[vtk-developers] [vtkusers] Transition to Discourse - thoughts from lurker

[Marcus D. Hanwell]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 2:05 PM Elvis Stansvik <elvis.stansvik at orexplore.com>
wrote:

> Den ons 23 jan. 2019 kl 19:50 skrev Cory Quammen <cory.quammen at kitware.com
> >:
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 1:46 PM Elvis Stansvik
> > <elvis.stansvik at orexplore.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Meanwhile I see that discussion is still active on the dev mailing
> > > list. Shouldn't the VTK developers dogfood and use the Development
> > > category on Discourse now? :)
> >
> > Yep, that's the idea for new developer topics. I think it makes sense
> > for existing discussions to be wrapped up on the mailing list for
> > archival purposes.
> >
> > > Sorry, mostly joking. I'm one of the ones who are sad to see the
> > > mailing lists go, and the greater transition to Discourse, as my life
> > > is sort of built around my inbox :p I'll grudgingly accept defeat and
> > > register of course.
> >
> > You can still use email! Albeit with some of the caveats mentioned in
> > the discussion leading up to this transition.
>
> Yep, threw in some thoughts in that that thread (I think). I
> participate some in other communities that have transitioned to
> Discourse (e.g. HDF5), and it's a pain.. I can't collect all my
> correspondence in one place anymore, marking/unmarking of stuff as
> read etc., the mails from Discourse has a lot of cruft (buttons/links)
> and the threading/replying inline doesn't work well. Also, if I reply
> to a thread via the web UI, it'll show up as unread in my inbox
> (naturally), which is annoying because I use that to keep an eye on
> topics I follow. Also can't catch up on stuff while offline, which
> occasionally do happen.
>
> Wait, now I started a rambling when I promised myself not to do it :)
> It's a community decision and I accept that. Perhaps the mail
> integration will improve.
>

I am trying to finish up some writing, and so procrastination made me check
the lists. I love and hate Discourse, there, I said it! The interface is
nice, and I think you can express more, fix typos, have richer
interactions, and provide a better thing to be indexed/viewed by others.

Discourse is still a pain for people that participate in many communities,
email is hard to beat for using the client you prefer, threading support,
having layers of communities you work with. I have a chemistry folder with
chemistry lists I am on within, a Kitware folder with Kitware related
communities, general lists folder for all the others.

Each of those subfolders is starting to become their own Discourse
instance, and it makes it harder for me to keep track of all of them, and
view them all from my mail client, replying with ease. I get the impression
that mailing lists are going the way of IRC :-) I am trying to adapt my
habits, but often miss notifications on threads I am taking part in, and
don't reply for weeks or more.

I suspect I need to develop new habits, spending a little time checking in
on Discourse instances I interact with every now and then, possibly
tweaking the notifications, and how I filter them in my email folder. I
genuinely prefer the added richness in discussion threads, I haven't tried
replying to Discourse stuff through email. Attending open source
conferences/workshops Discourse is improving engagement with newer
community members.

I think on balance it is a great step forward, but when something works
well for you (and me) it can feel like a waste of time changing it up. It
does us all good to learn new things, tangentially it has been fun to watch
the evolution of static web site, to server side includes, to Dreamweaver
et al, to PHP/MySQL content managers, to template-based static web sites. I
am a huge fan of Hugo, you can use GitHub for review, Travis to deploy, ...

I really should get back to writing ;-) Sad to see the demise of the lists,
and need to spend a little time retooling my habits around communication
with communities.
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