[Discussion] mailing list alternative

Evolution Discussion
21

I have no problem with the project moving to forums instead of the Mailman mailing lists we have now — if it is the right set of tradeoffs.

My preference is to approach the topic objectively, working from goals and seeing how the mailing lists are aligning with those goals and how an alternative, such as Discourse, might do a better job.

The current use of mailing lists has been carry-over of how both LLVM does public discussion (which is all mailing lists) and how the Swift team at Apple has used mailing lists for discussion. That inertia has benefits in that it is a familiar workflow that is “proven” to work — but the doesn’t mean it is the best option going forward.

Here are some of the things that matter to me:

- Topics are easy to manage and search, with stable URLs for archives.

- It is easy to reference other topics with a stable (canonical) URL that allows you to jump into that other topic easily. That’s hard to do if you haven’t already been subscribed to the list.

- Works fine with email clients, for those who want to keep that workflow (again this inertia is important).

- Code formatting, and other tools that add clarity in communication, are a huge plus.

I’d like to understand more the subjective comments on this thread, such as "may intimidate newcomers”. This feels very subjective, and while I am not disagreeing with that statement I don’t fully understand its justification. Signing up for mailing lists is fairly straightforward, and one isn’t obligated to respond to threads. Are forums really any less “intimating”? If so, why is that the case? Is this simply a statement about mailing lists not being in vogue?

I do also think the asynchronous nature of the mailing lists is important, as opposed to discussions feeling like a live chat. Live chat, such as the use of Slack the SwiftPM folks have been using, is very useful too, but I don’t want participants on swift-evolution or any of our mailing lists feel obligated to respond in real time — that’s simply not the nature of the communication on the lists.

So in short, using mailing lists specifically is not sacred — we can change what we use for our community discussions. I just want an objective evaluation of the needs the mailing lists are meant to serve, and work from there. If moving to something like (say) Discourse would be a negative on a critical piece that is well-served by the mailing lists, that would (in my opinion) a bad direction to take. I’m not saying that is the case, just that this is how I prefer we approach the discussion.

Ted

···

On Jan 23, 2017, at 3:18 PM, Ole Begemann via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

Obligatory prior discussion sheds, er, I mean threads:

[swift-evolution] Mailman?
[swift-evolution] [Swift4] Mailing list vs. Forum
/ The swift-evolution The Week Of Monday 1 August 2016 Archive by thread

I haven't followed the previous discussions closely. As someone who mostly follows the discussions passively and only rarely posts something to the list, I have two major complaints with the current situation:

* The disconnect between the messages in my mail client and their URLs in the list archive makes sharing or bookmarking messages a major pain in the ass. If it were possible for each message to contain its own permalink in the footer, I would be much happier. It seems this feature is available in Mailman 3 [1], but the Swift lists seem to be running on Mailman 2.x.

* The web archive has very bad usability. I suppose design is a matter of taste, but having the archive organized by week is just wrong. This means that readers will regularly miss significant parts of threads that cross week boundaries without even noticing it.

I don't like the mailing lists (and hadn't subscribed to any for close to a decade before Swift), but fixing the above two points would go 90% of the way for me.

If you're counting votes, I'm also +1 for trying out Discourse.

Another, less important complaint:

* Readability is inconsistent because people use different formatting and email allows full control over HTML. I assume a forum that allows Markdown strikes the ideal middle ground between some control over formatting but not needlessly messing with font sizes etc.

I can understand if the Swift team is hesitant to switch to a forum. If you have a working mailing list infrastructure everybody at the company is used to, migrating to a forum is a pretty big undertaking and potential disruption to the workflow. I'm not certain conversations will be much easier to follow in a forum.

I found it very uncomfortable to read the mailing lists in my normal mail client because I want a totally different UI for the two tasks of reading swift-evolution vs. reading my regular mail. But this can be solved pretty easily by using a separate mail client only for the lists. I actually ended up reading the lists in Thunderbird via NNTP on news.gmane.org. Since Gmane is currently reorganizing and not adding new lists, this means I can't do this for new lists like swift-server-dev, but other than that it works well. The biggest downside is that I am limited to one device because read status isn’t synced across devices.

[1]: [Mailman-Users] Include archive URL for the current email (in thefooter)?
_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

22

I’ve looked into Discourse a bit, and it does look very promising. One *specific* way in which a motivated individual could help would be to take a look at Discourse’s import scripts <https://github.com/discourse/discourse/tree/master/script/import_scripts&gt; and try importing swift-evolution’s mailing archives with them. We absolutely do not want to lose history when we switch technologies. Do the messages import well? Are threading and topics maintained in a reasonable manner? Does Discourse provide effective UI for looking into past discussions on some specific topic we’re interested in?

  - Doug

···

On Jan 25, 2017, at 12:05 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

I have no problem with the project moving to forums instead of the Mailman mailing lists we have now — if it is the right set of tradeoffs.

My preference is to approach the topic objectively, working from goals and seeing how the mailing lists are aligning with those goals and how an alternative, such as Discourse, might do a better job.

The current use of mailing lists has been carry-over of how both LLVM does public discussion (which is all mailing lists) and how the Swift team at Apple has used mailing lists for discussion. That inertia has benefits in that it is a familiar workflow that is “proven” to work — but the doesn’t mean it is the best option going forward.

Here are some of the things that matter to me:

- Topics are easy to manage and search, with stable URLs for archives.

- It is easy to reference other topics with a stable (canonical) URL that allows you to jump into that other topic easily. That’s hard to do if you haven’t already been subscribed to the list.

- Works fine with email clients, for those who want to keep that workflow (again this inertia is important).

- Code formatting, and other tools that add clarity in communication, are a huge plus.

I’d like to understand more the subjective comments on this thread, such as "may intimidate newcomers”. This feels very subjective, and while I am not disagreeing with that statement I don’t fully understand its justification. Signing up for mailing lists is fairly straightforward, and one isn’t obligated to respond to threads. Are forums really any less “intimating”? If so, why is that the case? Is this simply a statement about mailing lists not being in vogue?

I do also think the asynchronous nature of the mailing lists is important, as opposed to discussions feeling like a live chat. Live chat, such as the use of Slack the SwiftPM folks have been using, is very useful too, but I don’t want participants on swift-evolution or any of our mailing lists feel obligated to respond in real time — that’s simply not the nature of the communication on the lists.

So in short, using mailing lists specifically is not sacred — we can change what we use for our community discussions. I just want an objective evaluation of the needs the mailing lists are meant to serve, and work from there. If moving to something like (say) Discourse would be a negative on a critical piece that is well-served by the mailing lists, that would (in my opinion) a bad direction to take. I’m not saying that is the case, just that this is how I prefer we approach the discussion.

23

Signing up for mailing lists is straightforward, yes—but that’s only a small part of it. Signing up for a mailing list is a *commitment.* Once you do it, your inbox will be inundated with mailing list posts, making it difficult to find messages that actually have been intended for you personally. Therefore, you’ll have to deal with that somehow. You can set up rules in Mail to route mailing list posts to a separate folder, but that won’t help you if you access your webmail from a public machine. Therefore, you pretty much need to go set up a separate e-mail address for the mailing list, and then wade through the topics, 99% of which might be things you don’t care about, in order to follow the 1% that you do. Oh, and you’d better remember to clean out your folder/separate mail account every once in a while, or before long there’ll be 10,000s of messages in there, and your Time Machine backups will take a geological age.

What if you just wanted to show up and ask one question? Suppose you had one certain problem that you wanted to ask swift-users for help on. In order to post, you have to sign up. In order to sign up, you have to create the separate aforementioned e-mail address or mail rule. Then, once you’ve signed up, you have to keep track of your question among all the active threads going on at the moment, and the e-mails will keep coming in indefinitely. Sure, you can unsubscribe once it seems like your thread has run its course. But what if you’re wrong? What if, shortly after you remove yourself from the list, someone posts some really helpful bit of information to the thread? You’ll never see it. Even if you stay subscribed to the list, you may never see it, because unless you’re setting up special Mail rules for every thread you’re interested in, a new message in that thread might get buried in the noise of other threads which aren’t interesting to you (and even if you do make a rule, it may fail if, for example, the participants end up changing the thread subject header).

With a web forum, you just sign up for notifications on the threads you want, and get notified when something happens in that thread. You don’t have to get any notifications/emails for irrelevant threads. It’s simple, easy, and with much less of a commitment, which makes it *much* less intimidating.

Charles

···

On Jan 25, 2017, at 2:05 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

I’d like to understand more the subjective comments on this thread, such as "may intimidate newcomers”. This feels very subjective, and while I am not disagreeing with that statement I don’t fully understand its justification. Signing up for mailing lists is fairly straightforward, and one isn’t obligated to respond to threads. Are forums really any less “intimating”? If so, why is that the case? Is this simply a statement about mailing lists not being in vogue?

24

I like and prefer the status quo, particularly for Swift Evolution.

* The mailing lists are web searchable and provide a permanent public record. My personal mail archives formed from list traffic are even more searchable because all the data is on my computer.

* Gmane was a painful lesson learned on why it's so important that the tools be completely owned and controlled from swift.org. It's easy enough (although not perfect) to grab a link from http://lists.swift.org <http://lists.swift.org/&gt; archives for sharing. At most you're searching through one week.

* Topic discoverability is excellent. Each day, I need only scan the subject lines and know what's being discussed and how recently. I flag what interests me, archive the rest. When a subject that I previously archived as not interesting starts gathering momentum, I see its traffic increase. I can make a determination immediately about whether I want to continue reading.

* There is little thread-drift and off-topic chatter. List members are extremely responsible when it comes to updating subject lines or starting new threads as needed. The mailing list discourages purely social banter.

If anything, I have minor suggestions on how to improve announcements since they sometimes skip SE-Announce or have incorrect links, etc. If anyone wants my opinion on that, please contact me directly off-list.

-- E

···

On Jan 25, 2017, at 1:05 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

I have no problem with the project moving to forums instead of the Mailman mailing lists we have now — if it is the right set of tradeoffs.

25

...

So in short, using mailing lists specifically is not sacred — we can
change what we use for our community discussions. I just want an objective
evaluation of the needs the mailing lists are meant to serve, and work from
there. If moving to something like (say) Discourse would be a negative on
a critical piece that is well-served by the mailing lists, that would (in
my opinion) a bad direction to take. I’m not saying that is the case, just
that this is how I prefer we approach the discussion.

I'm interested in hearing more about the needs *you* feel the lists are
meant to serve. I'm guessing some of this is a strategic matter for the
Swift team, not something that all of us here on the list could fully
articulate.

The valuable things I see are:

- anyone with an idea can discuss it with the community, regardless of
their experience with PLs and compilers.
- multiple community members, and core team members, can collaborate in a
discussion or author a proposal.
- the community can watch and learn from discussion and implementation
processes amongst the core team.
- the core team can disseminate strategic vision and internal decisions
that otherwise would have to wait for the release notes or WWDC, or at
least a blog post.

None of these seem specific to any particular message board/system, except
that they are much more easily attainable with a highly asynchronous
system, like you mentioned.

···

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 12:05 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution < swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

Ted

On Jan 23, 2017, at 3:18 PM, Ole Begemann via swift-evolution < > swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

Obligatory prior discussion sheds, er, I mean threads:

https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mo
n-20151207/001537.html
https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mo
n-20160725/025692.html
/ https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mo
n-20160801/thread.html#25765

I haven't followed the previous discussions closely. As someone who mostly
follows the discussions passively and only rarely posts something to the
list, I have two major complaints with the current situation:

* The disconnect between the messages in my mail client and their URLs in
the list archive makes sharing or bookmarking messages a major pain in the
ass. If it were possible for each message to contain its own permalink in
the footer, I would be much happier. It seems this feature is available in
Mailman 3 [1], but the Swift lists seem to be running on Mailman 2.x.

* The web archive has very bad usability. I suppose design is a matter of
taste, but having the archive organized by week is just wrong. This means
that readers will regularly miss significant parts of threads that cross
week boundaries without even noticing it.

I don't like the mailing lists (and hadn't subscribed to any for close to
a decade before Swift), but fixing the above two points would go 90% of the
way for me.

If you're counting votes, I'm also +1 for trying out Discourse.

Another, less important complaint:

* Readability is inconsistent because people use different formatting and
email allows full control over HTML. I assume a forum that allows Markdown
strikes the ideal middle ground between some control over formatting but
not needlessly messing with font sizes etc.

I can understand if the Swift team is hesitant to switch to a forum. If
you have a working mailing list infrastructure everybody at the company is
used to, migrating to a forum is a pretty big undertaking and potential
disruption to the workflow. I'm not certain conversations will be much
easier to follow in a forum.

I found it very uncomfortable to read the mailing lists in my normal mail
client because I want a totally different UI for the two tasks of reading
swift-evolution vs. reading my regular mail. But this can be solved pretty
easily by using a separate mail client only for the lists. I actually ended
up reading the lists in Thunderbird via NNTP on news.gmane.org. Since
Gmane is currently reorganizing and not adding new lists, this means I
can't do this for new lists like swift-server-dev, but other than that it
works well. The biggest downside is that I am limited to one device because
read status isn’t synced across devices.

[1]: The Mailman-Users October 2011 Archive by thread
/072379.html
_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

26

I’d like to understand more the subjective comments on this thread, such as "may intimidate newcomers”. This feels very subjective, and while I am not disagreeing with that statement I don’t fully understand its justification. Signing up for mailing lists is fairly straightforward, and one isn’t obligated to respond to threads. Are forums really any less “intimating”? If so, why is that the case? Is this simply a statement about mailing lists not being in vogue?

- We have 5 lists, requiring 5 subscriptions (swift-corelibs-dev, swift-dev, swift-users, swift-evo, and one about server APIs).

- Once you subscribe you get new content, but not old content. If somebody bumps a thread from before you subscribed, you get no context. When you first subscribe to a list, you land bang in the middle of whatever’s going on and reading the prior discussion requires a switch to the (awful, I’m sorry to say) web UI.

- Sometimes people refer to discussions on a list you don’t subscribe to. Again, I won’t have that content in my mail client and will have to use the web UI. It’s not an insignificant hurdle for convenience.

- Email addresses are public. Maybe that was acceptable in the 80s, or internally within a company, but for individuals it means creating a burner email account so you don’t get spammed or hounded by corporate recruiters. Isn’t Apple supposed to be big on privacy?

- Formatting can be inconsistent between mail clients. I sometimes browse the lists on my commute, then I come across a post formatted in a way my client doesn’t like and it parasitically infects everybody who replies to that comment. A rich HTML rendered version can be more consistent.

All of which makes mailing lists a rather fussy and contributor-unfriendly solution.

And yes, mailing lists are not really a modern solution to these kinds of discussions. Lots of people will have never signed up for a mailing list before in their life, not understand how to use one, forget to “reply all”, or accidentally reply to one of the “announce” addresses and get one of those “you are not authorised to post to this list” messages which makes it seems like you’ve been banned or something.

The ideal solution, IMO, would be a discussion service integrated in to GitHub itself. It seems to be a popular request (Issues · dear-github/dear-github · GitHub), but there’s nothing on the GitHub roadmap about that. Other projects in similar situations seem to go with Discourse, so if it's consistent with our requirements I’d support using that.

- Karl

27

I would love to participate in swift evolution discussions, and I made and
defended one of the proposals for Swift here (SE-0025), but using email for
this is so difficult that I stopped following the list. The only thing that
kept me going with that proposal was that I really really wanted the
change. And in the end I even missed part of a discussion about that (I
stopped following after it was accepted). I wasn't quiet because I no
longer wanted to participate. It was because participating was too
difficult due to email.

I caught this thread completely by accident on twitter.

I really hope that we switch to Discorse or something similar. I'd love to
get back into discussions and contribute. I am sure that there are many
people like me.

···

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 3:19 PM Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution < swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

I have no problem with the project moving to forums instead of the Mailman
mailing lists we have now — if it is the right set of tradeoffs.

My preference is to approach the topic objectively, working from goals and
seeing how the mailing lists are aligning with those goals and how an
alternative, such as Discourse, might do a better job.

The current use of mailing lists has been carry-over of how both LLVM does
public discussion (which is all mailing lists) and how the Swift team at
Apple has used mailing lists for discussion. That inertia has benefits in
that it is a familiar workflow that is “proven” to work — but the doesn’t
mean it is the best option going forward.

Here are some of the things that matter to me:

- Topics are easy to manage and search, with stable URLs for archives.

- It is easy to reference other topics with a stable (canonical) URL that
allows you to jump into that other topic easily. That’s hard to do if you
haven’t already been subscribed to the list.

- Works fine with email clients, for those who want to keep that workflow
(again this inertia is important).

- Code formatting, and other tools that add clarity in communication, are
a huge plus.

I’d like to understand more the subjective comments on this thread, such
as "may intimidate newcomers”. This feels very subjective, and while I am
not disagreeing with that statement I don’t fully understand its
justification. Signing up for mailing lists is fairly straightforward, and
one isn’t obligated to respond to threads. Are forums really any less
“intimating”? If so, why is that the case? Is this simply a statement
about mailing lists not being in vogue?

I do also think the asynchronous nature of the mailing lists is important,
as opposed to discussions feeling like a live chat. Live chat, such as the
use of Slack the SwiftPM folks have been using, is very useful too, but I
don’t want participants on swift-evolution or any of our mailing lists feel
obligated to respond in real time — that’s simply not the nature of the
communication on the lists.

So in short, using mailing lists specifically is not sacred — we can
change what we use for our community discussions. I just want an objective
evaluation of the needs the mailing lists are meant to serve, and work from
there. If moving to something like (say) Discourse would be a negative on
a critical piece that is well-served by the mailing lists, that would (in
my opinion) a bad direction to take. I’m not saying that is the case, just
that this is how I prefer we approach the discussion.

Ted

On Jan 23, 2017, at 3:18 PM, Ole Begemann via swift-evolution < > swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

Obligatory prior discussion sheds, er, I mean threads:

[swift-evolution] Mailman?

[swift-evolution] [Swift4] Mailing list vs. Forum
/
The swift-evolution The Week Of Monday 1 August 2016 Archive by thread

I haven't followed the previous discussions closely. As someone who mostly
follows the discussions passively and only rarely posts something to the
list, I have two major complaints with the current situation:

* The disconnect between the messages in my mail client and their URLs in
the list archive makes sharing or bookmarking messages a major pain in the
ass. If it were possible for each message to contain its own permalink in
the footer, I would be much happier. It seems this feature is available in
Mailman 3 [1], but the Swift lists seem to be running on Mailman 2.x.

* The web archive has very bad usability. I suppose design is a matter of
taste, but having the archive organized by week is just wrong. This means
that readers will regularly miss significant parts of threads that cross
week boundaries without even noticing it.

I don't like the mailing lists (and hadn't subscribed to any for close to
a decade before Swift), but fixing the above two points would go 90% of the
way for me.

If you're counting votes, I'm also +1 for trying out Discourse.

Another, less important complaint:

* Readability is inconsistent because people use different formatting and
email allows full control over HTML. I assume a forum that allows Markdown
strikes the ideal middle ground between some control over formatting but
not needlessly messing with font sizes etc.

I can understand if the Swift team is hesitant to switch to a forum. If
you have a working mailing list infrastructure everybody at the company is
used to, migrating to a forum is a pretty big undertaking and potential
disruption to the workflow. I'm not certain conversations will be much
easier to follow in a forum.

I found it very uncomfortable to read the mailing lists in my normal mail
client because I want a totally different UI for the two tasks of reading
swift-evolution vs. reading my regular mail. But this can be solved pretty
easily by using a separate mail client only for the lists. I actually ended
up reading the lists in Thunderbird via NNTP on news.gmane.org. Since
Gmane is currently reorganizing and not adding new lists, this means I
can't do this for new lists like swift-server-dev, but other than that it
works well. The biggest downside is that I am limited to one device because
read status isn’t synced across devices.

[1]:
[Mailman-Users] Include archive URL for the current email (in thefooter)?
_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

28

FWIW, I subscribe to many mailing lists in gmail and have it auto filter emails to mailing lists into a separate mailbox (well, really, tags) for each list. It works great for me.

This doesn’t detract from your point about it being a commitment though.

-Chris

···

On Jan 25, 2017, at 1:06 PM, Charles Srstka via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

On Jan 25, 2017, at 2:05 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote:

I’d like to understand more the subjective comments on this thread, such as "may intimidate newcomers”. This feels very subjective, and while I am not disagreeing with that statement I don’t fully understand its justification. Signing up for mailing lists is fairly straightforward, and one isn’t obligated to respond to threads. Are forums really any less “intimating”? If so, why is that the case? Is this simply a statement about mailing lists not being in vogue?

Signing up for mailing lists is straightforward, yes—but that’s only a small part of it. Signing up for a mailing list is a *commitment.* Once you do it, your inbox will be inundated with mailing list posts, making it difficult to find messages that actually have been intended for you personally. Therefore, you’ll have to deal with that somehow. You can set up rules in Mail to route mailing list posts to a separate folder, but that won’t help you if you access your webmail from a public machine.

29

I'd be willing to put some time into trying this. But the relevant import
script is for mbox files
<https://meta.discourse.org/t/import-mailman-archives-into-discourse/18537/9?u=jtbandes&gt;\.
Is it possible to publicly share the data files from the swift-evolution
mailman installation, so someone can try importing them?

···

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 1:32 PM, Douglas Gregor via swift-evolution < swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

On Jan 25, 2017, at 12:05 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution < > swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

I have no problem with the project moving to forums instead of the Mailman
mailing lists we have now — if it is the right set of tradeoffs.

My preference is to approach the topic objectively, working from goals and
seeing how the mailing lists are aligning with those goals and how an
alternative, such as Discourse, might do a better job.

The current use of mailing lists has been carry-over of how both LLVM does
public discussion (which is all mailing lists) and how the Swift team at
Apple has used mailing lists for discussion. That inertia has benefits in
that it is a familiar workflow that is “proven” to work — but the doesn’t
mean it is the best option going forward.

Here are some of the things that matter to me:

- Topics are easy to manage and search, with stable URLs for archives.

- It is easy to reference other topics with a stable (canonical) URL that
allows you to jump into that other topic easily. That’s hard to do if you
haven’t already been subscribed to the list.

- Works fine with email clients, for those who want to keep that workflow
(again this inertia is important).

- Code formatting, and other tools that add clarity in communication, are
a huge plus.

I’d like to understand more the subjective comments on this thread, such
as "may intimidate newcomers”. This feels very subjective, and while I am
not disagreeing with that statement I don’t fully understand its
justification. Signing up for mailing lists is fairly straightforward, and
one isn’t obligated to respond to threads. Are forums really any less
“intimating”? If so, why is that the case? Is this simply a statement
about mailing lists not being in vogue?

I do also think the asynchronous nature of the mailing lists is important,
as opposed to discussions feeling like a live chat. Live chat, such as the
use of Slack the SwiftPM folks have been using, is very useful too, but I
don’t want participants on swift-evolution or any of our mailing lists feel
obligated to respond in real time — that’s simply not the nature of the
communication on the lists.

So in short, using mailing lists specifically is not sacred — we can
change what we use for our community discussions. I just want an objective
evaluation of the needs the mailing lists are meant to serve, and work from
there. If moving to something like (say) Discourse would be a negative on
a critical piece that is well-served by the mailing lists, that would (in
my opinion) a bad direction to take. I’m not saying that is the case, just
that this is how I prefer we approach the discussion.

I’ve looked into Discourse a bit, and it does look very promising. One
*specific* way in which a motivated individual could help would be to take
a look at Discourse’s import scripts
<https://github.com/discourse/discourse/tree/master/script/import_scripts&gt; and
try importing swift-evolution’s mailing archives with them. We absolutely
do not want to lose history when we switch technologies. Do the messages
import well? Are threading and topics maintained in a reasonable manner?
Does Discourse provide effective UI for looking into past discussions on
some specific topic we’re interested in?

- Doug

30

...

So in short, using mailing lists specifically is not sacred — we can change what we use for our community discussions. I just want an objective evaluation of the needs the mailing lists are meant to serve, and work from there. If moving to something like (say) Discourse would be a negative on a critical piece that is well-served by the mailing lists, that would (in my opinion) a bad direction to take. I’m not saying that is the case, just that this is how I prefer we approach the discussion.

I'm interested in hearing more about the needs you feel the lists are meant to serve. I'm guessing some of this is a strategic matter for the Swift team, not something that all of us here on the list could fully articulate.

The valuable things I see are:

- anyone with an idea can discuss it with the community, regardless of their experience with PLs and compilers.
- multiple community members, and core team members, can collaborate in a discussion or author a proposal.
- the community can watch and learn from discussion and implementation processes amongst the core team.
- the core team can disseminate strategic vision and internal decisions that otherwise would have to wait for the release notes or WWDC, or at least a blog post.

I think all of these are important.

None of these seem specific to any particular message board/system, except that they are much more easily attainable with a highly asynchronous system, like you mentioned.

The current set of lists serve different purposes for different audiences.

I suspect those participating on the *-dev lists are mostly fine with keeping those as mailing lists. Those lists are for individuals who want to be continuously plugged into the conversations regarding the development of Swift's implementation, and the volume of discussion there has tended to be far more manageable than on swift-evolution.

For swift-evolution and swift-users, I suspect forums would be a better model. It allows people to jump into specific discussions more easily, especially if a discussion has already started but they aren't permanently subscribed the feed of all chatter on the list. The Mailman archives aren't "interactive" in that one can jump in on a thread; if you missed the thread you essentially missed participating in it, and have to start a new one if you want to continue a topic. Forums like allow participation on swift-evolution to be more intermittent — facilitating (temporary) wider participation on topics that have broader interest to more of the community because of the (possibly) lower barrier to entry the ability to jump in on an ongoing topic without needing to always be subscribed to everything. I see some huge advantages there; if we think there is a topic that is of particular interest to the community one can (say) tweet about it to advertise the discussion and draw more immediate participation.

OTOH, I see mailing lists being attractive to those who really want to get the entire feed of discussion, apply post-hoc filtering or other management techniques to prioritize looking at the discussions that interest them.

I'm keenly interested in seeing if we can get both the benefits of forum and mailing lists. If Discourse provides a nice way to integrate into the current email workflow that many of us use — and like — then that seems really promising. The questions that come to mind is whether or not using email would really feel second class or awkward. This includes the formatting of the emails, how easy it is to organize topics, etc.

···

On Jan 25, 2017, at 9:45 PM, Jacob Bandes-Storch <jtbandes@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 12:05 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

Ted

On Jan 23, 2017, at 3:18 PM, Ole Begemann via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

Obligatory prior discussion sheds, er, I mean threads:

[swift-evolution] Mailman?
[swift-evolution] [Swift4] Mailing list vs. Forum
/ The swift-evolution The Week Of Monday 1 August 2016 Archive by thread

I haven't followed the previous discussions closely. As someone who mostly follows the discussions passively and only rarely posts something to the list, I have two major complaints with the current situation:

* The disconnect between the messages in my mail client and their URLs in the list archive makes sharing or bookmarking messages a major pain in the ass. If it were possible for each message to contain its own permalink in the footer, I would be much happier. It seems this feature is available in Mailman 3 [1], but the Swift lists seem to be running on Mailman 2.x.

* The web archive has very bad usability. I suppose design is a matter of taste, but having the archive organized by week is just wrong. This means that readers will regularly miss significant parts of threads that cross week boundaries without even noticing it.

I don't like the mailing lists (and hadn't subscribed to any for close to a decade before Swift), but fixing the above two points would go 90% of the way for me.

If you're counting votes, I'm also +1 for trying out Discourse.

Another, less important complaint:

* Readability is inconsistent because people use different formatting and email allows full control over HTML. I assume a forum that allows Markdown strikes the ideal middle ground between some control over formatting but not needlessly messing with font sizes etc.

I can understand if the Swift team is hesitant to switch to a forum. If you have a working mailing list infrastructure everybody at the company is used to, migrating to a forum is a pretty big undertaking and potential disruption to the workflow. I'm not certain conversations will be much easier to follow in a forum.

I found it very uncomfortable to read the mailing lists in my normal mail client because I want a totally different UI for the two tasks of reading swift-evolution vs. reading my regular mail. But this can be solved pretty easily by using a separate mail client only for the lists. I actually ended up reading the lists in Thunderbird via NNTP on news.gmane.org. Since Gmane is currently reorganizing and not adding new lists, this means I can't do this for new lists like swift-server-dev, but other than that it works well. The biggest downside is that I am limited to one device because read status isn’t synced across devices.

[1]: [Mailman-Users] Include archive URL for the current email (in thefooter)?
_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

31

:raised_hand:

I forged the mighty, turgid rivers of rubyenv, hand-tweaked gem dependencies, and sed-cleaned mbox files to try this out—you can see the results of an import (using one or two day old data) at this address:
  http://discourse.natecook.com/

It looks like the threads were handled properly, though they bear some obvious marks of their mailing list origins. Users can actually claim their accounts if they do a password reset. However:
  - it's hooked up to a trial SendGrid account, which will top out at 100 emails/day
  - I should probably delete this soon so Google doesn't think it's the real deal

I might have mentioned this before, but I'm strongly in favor of forum-based solution over the mailing list (at least for this group), and Discourse seems to be the best one running right now (and fairly open to extension and customization). I made a new topic here to demonstrate a couple features (code blocks and inline images):
  http://discourse.natecook.com/t/pitch-add-dark-mode-to-swift/3051

Thanks -
Nate

···

On Jan 25, 2017, at 3:32 PM, Douglas Gregor via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

On Jan 25, 2017, at 12:05 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote:

I have no problem with the project moving to forums instead of the Mailman mailing lists we have now — if it is the right set of tradeoffs.

My preference is to approach the topic objectively, working from goals and seeing how the mailing lists are aligning with those goals and how an alternative, such as Discourse, might do a better job.

The current use of mailing lists has been carry-over of how both LLVM does public discussion (which is all mailing lists) and how the Swift team at Apple has used mailing lists for discussion. That inertia has benefits in that it is a familiar workflow that is “proven” to work — but the doesn’t mean it is the best option going forward.

Here are some of the things that matter to me:

- Topics are easy to manage and search, with stable URLs for archives.

- It is easy to reference other topics with a stable (canonical) URL that allows you to jump into that other topic easily. That’s hard to do if you haven’t already been subscribed to the list.

- Works fine with email clients, for those who want to keep that workflow (again this inertia is important).

- Code formatting, and other tools that add clarity in communication, are a huge plus.

I’d like to understand more the subjective comments on this thread, such as "may intimidate newcomers”. This feels very subjective, and while I am not disagreeing with that statement I don’t fully understand its justification. Signing up for mailing lists is fairly straightforward, and one isn’t obligated to respond to threads. Are forums really any less “intimating”? If so, why is that the case? Is this simply a statement about mailing lists not being in vogue?

I do also think the asynchronous nature of the mailing lists is important, as opposed to discussions feeling like a live chat. Live chat, such as the use of Slack the SwiftPM folks have been using, is very useful too, but I don’t want participants on swift-evolution or any of our mailing lists feel obligated to respond in real time — that’s simply not the nature of the communication on the lists.

So in short, using mailing lists specifically is not sacred — we can change what we use for our community discussions. I just want an objective evaluation of the needs the mailing lists are meant to serve, and work from there. If moving to something like (say) Discourse would be a negative on a critical piece that is well-served by the mailing lists, that would (in my opinion) a bad direction to take. I’m not saying that is the case, just that this is how I prefer we approach the discussion.

I’ve looked into Discourse a bit, and it does look very promising. One *specific* way in which a motivated individual could help would be to take a look at Discourse’s import scripts <https://github.com/discourse/discourse/tree/master/script/import_scripts&gt; and try importing swift-evolution’s mailing archives with them. We absolutely do not want to lose history when we switch technologies. Do the messages import well? Are threading and topics maintained in a reasonable manner? Does Discourse provide effective UI for looking into past discussions on some specific topic we’re interested in?

  - Doug

32

I have no problem with the project moving to forums instead of the Mailman mailing lists we have now — if it is the right set of tradeoffs.

I like and prefer the status quo, particularly for Swift Evolution.

* The mailing lists are web searchable and provide a permanent public record. My personal mail archives formed from list traffic are even more searchable because all the data is on my computer.

* Gmane was a painful lesson learned on why it's so important that the tools be completely owned and controlled from swift.org <http://swift.org/&gt;\. It's easy enough (although not perfect) to grab a link from http://lists.swift.org <http://lists.swift.org/&gt; archives for sharing. At most you're searching through one week.

AFAIK you can host your own discours sever.

···

Le 26 janv. 2017 à 00:34, Erica Sadun via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> a écrit :

On Jan 25, 2017, at 1:05 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote:

* Topic discoverability is excellent. Each day, I need only scan the subject lines and know what's being discussed and how recently. I flag what interests me, archive the rest. When a subject that I previously archived as not interesting starts gathering momentum, I see its traffic increase. I can make a determination immediately about whether I want to continue reading.

* There is little thread-drift and off-topic chatter. List members are extremely responsible when it comes to updating subject lines or starting new threads as needed. The mailing list discourages purely social banter.

If anything, I have minor suggestions on how to improve announcements since they sometimes skip SE-Announce or have incorrect links, etc. If anyone wants my opinion on that, please contact me directly off-list.

-- E

_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

33

I have no problem with the project moving to forums instead of the Mailman mailing lists we have now — if it is the right set of tradeoffs.

I like and prefer the status quo, particularly for Swift Evolution.

+1

I use the Mac OS mail client in threaded mode and it’s absolutely fine. I can easily see which messages I haven’t read, it works offline, I can compose messages offline, I have complete control over which messages I keep and which messages I don’t keep.

···

On 25 Jan 2017, at 23:34, Erica Sadun via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

On Jan 25, 2017, at 1:05 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

34

I’d like to understand more the subjective comments on this thread, such
as "may intimidate newcomers”. This feels very subjective, and while I am
not disagreeing with that statement I don’t fully understand its
justification. Signing up for mailing lists is fairly straightforward, and
one isn’t obligated to respond to threads. Are forums really any less
“intimating”? If so, why is that the case? Is this simply a statement
about mailing lists not being in vogue?

Signing up for mailing lists is straightforward, yes—but that’s only a
small part of it. Signing up for a mailing list is a *commitment.* Once you
do it, your inbox will be inundated with mailing list posts, making it
difficult to find messages that actually have been intended for you
personally. Therefore, you’ll have to deal with that somehow. You can set
up rules in Mail to route mailing list posts to a separate folder, but that
won’t help you if you access your webmail from a public machine.

FWIW, I subscribe to many mailing lists in gmail and have it auto filter
emails to mailing lists into a separate mailbox (well, really, tags) for
each list. It works great for me.

This doesn’t detract from your point about it being a commitment though.

It does kind of imply a follow-up question, though: is it _undesirable_
that signing up for a mailing list is a modicum of commitment?

-Chris

···

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 7:41 PM, Chris Lattner via swift-evolution < swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

On Jan 25, 2017, at 1:06 PM, Charles Srstka via swift-evolution < > swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:
On Jan 25, 2017, at 2:05 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution < > swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

35

...never mind, figured out how to download it —
https://meta.discourse.org/t/import-mailman-archives-into-discourse/18537/11

···

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 9:53 PM, Jacob Bandes-Storch <jtbandes@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 1:32 PM, Douglas Gregor via swift-evolution < > swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

On Jan 25, 2017, at 12:05 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution < >> swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

I have no problem with the project moving to forums instead of the
Mailman mailing lists we have now — if it is the right set of tradeoffs.

My preference is to approach the topic objectively, working from goals
and seeing how the mailing lists are aligning with those goals and how an
alternative, such as Discourse, might do a better job.

The current use of mailing lists has been carry-over of how both LLVM
does public discussion (which is all mailing lists) and how the Swift team
at Apple has used mailing lists for discussion. That inertia has benefits
in that it is a familiar workflow that is “proven” to work — but the
doesn’t mean it is the best option going forward.

Here are some of the things that matter to me:

- Topics are easy to manage and search, with stable URLs for archives.

- It is easy to reference other topics with a stable (canonical) URL that
allows you to jump into that other topic easily. That’s hard to do if you
haven’t already been subscribed to the list.

- Works fine with email clients, for those who want to keep that workflow
(again this inertia is important).

- Code formatting, and other tools that add clarity in communication, are
a huge plus.

I’d like to understand more the subjective comments on this thread, such
as "may intimidate newcomers”. This feels very subjective, and while I am
not disagreeing with that statement I don’t fully understand its
justification. Signing up for mailing lists is fairly straightforward, and
one isn’t obligated to respond to threads. Are forums really any less
“intimating”? If so, why is that the case? Is this simply a statement
about mailing lists not being in vogue?

I do also think the asynchronous nature of the mailing lists is
important, as opposed to discussions feeling like a live chat. Live chat,
such as the use of Slack the SwiftPM folks have been using, is very useful
too, but I don’t want participants on swift-evolution or any of our mailing
lists feel obligated to respond in real time — that’s simply not the nature
of the communication on the lists.

So in short, using mailing lists specifically is not sacred — we can
change what we use for our community discussions. I just want an objective
evaluation of the needs the mailing lists are meant to serve, and work from
there. If moving to something like (say) Discourse would be a negative on
a critical piece that is well-served by the mailing lists, that would (in
my opinion) a bad direction to take. I’m not saying that is the case, just
that this is how I prefer we approach the discussion.

I’ve looked into Discourse a bit, and it does look very promising. One
*specific* way in which a motivated individual could help would be to take
a look at Discourse’s import scripts
<https://github.com/discourse/discourse/tree/master/script/import_scripts&gt; and
try importing swift-evolution’s mailing archives with them. We absolutely
do not want to lose history when we switch technologies. Do the messages
import well? Are threading and topics maintained in a reasonable manner?
Does Discourse provide effective UI for looking into past discussions on
some specific topic we’re interested in?

- Doug

I'd be willing to put some time into trying this. But the relevant import
script is for mbox files
<https://meta.discourse.org/t/import-mailman-archives-into-discourse/18537/9?u=jtbandes&gt;\.
Is it possible to publicly share the data files from the swift-evolution
mailman installation, so someone can try importing them?

36

:raised_hand:

I forged the mighty, turgid rivers of rubyenv, hand-tweaked gem
dependencies, and sed-cleaned mbox files to try this out—you can see
the results of an import (using one or two day old data) at this
address:
  http://discourse.natecook.com/

It looks like the threads were handled properly, though they bear some
obvious marks of their mailing list origins. Users can actually claim
their accounts if they do a password reset. However:
  - it's hooked up to a trial SendGrid account, which will top out at 100 emails/day
  - I should probably delete this soon so Google doesn't think it's the real deal

It's a shame that it has no facility for hiding long quotations. Trying
to find the actual content in this thread is pretty awful:
http://discourse.natecook.com/t/strings-in-swift-4/2980/13

Once upon a time, there was a tradition of carefully crafting the
presentation of replies to mailing lists
<Usenet Posting Tips; but I fear those
days may be behind us.

I might have mentioned this before, but I'm strongly in favor of
forum-based solution over the mailing list (at least for this group),
and Discourse seems to be the best one running right now (and fairly
open to extension and customization). I made a new topic here to
demonstrate a couple features (code blocks and inline images):
  http://discourse.natecook.com/t/pitch-add-dark-mode-to-swift/3051

That said, I too am strongly in favor of moving to Discourse.

···

on Thu Jan 26 2017, Nate Cook <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

--
-Dave

37

Thanks, Nate, for setting this up. I’ve never played with discourse before, but this allowed me to spend some time with it in the context of swift-evolution.

My first impression, based perhaps on not being familiar with it, was that it didn’t add much to the mailing list experience. The top-level list of threads is good. However, once within a thread, I distinctly found the experience (http://discourse.natecook.com/t/strings-in-swift-4/2980/, as Dave mentioned) to be sub-par to what I’m used to with my mail client. It was a confounding blob of content. Are there plug-ins to provide an index to posts within a thread? (the magic J and K keys that Nate just mentioned might would help some, but still require a heck-of-a-lot of scrolling to find stuff). The ability to persistently collapse posts would seem key as well.

Since many will likely want to continue to access the discussion via mail, I have some questions for anybody who actually has real-life experience in using Discourse primarily via email:

1. Can one sign up to receive all posts within a project via email? Or does one need to sign up for email on a thread-by-thread basis?
2. Can one receive email notifications of new threads?
3. How does one create a new thread via email? (presumably just by sending an email with a new subject, ala mailing list?)

Based on my (limited, non-subscriber-to-discourse) experience so far, I would vote for the status quo, perhaps based on years of using mailing lists via email. But I’m trying to be open minded.

James

···

On Jan 26, 2017, at 10:02 AM, Nate Cook via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

I forged the mighty, turgid rivers of rubyenv, hand-tweaked gem dependencies, and sed-cleaned mbox files to try this out—you can see the results of an import (using one or two day old data) at this address:
  http://discourse.natecook.com/

38

Definitely—if the group were to make the switch to Discourse, I would imagine there would be fewer posts that follow the "quote all and top post" strategy, but in the imported posts they really do get in the way.

FWIW, you can jump from message to message with the J and K keys in Discourse, or press ? to see all the key shortcuts.

Nate

···

On Jan 26, 2017, at 1:41 PM, Dave Abrahams via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

It's a shame that it has no facility for hiding long quotations. Trying
to find the actual content in this thread is pretty awful:
http://discourse.natecook.com/t/strings-in-swift-4/2980/13

39

Awesome :) Hopefully that will finally convince the people what ‘are working on this’ to actually make it ;)

I could find some really old threads of mine in just seconds. My mail client cannot do that job that well.

Cannot wait :drooling_face:

···

--
Adrian Zubarev
Sent with Airmail

Am 26. Januar 2017 um 19:03:13, Nate Cook via swift-evolution (swift-evolution@swift.org) schrieb:

On Jan 25, 2017, at 3:32 PM, Douglas Gregor via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

On Jan 25, 2017, at 12:05 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

I have no problem with the project moving to forums instead of the Mailman mailing lists we have now — if it is the right set of tradeoffs.

My preference is to approach the topic objectively, working from goals and seeing how the mailing lists are aligning with those goals and how an alternative, such as Discourse, might do a better job.

The current use of mailing lists has been carry-over of how both LLVM does public discussion (which is all mailing lists) and how the Swift team at Apple has used mailing lists for discussion. That inertia has benefits in that it is a familiar workflow that is “proven” to work — but the doesn’t mean it is the best option going forward.

Here are some of the things that matter to me:

- Topics are easy to manage and search, with stable URLs for archives.

- It is easy to reference other topics with a stable (canonical) URL that allows you to jump into that other topic easily. That’s hard to do if you haven’t already been subscribed to the list.

- Works fine with email clients, for those who want to keep that workflow (again this inertia is important).

- Code formatting, and other tools that add clarity in communication, are a huge plus.

I’d like to understand more the subjective comments on this thread, such as "may intimidate newcomers”. This feels very subjective, and while I am not disagreeing with that statement I don’t fully understand its justification. Signing up for mailing lists is fairly straightforward, and one isn’t obligated to respond to threads. Are forums really any less “intimating”? If so, why is that the case? Is this simply a statement about mailing lists not being in vogue?

I do also think the asynchronous nature of the mailing lists is important, as opposed to discussions feeling like a live chat. Live chat, such as the use of Slack the SwiftPM folks have been using, is very useful too, but I don’t want participants on swift-evolution or any of our mailing lists feel obligated to respond in real time — that’s simply not the nature of the communication on the lists.

So in short, using mailing lists specifically is not sacred — we can change what we use for our community discussions. I just want an objective evaluation of the needs the mailing lists are meant to serve, and work from there. If moving to something like (say) Discourse would be a negative on a critical piece that is well-served by the mailing lists, that would (in my opinion) a bad direction to take. I’m not saying that is the case, just that this is how I prefer we approach the discussion.

I’ve looked into Discourse a bit, and it does look very promising. One *specific* way in which a motivated individual could help would be to take a look at Discourse’s import scripts and try importing swift-evolution’s mailing archives with them. We absolutely do not want to lose history when we switch technologies. Do the messages import well? Are threading and topics maintained in a reasonable manner? Does Discourse provide effective UI for looking into past discussions on some specific topic we’re interested in?

- Doug

:raised_hand:

I forged the mighty, turgid rivers of rubyenv, hand-tweaked gem dependencies, and sed-cleaned mbox files to try this out—you can see the results of an import (using one or two day old data) at this address:
http://discourse.natecook.com/

It looks like the threads were handled properly, though they bear some obvious marks of their mailing list origins. Users can actually claim their accounts if they do a password reset. However:
- it's hooked up to a trial SendGrid account, which will top out at 100 emails/day
- I should probably delete this soon so Google doesn't think it's the real deal

I might have mentioned this before, but I'm strongly in favor of forum-based solution over the mailing list (at least for this group), and Discourse seems to be the best one running right now (and fairly open to extension and customization). I made a new topic here to demonstrate a couple features (code blocks and inline images):
http://discourse.natecook.com/t/pitch-add-dark-mode-to-swift/3051

Thanks -
Nate

_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

40

Not true if you quote something via the web interface. See my quote here:
http://discourse.natecook.com/t/pitch-add-dark-mode-to-swift/3051

···

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 12:03 PM Dave Abrahams via swift-evolution < swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

on Thu Jan 26 2017, Nate Cook <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

> :raised_hand:
>
> I forged the mighty, turgid rivers of rubyenv, hand-tweaked gem
> dependencies, and sed-cleaned mbox files to try this out—you can see
> the results of an import (using one or two day old data) at this
> address:
> http://discourse.natecook.com/
>
> It looks like the threads were handled properly, though they bear some
> obvious marks of their mailing list origins. Users can actually claim
> their accounts if they do a password reset. However:
> - it's hooked up to a trial SendGrid account, which will top out
at 100 emails/day
> - I should probably delete this soon so Google doesn't think it's
the real deal

It's a shame that it has no facility for hiding long quotations. Trying
to find the actual content in this thread is pretty awful:
http://discourse.natecook.com/t/strings-in-swift-4/2980/13

Once upon a time, there was a tradition of carefully crafting the
presentation of replies to mailing lists
<Usenet Posting Tips; but I fear those
days may be behind us.

> I might have mentioned this before, but I'm strongly in favor of
> forum-based solution over the mailing list (at least for this group),
> and Discourse seems to be the best one running right now (and fairly
> open to extension and customization). I made a new topic here to
> demonstrate a couple features (code blocks and inline images):
> http://discourse.natecook.com/t/pitch-add-dark-mode-to-swift/3051

That said, I too am strongly in favor of moving to Discourse.

--
-Dave

_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution