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The Gnome Project is closing all its mailing lists

theregister.com

71–80 of 95 posts

Re: The Gnome Project is closing all its mailing lists

#71
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mailing Lists are decidedly democratic, and have least barrier to entry. Oh no, they are not. I loathe projects that only do mailing list support, because that means I have to subscribe to the mailing list, create a new folder and filter rule so that the mailing list doesn't flood my inbox with stuff I don't care about, and once the problem is solved, leave the mailing list, remove the filter and folder. In contras…

"I have to subscribe to the mailing list, create a new folder and filter rule" That's a workflow problem on your side. Why is it so hard? Maybe your mail user agent isn't configurable? "In contrast,"... "me"... "I"... "I"... "I"... Every one of your proposed advantages are not about the community's health, but about your convenience and ability to ignore the community as a whole. It's fine that you have a preference,…

> Every one of your proposed advantages are not about the community's health, but about your convenience and ability to ignore the community as a whole.

You were talking about MLs being more barrier-free than "friendly interfaces". I showed why that is not the case. The effort required for dealing with MLs is way higher.

Re: The Gnome Project is closing all its mailing lists

#72
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who formerly used to be in no-ML camp, I am proudly converted. Mailing Lists are decidedly democratic, and have least barrier to entry. It is also technically superior in providing unified interface to patches, communication, bug reports and everything adjacent. Compared to that any fancy service provides lock-in under thin veil of "friendly interface".

> Mailing Lists are decidedly democratic, and have least barrier to entry. Oh no, they are not. I loathe projects that only do mailing list support, because that means I have to subscribe to the mailing list, create a new folder and filter rule so that the mailing list doesn't flood my inbox with stuff I don't care about, and once the problem is solved, leave the mailing list, remove the filter and folder. In contras…

In most cases, you can send to a mailing list without subscribing, and people will include your email when they respond. I've filed multiple bugs this way. It was as easy as sending an email and attaching a patch.

Re: The Gnome Project is closing all its mailing lists

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mailing Lists are decidedly democratic, and have least barrier to entry. Oh no, they are not. I loathe projects that only do mailing list support, because that means I have to subscribe to the mailing list, create a new folder and filter rule so that the mailing list doesn't flood my inbox with stuff I don't care about, and once the problem is solved, leave the mailing list, remove the filter and folder. In contras…

In most cases, you can send to a mailing list without subscribing, and people will include your email when they respond. I've filed multiple bugs this way. It was as easy as sending an email and attaching a patch.

Whenever I tried interacting with mailing lists in the last five years, I always needed to subscribe or wait for days for someone to moderate the spam queue.

Anti-spam measures are a large part of what made using MLs so annoying. From a moderation side, MLs are more work for that reason as well - Github and Gitlab at least get rid of spambots shilling shady cryptocurrencies, weenie enlargeners or questionable quality designer drugs. With MLs, all of this ends up in your moderation queue as well.

Re: The Gnome Project is closing all its mailing lists

#75
post #60
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

see? my point.

It’s also very good on a laptop with a touchpad. You swipe up for overview, swipe left right for another desktop, each desktop contains a few windows. It’s easy and fast.

yes, this is one of many examples of gnome 3 deferring to MacOS's UX language

Re: The Gnome Project is closing all its mailing lists

#76
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A mailing list which is 1:1 accessible via a web interface and an NNTP interface.

Sure that's better. What would be even better would be support: - CI integration - Rich markup, for images etc. - Simple patch management - Edits to messages - Issue tracking

What does CI have to do with a mailing list for software support?

Rich markup: you can use HTML in mail. I think it's silly, but you can do that.

Simple patch management: that's what version control systems are for; if your vcs doesn't support email, you can't do that. If it does, you can.

Edits to messages: you mean altering the past? That's a terrible idea.

Issue tracking: that's what bug trackers are for. You add a link to the bug number, or, more likely, you send a mail message to the bug tracker's email interface and get a bug number back. Send more email with the bug number in the subject and it gets added as a comment to the bug.

Re: The Gnome Project is closing all its mailing lists

#77
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure that's better. What would be even better would be support: - CI integration - Rich markup, for images etc. - Simple patch management - Edits to messages - Issue tracking

What does CI have to do with a mailing list for software support? Rich markup: you can use HTML in mail. I think it's silly, but you can do that. Simple patch management: that's what version control systems are for; if your vcs doesn't support email, you can't do that. If it does, you can. Edits to messages: you mean altering the past? That's a terrible idea. Issue tracking: that's what bug trackers are for. You add…

I think most people prefer having all of this functionality integrated in one place.

Re: The Gnome Project is closing all its mailing lists

#78

As a mailing-list bound software professional, this is wonderful news. Maybe one day we will be free of software development on MLs.

> Maybe one day we will be free of software development on MLs.

This is the same as saying we should only ever do open source development on closed proprietary platforms which only exist and allow access on the whim of a single entity which responds to no one.

As opposed to communicating over a completely open, decentralized and inherently free protocol.

Re: The Gnome Project is closing all its mailing lists

#79
post #78

As a mailing-list bound software professional, this is wonderful news. Maybe one day we will be free of software development on MLs.

> Maybe one day we will be free of software development on MLs. This is the same as saying we should only ever do open source development on closed proprietary platforms which only exist and allow access on the whim of a single entity which responds to no one. As opposed to communicating over a completely open, decentralized and inherently free protocol.

Discourse is open source
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