Re: Testing Discourse for Debian
On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 10:51:21AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>
>Sub 30 was what I was thinking of. I'm only saying there's a bit of a
>statistical tendency, not that this applies to everyone, obviously. But
>when I look around at the broader development world, the majority of the
>newer projects seem to not use email at all. Even when they do, it's not
>where the most useful conversation happens.
>
>Now, in a lot of cases the real conversation happens on GitHub, which
>isn't exactly the same thing as a forum. But forums seem to play a large
>role in some of the more vibrant communities (Rust, for instance).
There was a good talk about this topic at FOSDEM this year:
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/nextgencontributors/
>> There is something to be said for educating "younger people" with the
>> old ways -- I mean how many of these "Modern" things are just
>> re-implementations of what previously existed (except with centralized
>> control and "oh yeah, pay us").
>
>This may be the case, but I think those of us who are familiar with email
>have a bit of a tendency (I'm *definitely* including myself in this) to
>jump straight to "let me explain to you how email already does everything
>you want if you just use it properly" without bothering to ask people what
>features they like and really listen to them.
>
>Professionally, I can tell you that my younger colleagues tend to hate
>email and far prefer other communication mechanisms, and that's not
>because they're unaware of how email is used. The most commonly stated
>reason is that email is full of noise and pointless messages that aren't
>worth reading, compared to other approaches. That's just anecdotes, not
>data, obviously, but it made me curious to understand what I might be
>missing. (My past experience is that when younger colleagues get excited
>about a new way of doing things, I should pay attention, because there are
>probably things that I'm missing and that I will appreciate if I look into
>them more deeply.)
Nod. Much as we're comfortable and happy with email, it's important to
keep open-minded and be ready to evaluate other things too. Just
because we happen to like it now, that doesn't mean it's guaranteed to
be the best possible way to communicate *ever*.
Hell, there's a strong confirmation bias here too - how many
potentially great future developers have we lost at a very early stage
because our email-centric workflow didn't appeal to them initially?
--
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. steve@einval.com
You raise the blade, you make the change... You re-arrange me 'til I'm sane...
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