
>>>    - Better moderation tools.
>>>    - Web-based user interface.
>>>    - Ability to send announcements to multiple categories to avoid
>>> having to
>>>      cross-post community wide announcements.
>>>
>>> - A subset of the community (MLIR) have been experimenting with Discourse
>>>    for over a year and are able to provide feedback about this experience
>>>    to the Board of Directors.
>>>
>>> We did also consider one alternative, which was migrating our lists to a
>>> mailman hosting service.  However, we concluded that with all the work it
>>> would take to migrate our lists to another service, it would be better
>>> if we moved to a service (like Discourse) that provided more features
>>> than what we have now.
>>>
>>> We understand that moving to Discourse is a change for the community and
>>> that people may be worried about this having a negative impact on their
>>> participation in the project.  As mentioned above, we believe that this
>>> change can be done without significant impact to anyone’s workflows.
>>> If you disagree, please contact the Infrastructure Working Group, to
>>> document the impact to your workflow, so we can work together to find
>>> a solution for your issue.
>>>
>>> If you have any other questions or comments you can raise them on this
>>> thread and please keep criticisms constructive and on topic.
>>>
>>>
>>> LLVM Foundation Board of Directors
>>>
>>> [1] https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2021-March/149027.html
>>> [2] https://www.discourse.org/
>>> [3] https://github.com/llvm/llvm-iwg
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> cfe-dev mailing list
>>> cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org
>>> https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cfe-dev
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> LLVM Developers mailing list
>> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
>> https://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
>>
>
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