Hello, On Sun 12 Apr 2020 at 07:39PM +02, Enrico Zini wrote: > Things that the current list discussion doesn't easily give: > > - +1 kind of feedback, or simple agreement, tends to unexpressed: > people only reply if they have a problem with things, and shut up > otherwise. > > For example, the recent Salsa as OIDC provider discussion had a > relatively small amount of people contributing: does it mean that a > lot of people just agree, or does it mean that only few people care? > > Silent assent and only negative feedback is a very demotivating > process to go through putting a proposal up for discussion. That makes sense. Thanks. I do not find "+1" feedback particular valuable in most contexts, but I understand your explanation for how it could be valuable and am grateful for it. > - Some kind of weighting of posts. Sometimes I wonder: "is it just me, > or this objection is not that relevant?", and I have no real way to > know, besides maybe polling my social bubble, which could be biased. > > Ranking of perceived importants of topics or aspects discussed might > have helped me manage the energy I put into the whole discussion, > going into more detail where I could see there was more interest or > concern. Well, I for one trust your judgement as to whether the objection is relevant :) But indeed, if you didn't have to spend the time making that judgement, it would be beneficial. >> I am concerned that the problem is basically a social one, and so cannot >> be solved just by using a different software stack to host discussions. > > Ish. I think there are may social aspects involved, and the same time > the process that we currently use has technical or traditional limits > which filter against various kinds of feedback which people would > socially be happy to give. > > I follow list discussions and some messages make me go "yay! Standing > ovation!" and some messages I skip after reading part of the first line, > and some messages make me furious. Socially we might able to express > that in a way that feeds into the quality and direction of discussions, > but technically, we currently cannot. Let me say a bit more. I tend to think that the bad threads we have are mainly due to limitations in our communicative skills. We do not always succeed in saying what is worth saying in as few words as possible. And, you can't solve a problem which is due to a lack of human skill by writing software. I am open to the possibility that this is not the right perspective to have. I have a bias towards assuming that communicative and informational problems are caused by people not behaving skillfully enough, when the cause is not otherwise clear. -- Sean Whitton
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