[llvm-dev] LLVM Discourse migration: goals justify means?

[Tom Stellard via llvm-dev]

On 1/26/22 14:36, Roman Lebedev via llvm-dev wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> As most of us here learned on Jan 7, apparently, we,
> the LLVM community, have overwhelmingly supported
> the decision to move to Discourse.
> 
> It already raises a question as to how said decision was made,
> and what exactly said "majority of the community" is.
> While it is true that the LLVM RFC process is unclear at best,
> in this particular case the problem becomes exceptionally egregious.
> 
> While it may be a selection bias, as a data point,
> everybody, that i regularly talk to, in #llvm IRC
> were just as surprised to learn of said development as I was.
> 
> There was no indication on e.g. llvm-dev@,
> and in fact the last mention of the migration was:
> https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2021-June/068449.html
> (over half a year ago!), but even if you just look at said thread,
> there were certain comments that weren't addressed, e.g.
> https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2021-June/068406.html
> 
> Hopefully, the "vote" wasn't held at the discourse itself,
> otherwise it very much mirrors certain recent & future world events,
> and does not paint the LLVM in a good light.
> 
> I'm fearful that the same story is bound to happen yet again
> with GitHub Pull Request migration, that all the multitude of complaints
> that were received each time they were requested (and that happened
> a number of times, hopefully not to exhaust those providing said feedback!)
> will be just swept away and ignored, and the switch be pushed through
> regardless, in the name of a noble "lowering the barrier of entry" goal.
> (There's similar question about discord "RFC")
> 
> So the first point I would like to raise is:
> such painful, community-wide decisions **can not** be made in secret.
> One way or another, it's going to affect every single LLVM developer,
> be it one working on the upstream LLVM, or some downstream fork,
> or those just wishing to keep up with the project.
> **There should be transparency and accountability.**
> 
> The second question I would like to raise is:
> the blog post claims transparent, first-class email support,
> but the mailing list mode can not actually be toggled on.
> There is just no such checkbox, unlike some other discourse forum.
> For me personally, that is a deal-breaker, and unless I'm able to
> keep up to date with the discussions in the lists format,
> I'm simply going to stop following discussions, period.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what "Mailing List Mode"
is, so let me try to clear this up:

"Mailing List Mode" is a convenient way to watch all Discourse categories
at once.  The mailman equivalent of this would be if you subscribed to
all the LLVM mailing lists at the same time.

There is another way to watch all the Discourse categories.  You can go
to your notification preferences and add every category (and sub-category)
to the list of categories that you want to watch.  Watching a category is
the mailman equivalent of subscribing to a single mailing list.

When you watch a category, you will receive emails for every new post in
the category.  Turning "Mailing List Mode" off does not prevent users from
receiving emails for new posts.

This is relevant now because "Mailing List Mode" was recently disabled for
everyone on Discourse. This was necessary because we were running up against
the daily email limits for free accounts on Discourse.

Whether or not the "Mailing List Mode" feature is available it is
not recommended that people use this feature.  It is recommended
that instead users watch only the categories that they are interested
in.  This will help reduce your own email load and also reduce the load
on the Discourse server (number of emails per month is limited based on
the organization's subscription type).

I hope this helps clear things up.

-Tom

> 
> While, I, personally, have not had much hands-on experience with
> LLVM's discourse, mainly it's email side, I hear the situation
> is not what the blogpost claims it to be, and there are other things
> that aren't "just work", and that was known months ago, e.g.:
> https://llvm.discourse.group/t/discourse-as-mailing-list-replacement-some-questions/3713/4
> 
> Given that the hard switch point of Feb 1'st has already been set,
> and is less than a week away, i'd like to hear some clarification
> as to what is going on, and strongly recommend doing either of the following:
> * STOP migration(s) due to "false start", the end status already being decided
>    before the process even begun, and using the process just as a means
>    to legalize the decision made beforehand.
> * postponing the switch by a month (until March 1'st), or however long needed,
>    effectively immediately, in order to make the migration actually possible
>    by working out the issues that have come up during the migration.
> 
> While what is written above is my personal view on things,
> I do **not** believe the said view is unique to me.
> 
> What are the foundation's thoughts on this?
> 
> Roman
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