On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 10:50:42AM +0200, Jarek Prokop wrote:
also drives us towards more scattered communications. Our infamous mega-threads are not really effective for getting to community consensus, and tend to bring out the worst in us.
Passionate people generate passionate discussion.
The only thing you will gain by a forum is that at the point the message will not be deemed appropriate, it will probably be deleted or "beatified" by the mod team. The passion from our human nature will not go away with a platform change.
That's true -- and I'm not looking to get rid of passion, or silence opinions. But when something is _really_ out of line (often written in the heat of the moment), it's better to have options to ... as you say, beautify* the conversation. That makes it better for other people participating, and better for the person who has a chance to make their point in a more constructive way.
* also, to fix typos :)
[snip]
A discussion to a technical change, for me, will forever be in a ticket. No matter the "wider discussion platform" projects will always have bug trackers where one can create a ticket.
Of course. That's not what I'm talking about. Consider for example this: https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/2817. That's not about the technical decision itself -- it's an branch of the conversation that should have been here.
biased towards those for whom it is working just fine. But, core Fedora development discussion can’t be limited to that ever-shrinking group. Consider who isn’t here. The problems are real, and the trend isn’t in a good direction.
But, is it shrinking due to a platform, or something other?
I don't think Fedora contribution and activity overall are shrinking. And I'm quite convinced that the platform is part of it.
It makes me want to try discourse out, not saying I'll stick around,
I'm glad to hear that.
I am, luckily, not paid to read forums with no threading. IMO, a stream of posts with mentions of previous posts is not threading. Threading begins and ends on new topic posts AFAICT on discourse.
It's not presented as a tree, but there _are_ threads of replies. If you see something like "2 replies" under a particular post, you can click that and the view will be restricted to just those replies, which you can then follow further.
Example: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/future-of-encryption-in-fedora-deskto...
But also, yes — when something really diverges in Discourse, it should be a new topic. A moderator can move things after the fact (like I did with https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/getting-systemd-homed-working-properl...) but even better, when replying, you can create a linked topic. See https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/site-tip-create-linked-topics-for-dee...
But I'd be happier if there was some tangible metric how to measure if we got more *related to the topic* engagement. I would hate to see 20 "+1" posts from "random" users counted towards "it is better now".
That's reasonable. Do you have suggestions for a good metric?
In Project Discussion, each different Fedora team can have its own tag, and you can subscribe to those that you’re interested in. Cross-posting is easy: tag a post with multiple teams.
I'd be interested in having a kind of "crossroad sign", to direct me towards tags what I would care about from a packager perspective. Not happy about this change, but it would make my experience a bit better...
There's a big _index_ at https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/tags, but that's probably bit much (while at the same time not containing enough description). What would this "sign" ideally look like to you?
That said, it is web-first software. (Or mobile, if that’s your thing.) That requires some adjustment, I know. I hope opening up a Fedora Discussion tab – or keeping one open — becomes an easy habit.
If I was a volunteer that's the thing I'd remember once in a blue moon that it even exists. But I guess that's just person to person :).
There _are_ email notifications, and you can interact by replying to them. (You can even +1 or <3.)
There is also a "digest" mail sent automatically if you're not active, showing active topics possibly of interest, which can serve as a more-frequent-than-blue-moon reminder. (You can turn this off, of course.)
As a person in my early 20s, I hate how everything is becoming web centric and no one can convince me to feel otherwise. While I am hearing from varying people around me, how it must be bad using email, it provides client-side filtering unparalleled by any platform that I used in the past.
It's fine, but it's no NNTP. That was really the best. :)
Do take a look at
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/guide-to-interacting-with-this-site-b...
It's not perfect, but it's better than most other forum software's email interfaces.
I enjoyed Fedora being on mailing lists, nothing ever came close to the threading of emails. I was not getting lost in threads of conversation while still being under the umbrella topic, no need to open who knows how many links to read all tangents.
I appreciate your perspective, feedback, and willingness to try this out!