-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
On Tue, 18 Mar 2025 19:54:55 +0000
Simon Quigley <simon@tsimonq2.net> wrote:
> Hello Robie,
>
> On 3/18/25 02:37 PM, Robie Basak wrote:
> > Dear Ubuntu Developers,
> >
> > Following the move from IRC to Matrix, the topic of moving to
> > Discourse from mailing lists came up, as one might expect. I can't
> > be alone in finding it extra effort to track both. Could the key
> > Ubuntu developer lists move over to Discourse entirely, so there's
> > one fewer place where key Ubuntu development communications happen?
> > I note that ubuntu-desktop@ has essentially made the move already.
>
> Strong +1; in my opinion, it's even overdue.
So... many of the people here probably saw me go on a minor rant in
#devel:ubuntu.com about wanting to keep the mailing lists, then
backpedal. I'll basically try to condense down my thoughts here, but
ultimately I'd say I'm a *weak* +1 on the move.
First, some reasons I sort of don't want to see the move happen, but
not badly enough to make me -1:
Discourse is not my favorite piece of software to use. The people who
are helping run it for Ubuntu are doing a fantastic job, and the actual
community there is amazing, but the software is just meh, for the
following reasons:
* There isn't a tree view of the conversation. Everything is just
stuffed into one long thread, as if each comment was just a reply
to the comment immediately before it. There's some hints in the user
interface to help you determine who's replying to who, but they're
minimal, sometimes ambiguous, and clunky to use.
* Discourse lazy-loads pieces of the conversation. This is a headache
when you're trying to scroll through a conversation quickly - you
have to wait for more of the conversation to load before you can keep
scrolling. There *is* a widget in the upper-right corner of the
screen for seeing where you *actually* are in the conversation (since
you can't rely on the browser scroll bar to tell you that, ugh), and
it can be used for speed scrolling, but that's one more thing to keep
track of, cluttering the UI and increasing the cognitive load when
trying to read through things.
* The search tool is just bad. Like, objectively bad. I don't know
what's wrong with how search is implemented on Discourse, but I can't
remember the last time I searched for something on any
Discourse-powered forum and actually found it. I always ended up
resorting to other ways of getting to the post I was looking for,
sometimes including searching for it on Google.
* The UI is just non-obvious in many ways. For instance, until today I
had no idea how to "subscribe" to a category. As it turns out there's
a bell icon in the upper-right corner of the screen that lets you do
this, but it's not in an obvious spot and I wasn't sure if
subscribing to a category was even possible until Erich pointed it
out to me today. This isn't the only way the UI is non-obvious -
navigating the user settings menu is another exercise in frustration.
* There's no way to download archives of conversations on Discourse so
you can work with them locally, to my awareness. This is compounded
with the non-functional search issue - if the search can't work, at
least let me download things so I can grep through them. Nope, that
can't happen either. Also, this means referencing conversations while
offline is impossible.
* Tags are confusing. Are they categories? Are they lightweight
categories? How do they help you find things? Do they even help you
find things? They just don't make sense to me. I add them to my
posts, but not because I have any idea what anyone will do with them
later.
* I like plain-text email. I know, it's 2025, no one uses plain-text
email but FOSS projects, but I like it.
Despite all of the above, I'm still +1 on the move because:
* Ubuntu's development mailing lists are just about dead from what I can
see. The conversations there are short, and the above issues wouldn't
really present many problems if those conversations were had on
Discourse. They might even get more visibility if that was done.
* The above problems are all things I have to deal with anyway. Ubuntu
uses Discourse, that's already done. So whether I like it or not,
lazy loading and squished conversation trees are in my future. Thus
preventing the move won't really help anything.
* The mailing lists are being overrun by spam. No idea why, it wasn't
like this not too long ago. Now it is like this.
* I'll get notifications about new things on Discourse in my email if I
subscribe to the right categories, so I won't miss out on things.
Thus, I'm willing to go along with such a move, and think it's in
Ubuntu's best interest. But if there's really good reasons to stick
with mailing lists that come up, don't be surprised if I switch sides :P
- --
Aaron
> > Personally I'm less sure this time, because I haven't found a way
> > for various mailing list workflows to work on Discourse for myself,
> > but I am open to figuring out how to make it work.
>
> There will be some rough edges, but in my opinion, the benefits
> outweigh the tradeoffs.
>
> > In response to my concern, Ian Weisser[1] has kindly offered to
> > spend some time with me and anyone else similarly skeptical to
> > figure out how mailing list workflows would map over to Discourse.
> > This would be realtime - I think the plan is to use some suitable
> > video call platform.
> >
> > So this is now an offer to all Ubuntu developers, especially those
> > skeptical about deprecating Ubuntu developer mailing lists, to help
> > give Discourse a fair shot by allowing Ian to suggest alternative
> > workflows that will work for you. If you'd like to join, please
> > reply privately so that I can coordinate the session with Ian.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Robie
> >
> > [1] In case you're unfamiliar, Ian is a prolific participant,
> > moderator and general leader over on the Ubuntu Discourse side of
> > things, and is an Ubuntu member.
>
> Ian is also the closest Ubuntu Member to me, geographically speaking.
> ;)
>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
iQIzBAEBCgAdFiEEudh48PFXwyPDa0wGpwkWDXPHkQkFAmfbM7QACgkQpwkWDXPH
kQlQRg//WV/7Xif4B/Ln2pPHeqMSsf/fxaDh/ivj1nyDKNX5Rg6OCVDrnyZPRLHs
y6AzDzJLMqZmjl67uZSp/iNDmPXiHUtDJWz4Na8YrFF9j6Pk5ploRoUn8K/Cmbmr
NtfzT95mFCb/8EFCgKx67eEWuXqcCDP2mOv/up4GDvoTpZMc4+Iiz/1RIZvlPhrK
23ZwE6H9UyLIb/QWnfaUCwV2iPdiwrUMPeHVmdJuE1DOepMObEqFJjSfcJ0gHnIf
4ke5w05VeRqzKpSgf6MyKthxPxSurrakmuXhUlQcYtJuf1MfGIBlE6Ba3rsahx9V
J7e80SN6eDv9ac/LHIc3JQKs5Ejfip63VE5wmpJs2IoZtpnXuIyavscONWFaywOY
WjITfWteOdQNPS2rxR9euvf1CQv5/m4612rqxAZRhF8Gyyt9jXqnxiJNnSjlqjyi
TtoB/PjJmXBmT5byiWUbiyT/NsYKiln8qXcmR1zIMTBNjI9Bu91v2ml9Vzfg8BLt
8Nj/68X5fCXyggdtkfmB2o669V8UnhuKQ+zZCYW2VBRxea8UFDamk8PgRbysZ9Gn
/ei9fPGoezpw+dQgJS1bQnJuApUFSe6JjWw9AXxKtbbg8FTtaRtA6QPhsYnpQU+Y
kYN3zuHJRGM0ByuN6uMhLkL/0GcQzdfNko8OLIDwFRsJLA3MQJo=
=exdj
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
--
ubuntu-devel mailing list
ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
