Creating a "python-dev" equivalent category

Sorry for being cranky. I’m not cranky at you.

If I had the appropriate permissions I would just go ahead and add the category myself, but I don’t :frowning:

Nobody in this thread is asking whether we should move discussions here from other venues like python-dev. That’s an important question, but it’s not what this thread is about. The question here is: for the development related discussions that are currently happening here, is it better to:

  1. File them in an appropriate category so people can configure their notifications/etc. appropriately,
  2. File them randomly in inappropriate and confusing categories, and in the process exclude community members from joining the discussion.

Right now we’re doing (2). Do you think we should be doing (1) or (2)?

I think we should be doing (3) - redirect discussions back to the mailing list if they are related to areas that haven’t yet been agreed should be moved to Discourse. That’s what we do when someone posts to the wrong mailing list - why should this be different?

I understand @nas’s point that he wanted to include screenshots (rich text is an improvement over text-only emails) but the mailing list (even with its limitations) is where this sort of discussion happens right now, and I’d rather it was changed as a result of a deliberate discussion and choice, not by accidental drift.

The thread Adding char* based APIs for Unix is another example of something that doesn’t belong in committers.

This discussion is a typical case where everybody agrees that things are broken, but since we can’t agree of a fix, we’ll just leave it broken.

Ah, I’m sorry about it. I thought python-dev is merged into “Committers” category in discourse.
I searched why I thought so… and find this.

I’m mapping discuss.python.org categories to these mailing lists in my head:

  • Committers: python-committers
  • Ideas: python-ideas
  • Users: python-list
  • core-workflow: core-workflow

For me it’s strange to have a gap between ideas and committers: no python-dev.

I’m just personally choosing to focus that kind of effort into council stuff right now and hopefully to help get the PEP written

Which PEP? The one that Barry asked here?
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-committers/2019-February/006537.html

Who is working on such PEP or who wants to write such PEP?

Even if a PEP is written, I’m not sure that we will be able to take a decision :slight_smile:

My practical problem is that until a decision is taken, there are more and more committers starting discussions in the Committers category which prevents non-committers to be involved in the discussion. I really dislike that committers have “super power” and exclude other people from discussions :frowning:

We should move these discussions to Users or ask committers to stop using Discourse for discussions who must be open to everybody. As you may have understood, I’m unhappy with the “move to the Users category” trade off :slight_smile:

Small explanation why I’m unhappy with this compromise.

I’m not subscribed to python-list nor python-ideas on purpose. Right now, I don’t have the bandwidth to follow these lists. I prefer to stick to python-dev. But because of the lack of python-dev category, I get a notification for new discussions in the Users category :frowning: Example of new Users discussion (it has been posted in the correct category :wink:):

Can an @admins please add a new python-dev category?

just semantnically, naming it python-dev wouldn’t really fit the current category naming schema.

Thoughts on reorganizing as such using sub categories?

Python Language:

  • Committers (equivalent to python-committers, recategorized from top level)
  • Development (equivalent to python-dev, new)
  • Ideas (equivalent to python-ideas, recategorized from top level)
  • Users (no mailing list equivalent that I’m aware of, recategorized from top level)

For now I’ve created the Development category. I suppose we can always recategorize later.

:frowning:

I remain -1 on splitting python-dev traffic between here and the mailing list, and in particular doing so without a proper community discussion of the change.

And I’m a little annoyed that this seemed to happen just because @vstinner kept asking for it, in spite of a number of people being uncomfortable with the idea. (@EWDurbin sorry if that’s not the reality, but I’m not clear what your actual reason for doing this was).

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ack, agh, sorry I suppose I jumped the gun?

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Okay… category removed until steering council or other suitable body decrees something. Apologies for misinterpreting.

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Please read again my rationale. Committers are already using discuss.python.org to discuss topics which would belong to python-dev if they would be posted to a mailing list. My concern is that they post to Committers whereas only core dev can reply there.

I am not the one who “took the decision” to use discuss.python.org to discuss Python development.

But which ones are really active ? The Committers category is. The Users category, mildly. The Ideas category? Most discussions still seem to happen on the python-ideas ML. As for core-workflow, it’s difficult to judge, as there aren’t many discussions on both channels.

I read your rationale. I disagree with it. Did you read my comment? People should be directed back to the mailing list, pointing out that we’re not yet using Discourse for python-dev discussions.

Hi,

The reason I posted here (the Users category) was because it says Users and the tooltip says ‘General discussion forum for the Python language. All welcome’

I’ve given up on comp.lang.python because google groups lets in so much spam it is impossible. (I did try flagging the spam for about a year but gave up.)

So I was hoping this would be a saner place for Python users.

But if that’s not its purpose, maybe the name ‘Users’ should change and certainly the tooltip.
My hope though is that it really will become a nice alternative to comp.lang.python: the rust discourse is a pleasure to use and no spam or discourtesy.

On Thu, 28 Feb 2019 15:30:11 +0000
“Victor Stinner via Discussions on Python.orgpython1@discoursemail.com
wrote:

Yes.

I believe @willingc and @pablogsal are going to (but I might be remembering wrong).

We have a steering council for a reason. :wink:

@vstinner I’ve started a draft PEP in my personal repos and invited @pablogsal to collaborate.

Similar to the process that we used for governance, I want to take an informational first pass of all of the communication mediums currently in use. Thanks to dev guide, Victor, and other resources, we’ll have a reasonable first pass.

Right now a very rough outline is in the repo (willingc/pep-communication). I have more extensive notes on paper (as I think better that way). I also plan to do some metrics for usage of various mediums.

As an FYI, I suspect that the best path forward is unlikely to be always mailing list or always Discourse.

If others wish to contribute or be co-authors, please leave a note in the issues for the repo.

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Oh nice, I didn’t know that Carol was working on a PEP. So things are moving on :wink:

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Do you happen to have a link for the repo?