Plan to move swift-evolution and swift-users mailing lists to Discourse

Using Swift
21

I'm pretty sure that Discourse's mailing list support is why so many people suggested it.

- Dave Sweeris

···

On Feb 9, 2017, at 09:30, Matthew Johnson via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 11:16 AM, Jens Alfke via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 3:41 AM, Jan Neumüller via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org> wrote:

I would prefer http://www.fudforum.org/ that has good mailing list support, too.

Well, we appear to have completely opposite opinions on UI/usability. I took a look at fudforum and yeah, to my eyes it exemplifies the awful clutter that’s been a hallmark of web forums since before PHPBB. There’s so much visual noise it’s very hard to parse or to find anything. Clearly designed by a coder with a big hammer named “<table>”. I’m not a UI designer, but I’ve worked extensively with UI designers (I spent 15 years at Apple working on stuff like iChat and AppleScript) so I think I have some grounding in the field.

I do believe, though, that whatever solution swift.org switches to needs to have good email support. That way the people who hate the web UI, or who just don’t prefer to use the web for discussions, can keep using email as we do today. This is perfectly feasible to do; again, groups.io is a good example.

Here my concern is that I have not found a way to configure Discourse to make its email notifications work well as a substitute for a mailing list. I have admin privileges on a Discourse installation run by my employer, so I’ve looked through the entire admin UI for ways to improve the emails, and some of the problems don’t seem fixable by tweaking settings.

At this point I’m going to shut up because it sounds like the decision has been made, and I don’t want to contribute to further bike-shedding.

I’ve been mostly silent in this conversation largely because I didn’t realize it was leading up to a formal decision. I wish it would have followed the proposal process so it was clear to everyone that a decision was being considered and this was our chance to offer input.

I really like the experience of participating in the community via email. If I knew a decision was being seriously considered I would have taken a closer look at Discourse and likely offered more input. I will be disappointed if the experience of participating is not at least as good as it is using email.

22

I would prefer http://www.fudforum.org/ that has good mailing list support, too.

Well, we appear to have completely opposite opinions on UI/usability. I took a look at fudforum and yeah, to my eyes it exemplifies the awful clutter that’s been a hallmark of web forums since before PHPBB. There’s so much visual noise it’s very hard to parse or to find anything. Clearly designed by a coder with a big hammer named “<table>”. I’m not a UI designer, but I’ve worked extensively with UI designers (I spent 15 years at Apple working on stuff like iChat and AppleScript) so I think I have some grounding in the field.

I do believe, though, that whatever solution swift.org <http://swift.org/&gt; switches to needs to have good email support. That way the people who hate the web UI, or who just don’t prefer to use the web for discussions, can keep using email as we do today. This is perfectly feasible to do; again, groups.io <http://groups.io/&gt; is a good example.

Here my concern is that I have not found a way to configure Discourse to make its email notifications work well as a substitute for a mailing list. I have admin privileges on a Discourse installation run by my employer, so I’ve looked through the entire admin UI for ways to improve the emails, and some of the problems don’t seem fixable by tweaking settings.

At this point I’m going to shut up because it sounds like the decision has been made, and I don’t want to contribute to further bike-shedding.

I’ve been mostly silent in this conversation largely because I didn’t realize it was leading up to a formal decision. I wish it would have followed the proposal process so it was clear to everyone that a decision was being considered and this was our chance to offer input.

I really like the experience of participating in the community via email. If I knew a decision was being seriously considered I would have taken a closer look at Discourse and likely offered more input. I will be disappointed if the experience of participating is not at least as good as it is using email.

One of the most important reasons I like using email is that Mail offers a great experience on iPhone and iPad. I am skeptical that a web-based forum could offer the same level of convenience and efficiency for keeping up with the community that email provides.

I hope that we do find a way to configure our tool (probably Discourse) so that the email experience on iPhone and iPad does not suffer. If we can meet that criteria and *also* offer the advantages of a web-based tool I will be very happy. But I think the current email experience on iPhone and iPad should set a minimum criteria that any tool must meet.

···

On Feb 9, 2017, at 11:16 AM, Jens Alfke via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 3:41 AM, Jan Neumüller via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org <mailto:swift-users@swift.org>> wrote:

—Jens
_______________________________________________
swift-users mailing list
swift-users@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-users

23

That last one is horrible to even look at (that’s my personal point of view). It’s packed full with unnecessary UI, which reminds me of the time when html-tables ruled all over the place. Discourse has a nice minimalistic look and I’m sure people that will setup the forum will tweak it to make it feel more appropriate for Swift, just like the design of the evolution-page was tweaked several times.

Here is really good example of how a huge/popular topic like the current one or String in Swift 4 would look like with Discourse (I picked one from Rust with lots of replies): High Order Function with Type Parameter - help - The Rust Programming Language Forum

+1 for Discourse, I think it really is the right choice.

···

--
Adrian Zubarev
Sent with Airmail

Am 9. Februar 2017 um 12:42:04, Jan Neumüller via swift-users (swift-users@swift.org) schrieb:

My problem with Discourse lies in its terrible ui. It is like most modern social media: totally useless to find stuff and stay organized in it. It reminds my heavy on the terrible ui of Facebook and the redone developer forums at Apple that have gone from fine to utterly useless chaos. Perhaps I’m to old for modern web, but what are other finding great at this?

I would prefer http://www.fudforum.org/ that has good mailing list support, too.

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

24

I don't see any discussions to have Swift Server Side shift to Discourse
forum too?

···

On Thursday, February 9, 2017, James Hillhouse via swift-evolution < swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

I'll echo Nick and Joshua–thanks Swift Core team for taking the time to
decide on this change.

Jim

> On Feb 8, 2017, at 9:37 PM, Rick Mann via swift-evolution < > swift-evolution@swift.org <javascript:;>> wrote:
>
> I second this praise. FWIW, I recently installed Discourse using a
DigitalOcean droplet, and it couldn't have been easier. Upgrades are
surprisingly easy, too.
>
> I have yet to figure out the email integration; I hope you can get that
working.
>
> I also hope you give some effort to improving on the default Discourse
look. It's not bad, but I feel like it doesn't do a good job of delineating
functional areas on the page. Having said that, I'm more than happy to wait
indefinitely for such an improvement; it's not worth holding up the
roll-out.
>
> Thanks again!
>
>> On Feb 8, 2017, at 19:34 , Joshua Alvarado via swift-evolution < > swift-evolution@swift.org <javascript:;>> wrote:
>>
>> :tada::confetti_ball::tada::confetti_ball::tada::confetti_ball::confetti_ball:
>> This is an awesome decision and a huge enhancement for the Swift
community. Thanks (Core Team) for taking the time to entertain the
discussion and move forward with what many community members have wanted.
>>
>> Alvarado, Joshua
>>
>>> On Feb 8, 2017, at 5:03 PM, Ted kremenek via swift-evolution < > swift-evolution@swift.org <javascript:;>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> There was a long thread on swift-evolution about whether we should use
modern forum software — like Discourse — as an alternative to the mailing
lists we have now. After a long discussion, the Core Team has decided to
move swift-evolution and swift-users to Discourse.
>>>
>>> There are tradeoffs to moving to a forum. The main advantages are:
>>>
>>> - Easy for people to participate without subscribing to the entire
mailing list, as well as no need to provide email address to participate.
A lot of people have voiced concern that they feel resistance to
participate because of needing to subscribe to a mailing list.
>>>
>>> - Consistent affordances and rendering of content, including Markdown
support. This is really useful for having technical discussions.
>>>
>>> - Better searching of topics, archiving, etc.
>>>
>>> - More tools for moderation.
>>>
>>> - Topic cross-referencing, and consistent organization of topics
instead of whatever threading support a mail client provides (which is
inconsistent).
>>>
>>> I also want to consider moving the -dev lists to the same forum setup
as well; but that will be a separate conversation on those lists.
>>>
>>> A rollout plan has not been figured out. People are busy and there
are logistics to figure out. I will be engaging a handful of members from
the community to help with the transition. Specifically, there are those
who really value using email for participation on swift-evolution and
swift-users, and the goal is to get the forum setup to allow those people
to continue to feel effective when using email for discussions on these
"lists".
>>>
>>> More details will be announced as they get figured out, but I felt it
was important to let the community know about this direction.
>>>
>>> Ted
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> swift-evolution mailing list
>>> swift-evolution@swift.org <javascript:;>
>>> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
>> _______________________________________________
>> swift-evolution mailing list
>> swift-evolution@swift.org <javascript:;>
>> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
>
>
> --
> Rick Mann
> rmann@latencyzero.com <javascript:;>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> swift-evolution mailing list
> swift-evolution@swift.org <javascript:;>
> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org <javascript:;>
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

25

I would prefer http://www.fudforum.org/ that has good mailing list support, too.

Well, we appear to have completely opposite opinions on UI/usability. I took a look at fudforum and yeah, to my eyes it exemplifies the awful clutter that’s been a hallmark of web forums since before PHPBB. There’s so much visual noise it’s very hard to parse or to find anything. Clearly designed by a coder with a big hammer named “<table>”. I’m not a UI designer, but I’ve worked extensively with UI designers (I spent 15 years at Apple working on stuff like iChat and AppleScript) so I think I have some grounding in the field.

I do believe, though, that whatever solution swift.org <http://swift.org/&gt; switches to needs to have good email support. That way the people who hate the web UI, or who just don’t prefer to use the web for discussions, can keep using email as we do today. This is perfectly feasible to do; again, groups.io <http://groups.io/&gt; is a good example.

Here my concern is that I have not found a way to configure Discourse to make its email notifications work well as a substitute for a mailing list. I have admin privileges on a Discourse installation run by my employer, so I’ve looked through the entire admin UI for ways to improve the emails, and some of the problems don’t seem fixable by tweaking settings.

At this point I’m going to shut up because it sounds like the decision has been made, and I don’t want to contribute to further bike-shedding.

I’ve been mostly silent in this conversation largely because I didn’t realize it was leading up to a formal decision. I wish it would have followed the proposal process so it was clear to everyone that a decision was being considered and this was our chance to offer input.

FWIW, I am not ignoring this thread. At some point there was diminishing signal on the thread, and it felt like the category of opinions that had been voiced had been vocalized on the thread. Looping in swift-users into that thread would have been a good thing to do in hindsight so more people felt like they had a chance to participate. Based on what I am seeing in reaction to this decision, however, I’m not seeing much new signal.

I really like the experience of participating in the community via email. If I knew a decision was being seriously considered I would have taken a closer look at Discourse and likely offered more input. I will be disappointed if the experience of participating is not at least as good as it is using email.

This opinion was also eloquently voiced on the swift-evolution thread, and FWIW it is one that holds weight. I really want to strike a good balance here so we do what is best for the overall community. The reality is that we are pivoting from one technology to another, and with a web forum naturally the prime experience is in that forum. Email will likely feel “second class” to some degree simply because it, by design, is not the primary interaction model for forum software like Discourse. That doesn’t mean the email experience has to be terrible. Ideally it is good experience so that people who want to continue to use email for participation can continue to do so.

One of the most important reasons I like using email is that Mail offers a great experience on iPhone and iPad. I am skeptical that a web-based forum could offer the same level of convenience and efficiency for keeping up with the community that email provides.

Email unfortunately provides an uneven experience across clients, including the support for threading, what kind of content authorship affordances provided, and so forth. I totally get what you are saying though, being someone who uses Mail in the same way.

I hope that we do find a way to configure our tool (probably Discourse) so that the email experience on iPhone and iPad does not suffer. If we can meet that criteria and *also* offer the advantages of a web-based tool I will be very happy. But I think the current email experience on iPhone and iPad should set a minimum criteria that any tool must meet.

This is something I’m interested in achieving as well. There are a lot of tradeoffs here, and I suspect what we end up with will be tradeoffs that will be highly subjective from person to person. The “does not suffer” is hard to qualify, at least objectively, because it likely will be *different* from what we have now.

···

On Feb 9, 2017, at 9:30 AM, Matthew Johnson via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 11:16 AM, Jens Alfke via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org <mailto:swift-users@swift.org>> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 3:41 AM, Jan Neumüller via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org <mailto:swift-users@swift.org>> wrote:

—Jens
_______________________________________________
swift-users mailing list
swift-users@swift.org <mailto:swift-users@swift.org>
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-users

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

26

The decision to move from the mailing list may have surprised many but the
discussion on it has been ongoing very strong. Sorry you feel like you
didn't get to voice your opinion which I believe everyone should have the
opportunity to. I think many agree that email has it's perks on iPhone and
iPad but many have advocated for Disclosure because a way to improve the
Swift community's communication. It is very hard to please every person in
the community with each change but as a community we should support each
other in the discussions and decisions that are put forth (agreeing or
not). I believe we can find a way to get the experience with Disclosure.
Get it best for iPhone and iPad users, as well as email support and those
who want to just use Disclosure only. This may not all happen at once but
it will come as we progress.

···

On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 10:30 AM, Matthew Johnson via swift-evolution < swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 11:16 AM, Jens Alfke via swift-users < > swift-users@swift.org> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 3:41 AM, Jan Neumüller via swift-users < > swift-users@swift.org> wrote:

I would prefer http://www.fudforum.org/ that has good mailing list
support, too.

Well, we appear to have completely opposite opinions on UI/usability. I
took a look at fudforum and yeah, to my eyes it exemplifies the awful
clutter that’s been a hallmark of web forums since before PHPBB. There’s so
much visual noise it’s very hard to parse or to find anything. Clearly
designed by a coder with a big hammer named “<table>”. I’m not a UI
designer, but I’ve worked extensively with UI designers (I spent 15 years
at Apple working on stuff like iChat and AppleScript) so I think I have
some grounding in the field.

I do believe, though, that *whatever solution swift.org
<http://swift.org/&gt; switches to needs to have good email support*. That
way the people who hate the web UI, or who just don’t prefer to use the web
for discussions, can keep using email as we do today. This is perfectly
feasible to do; again, groups.io is a good example.

Here my concern is that *I have not found a way to configure Discourse to
make its email notifications work well as a substitute for a mailing list.*
I have admin privileges on a Discourse installation run by my employer, so
I’ve looked through the entire admin UI for ways to improve the emails, and
some of the problems don’t seem fixable by tweaking settings.

At this point I’m going to shut up because it sounds like the decision has
been made, and I don’t want to contribute to further bike-shedding.

I’ve been mostly silent in this conversation largely because I didn’t
realize it was leading up to a formal decision. I wish it would have
followed the proposal process so it was clear to everyone that a decision
was being considered and this was our chance to offer input.

I really like the experience of participating in the community via email.
If I knew a decision was being seriously considered I would have taken a
closer look at Discourse and likely offered more input. I will be
disappointed if the experience of participating is not at least as good as
it is using email.

One of the most important reasons I like using email is that Mail offers a
great experience on iPhone and iPad. I am skeptical that a web-based forum
could offer the same level of convenience and efficiency for keeping up
with the community that email provides.

I hope that we do find a way to configure our tool (probably Discourse) so
that the email experience on iPhone and iPad does not suffer. If we can
meet that criteria and *also* offer the advantages of a web-based tool I
will be very happy. But I think the current email experience on iPhone and
iPad should set a minimum criteria that any tool must meet.

—Jens
_______________________________________________
swift-users mailing list
swift-users@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-users

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

--
Joshua Alvarado
alvaradojoshua0@gmail.com

27

So when is this transition happening? The sooner the better, as Mail can’t really handle threads with large messages, like the recent evolution threads about Foundation serialization and decoding. It just stops rendering messages. Discourse would help a lot for these sorts of discussions.

Jon

···

On Feb 22, 2017, at 3:18 PM, Gavin Eadie via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

I've been participating on email lists and forums for forty-ish years and this dichotomy has been an ever present cloud hanging over that activity, sometimes, sadly, to the extent that the list-v-forum debate has swamped the desired topic of conversation .. I've seen it reach language-war proportions.

I'll express my ignorance before I go further .. I have not tracked the progress of recent (typically web-based) computer aided communications products so don't bite my head off .. what follows is a position I've held for a long time, a plea for a product that may well exist now.

I'm a big 'delayed binding' fan which, in this context, could mean separating the storage of the content from the display of the content. Surely there are stores that can be accessed by IMAP (for those that want the 'mailing list' experience and the Eudora interface), and by other methods SQL, REST, JSON (for those who want a more expressive web-app experience)?

This would seem to be in the same spirit of Markdown .. expressive when rendered, but quite readable in its raw form.

I'm sure you get the idea .. doesn't any such thing exist?

On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 4:41 PM, Lane Schwartz via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org <mailto:swift-users@swift.org>> wrote:

Is there a plan to enable an integrated mailing list functionality so that those of us who prefer that modality can continue to participate via email? Other forum software that I've been asked to use in the past (sorry, I can't remember the name) had this functionality, and it made a huge difference for me.

On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 6:03 PM, Ted kremenek via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org <mailto:swift-users@swift.org>> wrote:

[...] Specifically, there are those who really value using email for participation on swift-evolution and swift-users, and the goal is to get the forum setup to allow those people to continue to feel effective when using email for discussions on these "lists".
_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

28

There will be discussions about each of the mailing lists on whether or not to move to Discourse. My preference is that all of the mailing lists move, but the needs of the different lists are slightly different and I didn't want to gate moving swift-evolution to a forum based on the outcome of those discussions. It is clear there is a real need that is solved by moving swift-evolution to a forum, and I want to get that moving. As it is, this will take some effort to make happen, and likely by that point we'll have settled what to do with the other mailing lists.

···

On Feb 8, 2017, at 9:50 PM, Muse M via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

I don't see any discussions to have Swift Server Side shift to Discourse forum too?

On Thursday, February 9, 2017, James Hillhouse via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:
I'll echo Nick and Joshua–thanks Swift Core team for taking the time to decide on this change.

Jim

> On Feb 8, 2017, at 9:37 PM, Rick Mann via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:
>
> I second this praise. FWIW, I recently installed Discourse using a DigitalOcean droplet, and it couldn't have been easier. Upgrades are surprisingly easy, too.
>
> I have yet to figure out the email integration; I hope you can get that working.
>
> I also hope you give some effort to improving on the default Discourse look. It's not bad, but I feel like it doesn't do a good job of delineating functional areas on the page. Having said that, I'm more than happy to wait indefinitely for such an improvement; it's not worth holding up the roll-out.
>
> Thanks again!
>
>> On Feb 8, 2017, at 19:34 , Joshua Alvarado via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:
>>
>> :tada::confetti_ball::tada::confetti_ball::tada::confetti_ball::confetti_ball:
>> This is an awesome decision and a huge enhancement for the Swift community. Thanks (Core Team) for taking the time to entertain the discussion and move forward with what many community members have wanted.
>>
>> Alvarado, Joshua
>>
>>> On Feb 8, 2017, at 5:03 PM, Ted kremenek via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> There was a long thread on swift-evolution about whether we should use modern forum software — like Discourse — as an alternative to the mailing lists we have now. After a long discussion, the Core Team has decided to move swift-evolution and swift-users to Discourse.
>>>
>>> There are tradeoffs to moving to a forum. The main advantages are:
>>>
>>> - Easy for people to participate without subscribing to the entire mailing list, as well as no need to provide email address to participate. A lot of people have voiced concern that they feel resistance to participate because of needing to subscribe to a mailing list.
>>>
>>> - Consistent affordances and rendering of content, including Markdown support. This is really useful for having technical discussions.
>>>
>>> - Better searching of topics, archiving, etc.
>>>
>>> - More tools for moderation.
>>>
>>> - Topic cross-referencing, and consistent organization of topics instead of whatever threading support a mail client provides (which is inconsistent).
>>>
>>> I also want to consider moving the -dev lists to the same forum setup as well; but that will be a separate conversation on those lists.
>>>
>>> A rollout plan has not been figured out. People are busy and there are logistics to figure out. I will be engaging a handful of members from the community to help with the transition. Specifically, there are those who really value using email for participation on swift-evolution and swift-users, and the goal is to get the forum setup to allow those people to continue to feel effective when using email for discussions on these "lists".
>>>
>>> More details will be announced as they get figured out, but I felt it was important to let the community know about this direction.
>>>
>>> Ted
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> 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
>
>
> --
> Rick Mann
> rmann@latencyzero.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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

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

29

That last one is horrible to even look at (that’s my personal point of view). It’s packed full with unnecessary UI, which reminds me of the time when html-tables ruled all over the place. Discourse has a nice minimalistic look and I’m sure people that will setup the forum will tweak it to make it feel more appropriate for Swift, just like the design of the evolution-page was tweaked several times.

I don’t see unnecessary UI, I see NEEDED UI. Discourse is so minimalistic you don’t see any relevant information at all 8(

Here is really good example of how a huge/popular topic like the current one or String in Swift 4 would look like with Discourse (I picked one from Rust with lots of replies): High Order Function with Type Parameter - help - The Rust Programming Language Forum
+1 for Discourse, I think it really is the right choice.

What is good at this example? I don’t see anything good there but lots of problems:

- very hard to see who posted a reply
- very bad readability thanks to tiny font and low contrast colors
- totally broken threading (is one really supposed to click each time on replies to see them?)
- lots of wasted screen space (empty space and a very narrow text area)
- cryptic stuff like this Dropbox - Screenshot 2017-02-09 14.03.20.png - Simplify your life <Dropbox - Screenshot 2017-02-09 14.03.20.png - Simplify your life;
- endless scrolling…

This is considered GOOD today? Does any modern web trend think on older people and people with glasses anymore?

Jan

···

On 9 Feb 2017, at 13:50, Adrian Zubarev <adrian.zubarev@devandartist.com> wrote:

30

Just to add to this point — new insights on this topic are welcome, and will be paid attention to. The decision to change to a forum is because that was evaluated as being the best thing for the community, based on the range of opinions provided and the tradeoffs made. If there is something important that was missed, obviously that is not going to be ignored. We want to do the right thing. So far I still feel that moving to a forum software is the right choice, but I’d like to do that in a way that allows people to still participate effectively via email.

···

On Feb 9, 2017, at 3:52 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org> wrote:

I’ve been mostly silent in this conversation largely because I didn’t realize it was leading up to a formal decision. I wish it would have followed the proposal process so it was clear to everyone that a decision was being considered and this was our chance to offer input.

FWIW, I am not ignoring this thread. At some point there was diminishing signal on the thread, and it felt like the category of opinions that had been voiced had been vocalized on the thread. Looping in swift-users into that thread would have been a good thing to do in hindsight so more people felt like they had a chance to participate. Based on what I am seeing in reaction to this decision, however, I’m not seeing much new signal.

31

Sorry, didn’t see the other threads about this. Sooner is better but I’m glad to know it’s at least planned.

Jon

···

On Mar 20, 2017, at 12:39 PM, Jon Shier <jon@jonshier.com> wrote:

  So when is this transition happening? The sooner the better, as Mail can’t really handle threads with large messages, like the recent evolution threads about Foundation serialization and decoding. It just stops rendering messages. Discourse would help a lot for these sorts of discussions.

Jon

On Feb 22, 2017, at 3:18 PM, Gavin Eadie via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote:

I've been participating on email lists and forums for forty-ish years and this dichotomy has been an ever present cloud hanging over that activity, sometimes, sadly, to the extent that the list-v-forum debate has swamped the desired topic of conversation .. I've seen it reach language-war proportions.

I'll express my ignorance before I go further .. I have not tracked the progress of recent (typically web-based) computer aided communications products so don't bite my head off .. what follows is a position I've held for a long time, a plea for a product that may well exist now.

I'm a big 'delayed binding' fan which, in this context, could mean separating the storage of the content from the display of the content. Surely there are stores that can be accessed by IMAP (for those that want the 'mailing list' experience and the Eudora interface), and by other methods SQL, REST, JSON (for those who want a more expressive web-app experience)?

This would seem to be in the same spirit of Markdown .. expressive when rendered, but quite readable in its raw form.

I'm sure you get the idea .. doesn't any such thing exist?

On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 4:41 PM, Lane Schwartz via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org <mailto:swift-users@swift.org>> wrote:

Is there a plan to enable an integrated mailing list functionality so that those of us who prefer that modality can continue to participate via email? Other forum software that I've been asked to use in the past (sorry, I can't remember the name) had this functionality, and it made a huge difference for me.

On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 6:03 PM, Ted kremenek via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org <mailto:swift-users@swift.org>> wrote:

[...] Specifically, there are those who really value using email for participation on swift-evolution and swift-users, and the goal is to get the forum setup to allow those people to continue to feel effective when using email for discussions on these "lists".
_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

32

Huh, I figured I was the only one that happened to since the Radar I opened on that actually didn’t get marked as a duplicate (rdar://31137438 <rdar://31137438>). For me, it was worse than you describe; once I clicked on that thread, Mail would stop rendering messages from *any* thread, not just that one, and basically became non-functional until I quit the app and restarted it. The thread was quite the land mine, and I will admit to occasionally using some… colorful language after accidentally clicking on it.

Charles

···

On Mar 20, 2017, at 11:39 AM, Jon Shier via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

  So when is this transition happening? The sooner the better, as Mail can’t really handle threads with large messages, like the recent evolution threads about Foundation serialization and decoding. It just stops rendering messages.

33

I’m sorry for you, but I don’t think we’re talking in this thread about being old and wearing glasses or not. My eyes aren’t the best either, but I’m not complaining about that or try to make this as an argument against minimalistic designs. (Coloring is a different story of its own.)

How’s that needed UI at all? It’s an ugly piece of web art compared to these days standards.

What’s the problem with endless scrolling? We’re all doing that every day on the internet, scrolling down to find and click on the next or # button for the purpose to again being able to scroll down to click on the same button over and over again. Discourse took that unnecessary click from you and provides a nice side scroller to quickly jump to a specific reply you want.

Reading all your complains lets me think that it’s exactly how you would think about sites like stackoverflow for example (or even the minimalistic swift.org).

I’m not trying to be offensive by any means. I just criticized your choice from my esthetic point of view.

···

--
Adrian Zubarev
Sent with Airmail

Am 9. Februar 2017 um 14:07:05, Jan Neumüller via swift-users (swift-users@swift.org) schrieb:

I see NEEDED UI.

34

Is there any way to have a trial run so we can evaluate the email experience of using the forum software before we make the final switch? I agree that this sounds like the right direction, but it’s hard to know what the email experience will really be like until we give it a try for a week or so.

···

On Feb 9, 2017, at 6:04 PM, Ted Kremenek <kremenek@apple.com> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 3:52 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org <mailto:swift-users@swift.org>> wrote:

I’ve been mostly silent in this conversation largely because I didn’t realize it was leading up to a formal decision. I wish it would have followed the proposal process so it was clear to everyone that a decision was being considered and this was our chance to offer input.

FWIW, I am not ignoring this thread. At some point there was diminishing signal on the thread, and it felt like the category of opinions that had been voiced had been vocalized on the thread. Looping in swift-users into that thread would have been a good thing to do in hindsight so more people felt like they had a chance to participate. Based on what I am seeing in reaction to this decision, however, I’m not seeing much new signal.

Just to add to this point — new insights on this topic are welcome, and will be paid attention to. The decision to change to a forum is because that was evaluated as being the best thing for the community, based on the range of opinions provided and the tradeoffs made. If there is something important that was missed, obviously that is not going to be ignored. We want to do the right thing. So far I still feel that moving to a forum software is the right choice, but I’d like to do that in a way that allows people to still participate effectively via email.

35

I’m sorry for you, but I don’t think we’re talking in this thread about being old and wearing glasses or not. My eyes aren’t the best either, but I’m not complaining about that or try to make this as an argument against minimalistic designs. (Coloring is a different story of its own.)

I hate “modern” or as I call it ugly web design.

How’s that needed UI at all? It’s an ugly piece of web art compared to these days standards.

Everything making functions and structure clearer is good. Today’s standards are a bag of pain and I never understood how such crappy sites als Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Stackoverflow, add lots of other “cool” sites are liked by so many. For me they are the epitome of what is wrong with todays web.

What’s the problem with endless scrolling? We’re all doing that every day on the internet, scrolling down to find and click on the next or # button for the purpose to again being able to scroll down to click on the same button over and over again. Discourse took that unnecessary click from you and provides a nice side scroller to quickly jump to a specific reply you want.

I can’t stand scrolling. Pages and pageturning are much nicer to my eyes and mind. I always lose track in these endless scrolling nightmares.

Reading all your complains lets me think that it’s exactly how you would think about sites like stackoverflow for example (or even the minimalistic swift.org <x-msg://4/swift.org>).

Se above - I hate both. At least swift.org <http://swift.org/&gt; has a font in readable size.

For me even the old geocities chaos was nicer then todays minimalistic crap. But I may possible thats my age, I hate modern music and movies, too.

I’m not trying to be offensive by any means. I just criticized your choice from my esthetic point of view.

And I’m just frustrated at this downward spiral in useful and nice design. It’s like the iOS Music app - gone from a nice and very useful app (till iOS6) to todays absolutely useless crap that tries to forcefeed Apple Music onto me but doesn’t help in efficient handling of my own music library. Luckily I could switch to Caesium to fix that.

Jan

···

On 9 Feb 2017, at 14:32, Adrian Zubarev <adrian.zubarev@devandartist.com> wrote:

36

I need to formalize a plan, but yes I’d like to trial this somehow. Nate Cook created a staged installation of Discourse when the thread on swift-evolution was happening and there was some useful telemetry out of that experiment (such as how rich text email interacted with doing inline replies). Moving to Discourse (or some alternate forum software if we decide Discourse is not a fit) would be a staged thing. The main question to me is how do we do a meaningful trial without actually doing the real discussions in the forum (while the mailing lists are still running).

···

On Feb 9, 2017, at 4:09 PM, Matthew Johnson <matthew@anandabits.com> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 6:04 PM, Ted Kremenek <kremenek@apple.com <mailto:kremenek@apple.com>> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 3:52 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org <mailto:swift-users@swift.org>> wrote:

I’ve been mostly silent in this conversation largely because I didn’t realize it was leading up to a formal decision. I wish it would have followed the proposal process so it was clear to everyone that a decision was being considered and this was our chance to offer input.

FWIW, I am not ignoring this thread. At some point there was diminishing signal on the thread, and it felt like the category of opinions that had been voiced had been vocalized on the thread. Looping in swift-users into that thread would have been a good thing to do in hindsight so more people felt like they had a chance to participate. Based on what I am seeing in reaction to this decision, however, I’m not seeing much new signal.

Just to add to this point — new insights on this topic are welcome, and will be paid attention to. The decision to change to a forum is because that was evaluated as being the best thing for the community, based on the range of opinions provided and the tradeoffs made. If there is something important that was missed, obviously that is not going to be ignored. We want to do the right thing. So far I still feel that moving to a forum software is the right choice, but I’d like to do that in a way that allows people to still participate effectively via email.

Is there any way to have a trial run so we can evaluate the email experience of using the forum software before we make the final switch? I agree that this sounds like the right direction, but it’s hard to know what the email experience will really be like until we give it a try for a week or so.

37

+1 for Discourse

···

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 9, 2017, at 14:32, Adrian Zubarev via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

I’m sorry for you, but I don’t think we’re talking in this thread about being old and wearing glasses or not. My eyes aren’t the best either, but I’m not complaining about that or try to make this as an argument against minimalistic designs. (Coloring is a different story of its own.)

How’s that needed UI at all? It’s an ugly piece of web art compared to these days standards.

What’s the problem with endless scrolling? We’re all doing that every day on the internet, scrolling down to find and click on the next or # button for the purpose to again being able to scroll down to click on the same button over and over again. Discourse took that unnecessary click from you and provides a nice side scroller to quickly jump to a specific reply you want.

Reading all your complains lets me think that it’s exactly how you would think about sites like stackoverflow for example (or even the minimalistic swift.org).

I’m not trying to be offensive by any means. I just criticized your choice from my esthetic point of view.

--
Adrian Zubarev
Sent with Airmail

Am 9. Februar 2017 um 14:07:05, Jan Neumüller via swift-users (swift-users@swift.org) schrieb:

I see NEEDED UI.

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

38

Hi Ted,

Today I learned about https://esdiscuss.org/ which is like an archiver viewer for discuss@mozilla.org pipermail mailing list

All their code is at esdiscuss · GitHub

This still preserves pipermail as the one source of truth but it allows better searching and visibility.

There is even a reply button which opens up a mail client presumably the correct headers.

Thanks!

···

On Feb 9, 2017, at 5:18 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 4:09 PM, Matthew Johnson <matthew@anandabits.com <mailto:matthew@anandabits.com>> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 6:04 PM, Ted Kremenek <kremenek@apple.com <mailto:kremenek@apple.com>> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 3:52 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org <mailto:swift-users@swift.org>> wrote:

I’ve been mostly silent in this conversation largely because I didn’t realize it was leading up to a formal decision. I wish it would have followed the proposal process so it was clear to everyone that a decision was being considered and this was our chance to offer input.

FWIW, I am not ignoring this thread. At some point there was diminishing signal on the thread, and it felt like the category of opinions that had been voiced had been vocalized on the thread. Looping in swift-users into that thread would have been a good thing to do in hindsight so more people felt like they had a chance to participate. Based on what I am seeing in reaction to this decision, however, I’m not seeing much new signal.

Just to add to this point — new insights on this topic are welcome, and will be paid attention to. The decision to change to a forum is because that was evaluated as being the best thing for the community, based on the range of opinions provided and the tradeoffs made. If there is something important that was missed, obviously that is not going to be ignored. We want to do the right thing. So far I still feel that moving to a forum software is the right choice, but I’d like to do that in a way that allows people to still participate effectively via email.

Is there any way to have a trial run so we can evaluate the email experience of using the forum software before we make the final switch? I agree that this sounds like the right direction, but it’s hard to know what the email experience will really be like until we give it a try for a week or so.

I need to formalize a plan, but yes I’d like to trial this somehow. Nate Cook created a staged installation of Discourse when the thread on swift-evolution was happening and there was some useful telemetry out of that experiment (such as how rich text email interacted with doing inline replies). Moving to Discourse (or some alternate forum software if we decide Discourse is not a fit) would be a staged thing. The main question to me is how do we do a meaningful trial without actually doing the real discussions in the forum (while the mailing lists are still running).
_______________________________________________
swift-users mailing list
swift-users@swift.org <mailto:swift-users@swift.org>
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-users

39

The quote below made my day dear Swift friend as I might remind you that if modern is associated with hate in your mind, then the modern programming language called Swift would probably be a bad choice.

I might remind everyone that Discourse is open sourced and therefore tweaks are possible. If you prefer a consistent font like on swift.org, than spell it out and help to create a corner on the web where every Swiftier feels right at home.

Personally I’d prefer (if possible) that we’d remove profile pictures from the forum and simply have only full names (colored?) + some kind of annotation (e.g. Core Team, etc.). Profile pictures are only gimmicks that does not contribute to anything at all.

As Jan already said, the font (and font-size?) of the forum could match the font from swift.org if possible. I wouldn’t mind and it’d make it a little bit more alike.

···

--
Adrian Zubarev
Sent with Airmail

Am 9. Februar 2017 um 14:57:34, Jan Neumüller via swift-users (swift-users@swift.org) schrieb:

I hate “modern” or as I call it ugly web design.

40

This looks way better then Discourse. +1 from me.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Jan Neumüller

···

--
GPG/PGP-Key: http://www.slayers.de/transfer/Jan_GPG_pub.asc

On 17 Feb 2017, at 21:45, Jose Cheyo Jimenez via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org> wrote:

Hi Ted,

Today I learned about https://esdiscuss.org/ which is like an archiver viewer for discuss@mozilla.org <mailto:discuss@mozilla.org> pipermail mailing list

All their code is at esdiscuss · GitHub

This still preserves pipermail as the one source of truth but it allows better searching and visibility.

There is even a reply button which opens up a mail client presumably the correct headers.

Thanks!

On Feb 9, 2017, at 5:18 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org <mailto:swift-users@swift.org>> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 4:09 PM, Matthew Johnson <matthew@anandabits.com <mailto:matthew@anandabits.com>> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 6:04 PM, Ted Kremenek <kremenek@apple.com <mailto:kremenek@apple.com>> wrote:

On Feb 9, 2017, at 3:52 PM, Ted Kremenek via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org <mailto:swift-users@swift.org>> wrote:

I’ve been mostly silent in this conversation largely because I didn’t realize it was leading up to a formal decision. I wish it would have followed the proposal process so it was clear to everyone that a decision was being considered and this was our chance to offer input.

FWIW, I am not ignoring this thread. At some point there was diminishing signal on the thread, and it felt like the category of opinions that had been voiced had been vocalized on the thread. Looping in swift-users into that thread would have been a good thing to do in hindsight so more people felt like they had a chance to participate. Based on what I am seeing in reaction to this decision, however, I’m not seeing much new signal.

Just to add to this point — new insights on this topic are welcome, and will be paid attention to. The decision to change to a forum is because that was evaluated as being the best thing for the community, based on the range of opinions provided and the tradeoffs made. If there is something important that was missed, obviously that is not going to be ignored. We want to do the right thing. So far I still feel that moving to a forum software is the right choice, but I’d like to do that in a way that allows people to still participate effectively via email.

Is there any way to have a trial run so we can evaluate the email experience of using the forum software before we make the final switch? I agree that this sounds like the right direction, but it’s hard to know what the email experience will really be like until we give it a try for a week or so.

I need to formalize a plan, but yes I’d like to trial this somehow. Nate Cook created a staged installation of Discourse when the thread on swift-evolution was happening and there was some useful telemetry out of that experiment (such as how rich text email interacted with doing inline replies). Moving to Discourse (or some alternate forum software if we decide Discourse is not a fit) would be a staged thing. The main question to me is how do we do a meaningful trial without actually doing the real discussions in the forum (while the mailing lists are still running).
_______________________________________________
swift-users mailing list
swift-users@swift.org <mailto:swift-users@swift.org>
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-users

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