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Re: Testing Discourse for Debian

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On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 10:51:21AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>
>Sub 30 was what I was thinking of.  I'm only saying there's a bit of a
>statistical tendency, not that this applies to everyone, obviously.  But
>when I look around at the broader development world, the majority of the
>newer projects seem to not use email at all.  Even when they do, it's not
>where the most useful conversation happens.
>
>Now, in a lot of cases the real conversation happens on GitHub, which
>isn't exactly the same thing as a forum.  But forums seem to play a large
>role in some of the more vibrant communities (Rust, for instance).

There was a good talk about this topic at FOSDEM this year:

  https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/nextgencontributors/

>> There is something to be said for educating "younger people" with the
>> old ways -- I mean how many of these "Modern" things are just
>> re-implementations of what previously existed (except with centralized
>> control and "oh yeah, pay us").
>
>This may be the case, but I think those of us who are familiar with email
>have a bit of a tendency (I'm *definitely* including myself in this) to
>jump straight to "let me explain to you how email already does everything
>you want if you just use it properly" without bothering to ask people what
>features they like and really listen to them.
>
>Professionally, I can tell you that my younger colleagues tend to hate
>email and far prefer other communication mechanisms, and that's not
>because they're unaware of how email is used.  The most commonly stated
>reason is that email is full of noise and pointless messages that aren't
>worth reading, compared to other approaches.  That's just anecdotes, not
>data, obviously, but it made me curious to understand what I might be
>missing.  (My past experience is that when younger colleagues get excited
>about a new way of doing things, I should pay attention, because there are
>probably things that I'm missing and that I will appreciate if I look into
>them more deeply.)

Nod. Much as we're comfortable and happy with email, it's important to
keep open-minded and be ready to evaluate other things too. Just
because we happen to like it now, that doesn't mean it's guaranteed to
be the best possible way to communicate *ever*.

Hell, there's a strong confirmation bias here too - how many
potentially great future developers have we lost at a very early stage
because our email-centric workflow didn't appeal to them initially?

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
You raise the blade, you make the change... You re-arrange me 'til I'm sane...

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Re: Re: Testing Discourse for Debian Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> - 2020-04-13 15:00 +0200
  Re: Re: Testing Discourse for Debian <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2020-04-13 15:20 +0200
    Re: Re: Testing Discourse for Debian Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> - 2020-04-13 15:40 +0200
      Re: Re: Testing Discourse for Debian <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2020-04-13 16:00 +0200
  Re: Testing Discourse for Debian Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> - 2020-04-13 20:00 +0200
    Re: Testing Discourse for Debian Steve McIntyre <93sam@debian.org> - 2020-04-13 21:30 +0200
      Re: Testing Discourse for Debian Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org> - 2020-04-14 13:00 +0200
        Re: Testing Discourse for Debian Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> - 2020-04-15 01:20 +0200
          Real Name was:Re: Testing Discourse for Debian Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> - 2020-04-15 02:20 +0200
    Re: Testing Discourse for Debian Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> - 2020-04-13 21:30 +0200
      Re: Testing Discourse for Debian Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> - 2020-04-13 22:10 +0200
        Re: Testing Discourse for Debian Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> - 2020-04-13 22:30 +0200
      Re: Testing Discourse for Debian Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-04-14 09:00 +0200

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