Disappointed and overwhelmed by Discourse

[SamSaffron]

@pf_moore see:

Defer Topic Button - Mark topic unread

I find this invaluable, recommend you install it here.

[pf_moore (Paul Moore)]

@SamSaffron

I find this invaluable, recommend you install it here.

I don’t understand what you mean by “Install it here”. Can you explain? Is it something I have to configure in my settings?

[SamSaffron]

You are going to have to convince an admin here to install it, once it is installed it will be available in your settings

[pf_moore (Paul Moore)]

@SamSaffron

You are going to have to convince an admin here to install it

Ah, OK, so that remark wasn’t directed at me, then I’ll give it a try if it gets enabled.

[grodola (Giampaolo Rodola)]

@SamSaffron

This should definitely work, I am going to need an example, it would be super helpful if you can let me know.

On Firefox 65 + Ubuntu:

• go to a section, say Core Workflow - Discussions on Python.org
• click on X button on the top right of the page → click “muted”
• go to latest (https://discuss.python.org/latest) → Core Workflow section is still shown

[monk-time (Dmitry)]

Huh, I never noticed you can switch notification status for a category using that well-hidden button near “+ New Topic”, neat. But it works fine for me.

[brettcannon]

@vstinner

but for an unknown reason, the feature isn’t available in a folder (called “label” in Gmail): only for emails living in the Inbox.

It seems sometime very recently they made it such that if you muted a thread from within a label it will add the “muted” label. Now that doesn’t do anything else since you are already skipping the inbox in that instance, but the label at least works. I’ve now bookmarked an is:muted search as the tab I open for Gmail everyday and then habitually select all unread emails and mark them as read.

[gpshead (Gregory P. Smith)]

@brettcannon

I think we will have to come to a decision soon if people take sides and stop reading here or the mailing lists as it leads to an even more extreme bifurcation of communication

You’ll need to decide what is even being decided upon.

If the topic to decide on is how to prevent bifurcation, I think the choice to make is for each specific category (currently aka “mailing list equivalents”) which one non-bifurcated communication method will be used. committers, dev, ideas, list/users, they all have different needs and audiences.

Are we forcing people to communicate in a certain manner? We already do. We force people to act like its the 90s for everything (SMTP, listservs, 90s style web archives) beyond this current experiment.

[Senthil (Senthil Kumaran)]

@brettcannon

But I think we will have to come to a decision soon if people take sides and stop reading here or the mailing lists as it leads to an even more extreme bifurcation of communication.

I understand this motivation, and it may be important to come to a conclusion soon. I had shared my feedback in this thread Creating a "python-dev" equivalent category - #8 by Senthil

• I feel that discourse may not be a true equivalent for mailing list. With mailing lists, we have configured our clients, and have adopted conventions to handle traffic and discussions.

• Discourse is useful for focused discussions. python-committers can still benefit from that as know the traffic of that list.

But I vote for keeping the mailing list of python-dev , python-ideas, peps, and other high traffic list.
For smaller discussions (python-committers), where we might need voting discourse can be useful.

If hard-pressed to choose one for python-dev, I will side with mailing list over discourse. This is not a negative opinion on discourse, but a preference based on the understanding of traffic and scale.

Thank you,
Senthil

[brettcannon]

@gpshead

committers, dev, ideas, list/users, they all have different needs and audiences.

Yep. For me I want to get python-committers sorted out first. If we decide “this will work for discuss.python.org” then let’s settle that instead of splitting discussions. Then we can talk about whether we want to move other lists over.

But for me the most immediate issue is core discussions taking place on two locations and people starting to say “I choose this side and I plan to ignore the other”.

[Mariatta]

Not sure if this is the place to voice my personal preference. I still prefer discourse compared to mailing list. I’ve started to not reply to python-committers mailing list and post here instead.

Really would be great if we can just choose one, I think this experiment has gone long enough.

I also don’t use any sort of notification/mailing list mode on discourse. I just come here several times a day and check the “latest” tab.

[maxking (Abhilash Raj)]

FWIW, Hyperkitty(Mailman 3 archiver) does have a way for you track the messages you have unread on this page see the bottom right. I agree the UI is not as good to figure out on the homepage what you haven’t read, but if you could report what you expect, we could try to fix it and present something better.

It is also possible to track what threads you have read.

Rich text is actually quite easy to add, although, it is not as easy to be interoperable with emails since that would break signatures if try to convert to plain text or look not-so-nice in plain-text if we don’t. We could discuss more on this and should be possible to implement if users are okay with one of those.

Moderation features are proposed as GSoC project for this summer, but will be picked up by me, in case we don’t find a suitable student to work on it. You would be able to block users/threads and delete emails from HK interface.

[brettcannon]

@maxking

I agree the UI is not as good to figure out on the homepage what you haven’t read, but if you could report what you expect, we could try to fix it and present something better.

Where would you like it reported?

[maxking (Abhilash Raj)]

@brettcannon

@maxking

I agree the UI is not as good to figure out on the homepage what you haven’t read, but if you could report what you expect, we could try to fix it and present something better.

Where would you like it reported?

Mailman 3 uses Gitlab for source hosting and issue tracking. You can report Hyperkitty issues here.

[SamSaffron]

@grodola

Core Workflow section is still shown

Yes we still show topics where you have explicit tracking state cause you visited them in the past and are tracking. New topics however and one’s you never visited will not show up in the list.

I confirmed here that it will not show up on the home page:

And since I am not tracking many core workflow topics:

For example is not visible to me in latest:

To clean up history you can just mute the topics you gathered read state on by visiting and muting.

[vstinner (Victor Stinner)]

@Mariatta

Really would be great if we can just choose one, I think this experiment has gone long enough.

I’m not sure that a “controversial” PEP has been discussed here. That would be the best way to test the main feature of Discourse: moderation. I saw the moderation used time to time, but until right now, PEP discussions on Discourse have been mostly commented by core devs. Governance PEPs were discussed in the Committers section, and so discussions were not open to everybody: only core devs.

Maybe @pablogsal and Mario would like to test Discourse with their PEP 570 here? (the Ideas section may be appropriate)

If I recall properly, the main reason to experiment Discourse was to handle high volume of messages on PEP discussions and enhance moderation, no? Do you consider that we had enough time to experiment that aspect of Discourse yet?

[vstinner (Victor Stinner)]

@mjw

I think mailman 3 + Hyperkitty goes a very long way towards resolving this (…)

Any update on the migration of python-ideas and python-dev to HyperKitty?

[brettcannon]

@vstinner

Any update on the migration of python-ideas and python-dev to HyperKitty?

At least for python-ideas that’s on hold until the status of discuss.python.org gets resolved (or I stop administering the list and someone takes it over).

[pitrou (Antoine Pitrou)]

@barry

In all honesty, I’ve stopped following python-ideas, although I do occasionally drop in via Gmane. Gmane/NNTP access to the list archives is obviously a pretty minority use case, but it works really well for me.

Right, GMane is really a godsend for keeping track of mailing-list without being overwhelmed. I don’t know how I would manage without it.

Conversely, imagine all mailing-lists you are following suddenly migrated to Discourse. Now you have to “log in” and keep a browser tab open to all Discourse instances (because, generally, you don’t follow only Python MLs, so it’s not only discuss.python.org but a bunch of different Discourse installs)…

[gpshead (Gregory P. Smith)]

@pitrou

imagine all mailing-lists you are following suddenly migrated to Discourse. Now you have to “log in” and keep a browser tab open to all Discourse instances (because, generally, you don’t follow only Python MLs, so it’s not only discuss.python.org but a bunch of different Discourse installs)…

Public Discourse forums could be hooked up to a listserv where the Discourse instance is the only allowed sender for forum archival in list form on GMane and friends.