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

[Kevin P. Neal via llvm-dev]

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?

-- 
Kevin P. Neal                                http://www.pobox.com/~kpn/

"Nonbelievers found it difficult to defend their position in \ 
    the presense of a working computer." -- a DEC Jensen paper