Mailing List Archive

On Fri, Dec 2, 2022 at 8:17 AM Baptiste Carvello <
devel2022@baptiste-carvello.net> wrote:

> Le 02/12/2022 à 10:09, Gregory P. Smith a écrit :
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 1, 2022 at 8:37 AM Victor Stinner <vstinner@python.org
> > <mailto:vstinner@python.org>> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Should we *close* the python-dev mailing list?
> >
> >
> > I'd be in favor of this.
>
> Why?


Because in the past people have complained about having too many places to
keep track of discussions (and this goes in both directions; some people
don't read email regularly while others live in their inbox). Since we are
promoting/pushing folks to use discuss.python.org it means this mailing
list starts to feel like more of a burden/excess.

-Brett


> Californian firms won't let their employees use an unmoderated
> forum for fear of liability: OK, so be it. But that's no reason to force
> other people to use tools they dislike.


We are just saying that we may, as a team, not want to be the people
providing a mailing list for folks to use to discuss Python development. Or
at the very least not make it feel like a requirement for core devs to
monitor this mailing list like it has been in the past. If people choose to
keep using email then they can choose to do so on their own, just like IRC
or any other place people chat.

-Brett


> "Modern tools" hegemonism is
> little more than pure intolerance.
>
> Or at least setting up an auto-responder
> > suggesting people post on discuss.python.org <http://discuss.python.org>
> > instead.
>
> Just put a line in the list signature stating that discussions requiring
> core-dev attention should happen on discourse, and be done.
>
> Cheers,
> Baptiste
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>

I am a long time lurker here*, a professional and educational user of
the language, a list moderator with practical exeperience managing a
engaged community of a few thousand users over the course of a decade -
and yes, I am old.

I saw what happened when the young developers there insisted that we'd
all be much happier with a threaded forum - so nice, if what you want
is to browse a web page, or to find all of the points in a (hopefully)
threaded discussion.

We were all assured that we could continue to participate in the new
forum in whatever way we wanted, and in particular that access by email
would be just as nice as ever.

That community still has a website, and I suppose people post on it,
but as I am not the equivalent of a "core dev" I have no reason to post
there, and more to the point the community has migrated away from the
comerderie that was widely experienced on the discussion lists.

The email communities died, and anyone who didn't have to "work" for
the organization went elsewhere.

So my observation is that the loudest voices for retiring an email list
(or IRC channel) will be exactly the people that don't use those
things, and seem to think no one else does either. I can readily allow
that those of you who do the work here and sort stuff out will find
utility in a threaded forum - but if you lose the list, it won't come
back. Perhaps "you" don't care - things change, and user preferences
shift. I wouldn't want my preferences to constrain how the core devs
do their work. But if you do not enjoy getting emails, perhaps you
should remember that some of us do.

Gordon

*i joined to raise an issue regarding the re library that seemed
significant to me at the time, and decided that what you all were doing
was interesting enough for me to continue to follow as it unfolded



On Fri, 2022-12-02 at 14:40 +0100, Baptiste Carvello wrote:
> Le 02/12/2022 à 10:09, Gregory P. Smith a écrit :
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 1, 2022 at 8:37 AM Victor Stinner <vstinner@python.org
> > <mailto:vstinner@python.org>> wrote:
> >
> >
> >     Should we *close* the python-dev mailing list?
> >
> >
> > I'd be in favor of this.
>
> Why? Californian firms won't let their employees use an unmoderated
> forum for fear of liability: OK, so be it. But that's no reason to
> force
> other people to use tools they dislike. "Modern tools" hegemonism is
> little more than pure intolerance.
>
> Or at least setting up an auto-responder
> > suggesting people post on discuss.python.org
> > <http://discuss.python.org>
> > instead.
>
> Just put a line in the list signature stating that discussions
> requiring
> core-dev attention should happen on discourse, and be done.
>
> Cheers,
> Baptiste
> _______________________________________________
> Python-Dev mailing list -- python-dev@python.org
> To unsubscribe send an email to python-dev-leave@python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-dev.python.org/
> Message archived at
> https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/message/IDKDF7P4WTNVZNJHJZIEQB2M42THOJ3V/
> Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/


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Le 02/12/2022 à 18:49, Brett Cannon a écrit :
>
> Since we are promoting/pushing folks to use discuss.python.org

Until now I've seen more "pushing" (with sticks) than "promoting" (with
carrots).

Since august I've been looking for a way to follow the discussions on
discourse without using the heavy and annoying web interface, or
building a whole stack of filters on my side. It's annoyingly close to
working with RSS: "posts.rss" would just need to keep entries for a
longer time, and include category information.

I regret that there seems to be zero interest in fixing those last
glitches and making RSS really work.

> <http://discuss.python.org> it means this mailing list starts to feel
> like more of a burden/excess.

The "burden" of keeping one additional list on an existing platform is
moderate. Nobody would be forced to read it, but interesting ideas would
surely be copied over to discourse at some point.

All the death clamors are way premature, and either relate to the
"sticks" tactics, or to the usual intolerance of "modern tools" converts.

Baptiste
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On Sun, Dec 04, 2022 at 08:20:56PM +0000, Barney Gale wrote:

> Oh brilliant. I'll unsubscribe from this list then. It sounds like the only
> people using it will be those folks who think their tooling preferences are
> more important than creating a joined-up Python community; I can survive
> without their input.

My, what a hot take you have there.

Did you consider that we already had "a joined-up Python community"
until a subset of people decided to split off to use Discuss to satisfy
*their* tooling preferences?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhaY1hRDYBg

--
Steve
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Perspective from a minor Python contributor:

The only thing worse than email or Discourse is email AND Discourse.
Fragmented communities are a nightmare. I don't want to post to multiple
places in order to reach the devs. Its hard enough to build consensus
already. The relative strengths of email vs discourse pale in comparison to
the dangers of fragmentation IMO.

I prefer mailing lists personally, but theyve been losing out to web forums
for 20 years now. In my view, switching solely to Discourse would help
ensure the vitality of the Python community for years to come.

Barney


On Sat, 3 Dec 2022, 21:31 Baptiste Carvello, <
devel2022@baptiste-carvello.net> wrote:

> Le 02/12/2022 à 18:49, Brett Cannon a écrit :
> >
> > Since we are promoting/pushing folks to use discuss.python.org
>
> Until now I've seen more "pushing" (with sticks) than "promoting" (with
> carrots).
>
> Since august I've been looking for a way to follow the discussions on
> discourse without using the heavy and annoying web interface, or
> building a whole stack of filters on my side. It's annoyingly close to
> working with RSS: "posts.rss" would just need to keep entries for a
> longer time, and include category information.
>
> I regret that there seems to be zero interest in fixing those last
> glitches and making RSS really work.
>
> > <http://discuss.python.org> it means this mailing list starts to feel
> > like more of a burden/excess.
>
> The "burden" of keeping one additional list on an existing platform is
> moderate. Nobody would be forced to read it, but interesting ideas would
> surely be copied over to discourse at some point.
>
> All the death clamors are way premature, and either relate to the
> "sticks" tactics, or to the usual intolerance of "modern tools" converts.


> Baptiste
> _______________________________________________
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> Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
>

Le 04/12/2022 à 16:55, Barney Gale a écrit :
>
> I don't want to post to multiple
> places in order to reach the devs.

Nobody proposed that. In order to reach the devs, you use discourse (or
have someone else do it on your behalf).

Just let the "second circle" of the community keep their mailing list,
as this second circle just won't switch to a specialized, and quite
unflexible tool.

Yeah, without most core devs, this list might be more akin to
python-ideas than the old python-dev. But it makes sense to keep the
bigger following it has grown over the years.

> I prefer mailing lists personally, but theyve been losing out to web
> forums for 20 years now.

This is historically untrue. In technical communities, web forums have
been considered second class tools until some 5 years ago, with
mailing-lists being seen as lighter, more flexible and more capable.

Then they began loosing to *heavily moderated* web forums because of the
insistence on moderation. Yeah, smartphones with no capable mail client
played a role too.

Cheers,
Baptiste
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Oh brilliant. I'll unsubscribe from this list then. It sounds like the only
people using it will be those folks who think their tooling preferences are
more important than creating a joined-up Python community; I can survive
without their input.


On Sun, 4 Dec 2022, 19:53 Baptiste Carvello, <
devel2022@baptiste-carvello.net> wrote:

> Le 04/12/2022 à 16:55, Barney Gale a écrit :
> >
> > I don't want to post to multiple
> > places in order to reach the devs.
>
> Nobody proposed that. In order to reach the devs, you use discourse (or
> have someone else do it on your behalf).
>
> Just let the "second circle" of the community keep their mailing list,
> as this second circle just won't switch to a specialized, and quite
> unflexible tool.
>
> Yeah, without most core devs, this list might be more akin to
> python-ideas than the old python-dev. But it makes sense to keep the
> bigger following it has grown over the years.
>
> > I prefer mailing lists personally, but theyve been losing out to web
> > forums for 20 years now.
>
> This is historically untrue. In technical communities, web forums have
> been considered second class tools until some 5 years ago, with
> mailing-lists being seen as lighter, more flexible and more capable.
>

Invision Power Board, PHPBB and others supplanted mailing lists in the
early 00s. Programming communities took longer because they
disproportionately attract folks with strong and inflexible preferences.

>
> Then they began loosing to *heavily moderated* web forums because of the
> insistence on moderation. Yeah, smartphones with no capable mail client
> played a role too.
>
> Cheers,
> Baptiste
> _______________________________________________
> Python-Dev mailing list -- python-dev@python.org
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>

On Fri, 02 Dec 2022 18:41:44 -0500
"Gordon R. Burgess" <gordon@parasamgate.com> wrote:
> I am a long time lurker here*, a professional and educational user of
> the language, a list moderator with practical exeperience managing a
> engaged community of a few thousand users over the course of a decade -
> and yes, I am old.
>
> I saw what happened when the young developers there insisted that we'd
> all be much happier with a threaded forum - so nice, if what you want
> is to browse a web page, or to find all of the points in a (hopefully)
> threaded discussion.

Well, those developers are not so "young" for the most part :-)

Regards

Antoine.


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On Mon, 5 Dec 2022 at 01:00, Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 04, 2022 at 08:20:56PM +0000, Barney Gale wrote:
>
> > Oh brilliant. I'll unsubscribe from this list then. It sounds like the
> only
> > people using it will be those folks who think their tooling preferences
> are
> > more important than creating a joined-up Python community; I can survive
> > without their input.
>
> My, what a hot take you have there.
>
> Did you consider that we already had "a joined-up Python community"
> until a subset of people decided to split off to use Discuss to satisfy
> *their* tooling preferences?
>

I did; I think it was a mistake to start discourse without a plan for
shutting down this mailing list.

Two wrongs don't make a right, though.


>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhaY1hRDYBg
>
> --
> Steve
>

Barney Gale writes:

> I did; I think it was a mistake to start discourse without a plan for
> shutting down this mailing list.

"Start"? When it was started it was an experiment. Nobody had a
strong take on whether Discourse would really take off or not, or even
whether there might be a dual-channel mode (admittedly that was
relatively unlikely IMO then). Planning to shut down the mailing list
wasn't a good idea.

Pretty quickly a lot of conversations moved to Discourse (surprisingly
to me). But there was still a fair amount of resistance, and a number
of people requested at minimum better threading for the Discourse mail
interface, which took a while but eventually was accomplished. IMO
its only been in the last 4-6 months that shutting down Python-Dev
became a realistic option, as traffic disappeared and the biggest
common complaint about Discourse was mostly resolved[1].

AFAICS the biggest issue with keeping Python-Dev is that it allows the
hope that dev conversations will return to email, and that just seems
unlikely to me. A few people will try to use it, and they'll be
directed to Discourse after short conversations. The only real cost I
see is to the admins, and that's almost zero for the site admin. I
can't speak to the cost to moderators. If they're sick of it, I'd say
we can make the list read-only (ie, archive-only) pretty much any
time. I'd be sad, but I get the feeling that the only people left
reading it are "here for the community", not to develop code, which is
happening over on Discourse.

I'm sure it would be easy[2] to modify the list of moderation options so
that moderators can with discard spam, or send a canned "go post on
Discourse, here's an introduction to Python Discourse" message to
RealPeople[tm].


Footnotes:
[1] That's maybe a little unfair. As a Mailman dev and mailing list
fan, I've thought a lot about this, and I believe there is a fundamental
difference between the completely asynchronous mail protocol and the
much more synchronous messaging protocol imposed by most forum
software, specifically Discourse.

[2] Mailman devs would help, obviously we love Python and would be
happy to contribute back.


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Hi,

Le 05/12/2022 à 14:50, Stephen J. Turnbull a écrit :
>
> I'd be sad, but I get the feeling that the only people left
> reading it are "here for the community", not to develop code, …
I think this is indeed true, but that's nothing to be sad about: "being
here for the community" is not wrong or shameful.

Since forever, python-dev has attracted a large following of enthusiast
Python users, who want to understand the design choices of their
preferred language. This widely shared concern for writing idiomatic
code is a distinguishing trait of the Python community (the whole
culture of "pythonic" code).

Now maybe this is a place where the mailman devs could help and make a
real difference: what if this list would become, not archive-only, but a
*read-only mirror* of those parts of Discourse that are relevant for
core development? That would mean setting up a pipeline starting with
Discourse's so-called "mailing-list mode", going through the kind of
filter stack that some core developers have been setting up for their
personal use, and feeding into this mailing list. The last part can only
be done with the powers of the mailman admins.

Being read-only would not be a problem in practice: non core-devs here
read much more than they post (as they should). Being forced to log into
a specific website is an acceptable roadblock once in a while for
posting, just not every day for simply following the discussions.

Turning this list into a relevant mirror of Discourse is the nicest
course of action for the hundreds of silent readers python-dev has
gathered over the years. All those people *won't* switch to routinely
visiting the Discourse website, no matter how much pushing and wishful
thinking the Steering Council puts into it. Shutting down the list means
kicking them away, more or less overtly.

Cheers,
Baptiste
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Baptiste Carvello writes:
> Le 05/12/2022 à 14:50, Stephen J. Turnbull a écrit :
> >
> > I'd be sad, but I get the feeling that the only people left
> > reading it are "here for the community", not to develop code, …

> I think this is indeed true, but that's nothing to be sad about:

I'm sad because of the prospect of shutting down the list, because

> "being here for the community" is not wrong or shameful.

Far from it! It's why I'm here.

> Now maybe this is a place where the mailman devs could help and make a
> real difference: what if this list would become, not archive-only, but a
> *read-only mirror* of those parts of Discourse that are relevant for
> core development? That would mean setting up a pipeline starting with
> Discourse's so-called "mailing-list mode", going through the kind of
> filter stack that some core developers have been setting up for their
> personal use, and feeding into this mailing list. The last part can only
> be done with the powers of the mailman admins.

The only thing in what you've described that requires admin powers is
shutting off the default ability to post, and then enabling Discourse
to post. None of this *requires* the help of Mailman devs.

> Turning this list into a relevant mirror of Discourse is the nicest
> course of action for the hundreds of silent readers python-dev has
> gathered over the years.

This does seem like an approach that gives 95% of everybody at least
95% of what they want. (In the other 5% of everybody there are the
core devs who strongly prefer email, a constituency important beyond
their numbers, but to do their work they need to communicate with
other core devs and it seems likely 90% of them will be on Discourse,
so....)

Steve

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On 06. 12. 22 11:16, Baptiste Carvello wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Le 05/12/2022 à 14:50, Stephen J. Turnbull a écrit :
>>
>> I'd be sad, but I get the feeling that the only people left
>> reading it are "here for the community", not to develop code, …
> I think this is indeed true, but that's nothing to be sad about: "being
> here for the community" is not wrong or shameful.
>
> Since forever, python-dev has attracted a large following of enthusiast
> Python users, who want to understand the design choices of their
> preferred language. This widely shared concern for writing idiomatic
> code is a distinguishing trait of the Python community (the whole
> culture of "pythonic" code).
>
> Now maybe this is a place where the mailman devs could help and make a
> real difference: what if this list would become, not archive-only, but a
> *read-only mirror* of those parts of Discourse that are relevant for
> core development? That would mean setting up a pipeline starting with
> Discourse's so-called "mailing-list mode", going through the kind of
> filter stack that some core developers have been setting up for their
> personal use, and feeding into this mailing list. The last part can only
> be done with the powers of the mailman admins.
>
> Being read-only would not be a problem in practice: non core-devs here
> read much more than they post (as they should). Being forced to log into
> a specific website is an acceptable roadblock once in a while for
> posting, just not every day for simply following the discussions.
>
> Turning this list into a relevant mirror of Discourse is the nicest
> course of action for the hundreds of silent readers python-dev has
> gathered over the years. All those people *won't* switch to routinely
> visiting the Discourse website, no matter how much pushing and wishful
> thinking the Steering Council puts into it.

I'd like to point out that the SC decision was *reactive*, after most
discussions moved to Discourse without SC pushing.

I liked the list myself! But as soon as most of the posts were mandatory
PEP and release notices, it stopped being useful.


> Shutting down the list means
> kicking them away, more or less overtly.
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I am a new community member and extremely eager to contribute.

I am just adding my two cents here. Apart from the core-mentorship list, I
have not found any other list useful. Discourse is impactful and has a
quite low turnaround time. I have been answering questions in the forum and
from what I can tell, people find it easy to post formatted code snippets
and other media.

Regards,
Abdullah
LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/abdnafees/>.



On Wed, Dec 7, 2022 at 4:04 PM Petr Viktorin <encukou@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 06. 12. 22 11:16, Baptiste Carvello wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Le 05/12/2022 à 14:50, Stephen J. Turnbull a écrit :
> >>
> >> I'd be sad, but I get the feeling that the only people left
> >> reading it are "here for the community", not to develop code, …
> > I think this is indeed true, but that's nothing to be sad about: "being
> > here for the community" is not wrong or shameful.
> >
> > Since forever, python-dev has attracted a large following of enthusiast
> > Python users, who want to understand the design choices of their
> > preferred language. This widely shared concern for writing idiomatic
> > code is a distinguishing trait of the Python community (the whole
> > culture of "pythonic" code).
> >
> > Now maybe this is a place where the mailman devs could help and make a
> > real difference: what if this list would become, not archive-only, but a
> > *read-only mirror* of those parts of Discourse that are relevant for
> > core development? That would mean setting up a pipeline starting with
> > Discourse's so-called "mailing-list mode", going through the kind of
> > filter stack that some core developers have been setting up for their
> > personal use, and feeding into this mailing list. The last part can only
> > be done with the powers of the mailman admins.
> >
> > Being read-only would not be a problem in practice: non core-devs here
> > read much more than they post (as they should). Being forced to log into
> > a specific website is an acceptable roadblock once in a while for
> > posting, just not every day for simply following the discussions.
> >
> > Turning this list into a relevant mirror of Discourse is the nicest
> > course of action for the hundreds of silent readers python-dev has
> > gathered over the years. All those people *won't* switch to routinely
> > visiting the Discourse website, no matter how much pushing and wishful
> > thinking the Steering Council puts into it.
>
> I'd like to point out that the SC decision was *reactive*, after most
> discussions moved to Discourse without SC pushing.
>
> I liked the list myself! But as soon as most of the posts were mandatory
> PEP and release notices, it stopped being useful.
>
>
> > Shutting down the list means
> > kicking them away, more or less overtly.
> _______________________________________________
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I’ve found that using mailing list mode to lurk on discuss.python.org works well. I’ve set up rules on my local mail client to archive what I don’t want in my inbox; I have 4 rules in place now, though I’m interested in a bit more than what was typically on python-dev.

Cheers,

John

> On Dec 6, 2022, at 5:16 AM, Baptiste Carvello <devel2022@baptiste-carvello.net> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Le 05/12/2022 à 14:50, Stephen J. Turnbull a écrit :
>>
>> I'd be sad, but I get the feeling that the only people left
>> reading it are "here for the community", not to develop code, …
> I think this is indeed true, but that's nothing to be sad about: "being
> here for the community" is not wrong or shameful.
>
> Since forever, python-dev has attracted a large following of enthusiast
> Python users, who want to understand the design choices of their
> preferred language. This widely shared concern for writing idiomatic
> code is a distinguishing trait of the Python community (the whole
> culture of "pythonic" code).
>
> Now maybe this is a place where the mailman devs could help and make a
> real difference: what if this list would become, not archive-only, but a
> *read-only mirror* of those parts of Discourse that are relevant for
> core development? That would mean setting up a pipeline starting with
> Discourse's so-called "mailing-list mode", going through the kind of
> filter stack that some core developers have been setting up for their
> personal use, and feeding into this mailing list. The last part can only
> be done with the powers of the mailman admins.
>
> Being read-only would not be a problem in practice: non core-devs here
> read much more than they post (as they should). Being forced to log into
> a specific website is an acceptable roadblock once in a while for
> posting, just not every day for simply following the discussions.
>
> Turning this list into a relevant mirror of Discourse is the nicest
> course of action for the hundreds of silent readers python-dev has
> gathered over the years. All those people *won't* switch to routinely
> visiting the Discourse website, no matter how much pushing and wishful
> thinking the Steering Council puts into it. Shutting down the list means
> kicking them away, more or less overtly.
>
> Cheers,
> Baptiste
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Le 07/12/2022 à 11:57, Petr Viktorin a écrit :
>
> I'd like to point out that the SC decision was *reactive*, after most
> discussions moved to Discourse without SC pushing.
>
> I liked the list myself! But as soon as most of the posts were mandatory
> PEP and release notices, it stopped being useful.

Well, that's only taking into account the posting side. On the reading
side, I reckon that many more people (more or less) silently read
python-dev than Discourse.

Cheers,
Baptiste
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Le 07/12/2022 à 16:11, John Ehresman a écrit :
> I’ve found that using mailing list mode to lurk on discuss.python.org works well. I’ve set up rules on my local mail client to archive what I don’t want in my inbox; I have 4 rules in place now, though I’m interested in a bit more than what was typically on python-dev.

I trust you that mailing list mode can work, once you've refined your
filter rules. Others have posted similar results.

However, each user writing their own filter rules doesn't scale well.
Most people just won't do it.

If this list really is to be shut down with no continuation, hopefully
we'll be given advance warning and allowed some more time to exchange
working, refined recipes.

Cheers,
Baptiste
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On Dec 7, 2022, at 02:57, Petr Viktorin <encukou@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'd like to point out that the SC decision was *reactive*, after most discussions moved to Discourse without SC pushing.
>
> I liked the list myself! But as soon as most of the posts were mandatory PEP and release notices, it stopped being useful.

Just another data point on the switch to Discourse. I was personally invested in mailing lists, having been the project leader for GNU Mailman for 20+ years (retired a few years now). Python-dev email was a central and indispensable part of my daily workflow. Gradually as more discussions moved to Discourse, so did I. I recently also turned off email notifications for GitHub and just use the GH UI for that. I absolutely love not having to slog through hundreds of emails before my first shots of caffeine, and I can now pull from Discourse or GH when it’s convenient for me. It’s also much easier to disengage for a few days and catch up later.

I have my complaints about Discourse, but for me the benefits far outweigh the negatives. My email is manageable again and I’m not going back!

That said, I don’t think python-dev should be shut down just yet, but it sure is nice to not be overwhelmed and stressed out every single day by the bloat in my Python inbox.

-Barry

> I can now pull from Discourse or GH when it’s convenient for me. It’s also much easier to disengage for a few days and catch up later.

I have a question about how you handle multiple communities. I'm
subscribed to ~30 python-dev style mailing lists across different
projects. There is no way I can open up 30 Discourse sites each day.
Mail brings everything into one place for me, and I have things setup
so that new mail from python-dev style lists is separated from my
general inbox.

Are you not subscribed to a bunch of communities? Or is there some way
you aggregate or visit each forum that works nicely?

Regards,
Simon
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Barry Warsaw writes:
> I absolutely love not having to slog through hundreds of emails
> before my first shots of caffeine, and I can now pull from
> Discourse or GH when it’s convenient for me. It’s also much easier
> to disengage for a few days and catch up later.

I absolutely cannot imagine slogging through hundreds of posts in the
Discourse interface. Couldn't this be, as Baptiste suggests, a
symptom of people disengaging and there just being less traffic? Or
is it somehow being channeled better so that you're only seeing what
interests you now?

In particular I have to suspect that a boatload of those were
python-committers mails that are now basically obsolete (can't say, I
never have sought enough responsibility that I needed to subscribe to
that firehose). But that would help with python-dev/ideas too.

Steve
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>
> I have a question about how you handle multiple communities. I'm
> subscribed to ~30 python-dev style mailing lists across different
> projects. There is no way I can open up 30 Discourse sites each day.
> Mail brings everything into one place for me, and I have things setup
> so that new mail from python-dev style lists is separated from my
> general inbox.
>

+1

I have other interests outside Python. Email filters allow me to categorize
email automatically, saving messages in folders which wait for me to get
around to that category.

Considering the explosion of outlets for Python discussion, I will relate a
recent unfortunate incident I don't think would have happened a couple
years ago. I won't name names, but I won't go out of my way to keep the
parties from being discovered. Someone posted a note to the [Python Help]
forum on discuss.python.org recently stating Python had an obvious memory
leak. I tried to help, explaining what I thought he needed to do to
demonstrate a leak. He posted a small C program which initialized, then
immediately finalized the Python runtime, and basically said, "this is a
memory leak." I pointed out that you need to loop over the same operation
to determine if you really have a leak. Back and forth for a bit.

Finally, I said, "if you believe this to be a memory leak, then you should
open an issue on GitHub." My intent was to get his argument in front of the
people who really are the experts on Python's memory management. His
response, "Oh, I already have, here and here and here." What a nice way to
waste my time... I imagine he was trolling, but maybe he was just
dissatisfied with the responses he got on GH and thought he could get
someone to go to bat for him.

My thinking is this would likely have not happened in the olden days when
almost all Python development/programming traffic was housed in python-list
and python-dev.Granted, the Python community was smaller, but, perhaps just
as importantly, a couple active core developers always seemed to keep an
eye on python-list. It seems likely that someone would have seen this
thread and nipped it in the bud early. "I responded to your issue a couple
months ago and explained why this isn't a memory leak. Now go away." Today,
I don't recall noticing core developers on the [Python Help] forum. (I
could well be wrong, but the web interface doesn't make it obvious
at-a-glance who's posted to a thread from the summary page. It's tiny
avatars all the way down.)

The flip side of that is that if you want to ask a question about
something, it's less obvious where to post that question. The fragmented
community means you stand a greater chance of guessing wrong and have it
not be seen by anyone who can help.

Just my 2¢

Skip

It’s possible, but here’s the way I look at it. I’m *already* engaged with dozens of communities, within Python but also others. So every morning I’d wake up to many hundreds of emails, which is just incredibly stress inducing. So it’s a tension between guarding my time better and FOMO. Discourse helps me manage that much better because rather than *all* of those conversations ending up in a bunch of email folders, now they’re just sitting in forum channels. This gives me two advantages: 1) I can pull from the conversations when it’s convenient for me, not when the stress of email hygiene guilts me into it, and 2) it’s so much easier to ignore the stuff I don’t care about, or even skim the stuff I mildly care about, while giving me more quality time to spend on the conversations I do care about.

As for python-committers, I turned off most email notifications from GH and use their notifications tab on the issues and PR I care about, and ignore the rest. GH’s notifications page isn’t fantastic, but it’s manageable and seems like a net win for controlling how and when I consume those conversations.

My workflow centers around a browser tab group I call “Comms” and there it’s got my webmail, which I use in addition to my desktop mail client, and maybe 4 Discourse tabs for the various communities I follow, one of which is Python’s. I usually just click on the “New” tab for each to see what’s happening, and then go through the conversations I’ve tagged or responded to. I might drop in to those a couple of times a day when things are slow. Then of course there’s Discord for various Python groups, and Python’s Slack.

The whole shift away from email leaves me calmer and better engaged.

-Barry

> On Dec 9, 2022, at 06:49, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephenjturnbull@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Barry Warsaw writes:
>> I absolutely love not having to slog through hundreds of emails
>> before my first shots of caffeine, and I can now pull from
>> Discourse or GH when it’s convenient for me. It’s also much easier
>> to disengage for a few days and catch up later.
>
> I absolutely cannot imagine slogging through hundreds of posts in the
> Discourse interface. Couldn't this be, as Baptiste suggests, a
> symptom of people disengaging and there just being less traffic? Or
> is it somehow being channeled better so that you're only seeing what
> interests you now?
>
> In particular I have to suspect that a boatload of those were
> python-committers mails that are now basically obsolete (can't say, I
> never have sought enough responsibility that I needed to subscribe to
> that firehose). But that would help with python-dev/ideas too.
>
> Steve

On 12/9/22 09:20, Barry Warsaw wrote:

> The whole shift away from email leaves me calmer and better engaged.

There are definitely advantages to the different methods of staying engaged, and which is the best fit definitely
depends on the individual.

It seems to me the best possible outcome of Discourse vs email is somebody / some company donating the time and/or
funding to improve Discourse's and Mailman's abilities to interoperate with each other.

(My thanks to the person whose name I cannot remember for improving Discourse's email threading.)

--
~Ethan~
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On 09Dec2022 14:58, Simon Cross <hodgestar+pythondev@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I can now pull from Discourse or GH when it’s convenient for me. It’s also much easier to disengage for a few days and catch up later.
>
>I have a question about how you handle multiple communities. I'm
>subscribed to ~30 python-dev style mailing lists across different
>projects. There is no way I can open up 30 Discourse sites each day.
>Mail brings everything into one place for me, and I have things setup
>so that new mail from python-dev style lists is separated from my
>general inbox.
>
>Are you not subscribed to a bunch of communities? Or is there some way
>you aggregate or visit each forum that works nicely?

I'm not Barry, but I have Discourse's "mailing list mode" enabled for
the Python Discourse forums. That delivers all posts to me as email, and
my filter rules file almost everything into my "python" mail folder.
Same for the matplotlib forum etc.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs@cskk.id.au>
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Ethan Furman writes:

> It seems to me the best possible outcome of Discourse vs email is
> somebody / some company donating the time and/or funding to improve
> Discourse's and Mailman's abilities to interoperate with each
> other.

There are fundamental differences between email's aysnchronous
message streams and Discourse's enforced single message stream. These
can't be perfectly reconciled, despite how fast email can be nowadays.

Since Mailman (and its users!) expects messages to arrive
asynchronously and handles that using threading information, as far as
I can see the Mailman side is handled as well as it can be now that
Discourse provides threading information, and you just subscribe
Mailman to Discourse. And obviously we can just sign up Discourse to
Mailman. The latter direction may be harder, depending on whether
Discourse can make sense of batches of messages being composed
independently of its message flow. The fact that Discourse didn't
provide threading information to email users in the past suggest that
it has an alternative mechanism for organizing mail flows, and message
IDs and Reference headers from email may not be so easily integrated.

I know nothing about Discourse internals, but I suspect that's going
to be the difficult part if there is one. With a little luck that
will be no problem. ;-)

Steve

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