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Re: Debian is testing Discourse



On Sun, Apr 12, 2020 at 18:16:44 +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:  
> What if someone else already wrote that, possibly in better words than I 
> could?
If you really feel like it's necessary, you can reply to the thread with:
 I like this proposal mainly because of A and B, but I am a bit concerned 
 about C. Person P. already gave an good argument as to why.

> The rules for submitting or sponsoring actual voting proposals /
> amendments etc. are clearly laid out, I don't see any danger here.
Well, I do, though none of us can see into the future.
But that makes me wonder: If you don't think likes/dislikes as present on 
discourse have an influence on this: Why bother using it at all ?

And even if I only mentioned it with one sentence in the debian-vote section as 
I wrote about it before: The accessibility, which would *decrease* with 
discourse, (and exclude mail-interface users from the like/disliking) should be 
a top priority for debian-vote.

If you want to give people more familiar with forums a familiar interface, I'd 
say the reverse approach is much more feasible and does not create problems 
with accessibility: Offer a forum-like front-end for the mailing list.
There are already 3rd parties offering something like that for debian 
mailing-lists. One that sometimes shows up in my search results, would be nabble 
(note that I'm not endorsing or recommending any such 3rd party provider)
  http://debian.2.n7.nabble.com/Debian-is-testing-Discourse-td4669989.html

If there is a need for that debian could offer something like that itself (if it 
does not yet exists, didn't check).
As the backend would still be purely text based, there is no issue with 
accessibility or feature exclusion.


This leaves us only with "moderation" as a _potential_ benefit of discourse as a 
primary interface.
Stronger moderation with retroactive editing and deleting however, while it 
night offer _some_ benefits, also creates a fair share of problems and potential 
for abuse in the future.
Given the disadvantages with a forum focused interface, I don't think a 
potential benefit in moderation is worth it.


-- Nito

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