4 ms·

I don't like mailing lists, it feels a bit dated to me, and you either get a lot of noise in your inbox or hope that people don't forget to CC you when replying

I don't like mailing lists, it feels a bit dated to me, and you either get a lot of noise in your inbox or hope that people don't forget to CC you when replying. Forums are OK, but do you really need one for most projects when there's GitHub issues and even discussions now? I personally like it when there's a chat (Discord, Telegram, whatever), it shouldn't be a replacement for an issue tracker but there can be things that aren't clear-cut issues, and I feel less embarrassed to ask in a chat if some behavior is intentional rather than opening an issue.

rcarmo 5y ago
Mailing-lists are the most effective way to keep track of things long-term and “catch up”, and they are trivial to filter into a folder IMHO.
- nyuszika7h 5y ago
  I disagree, mailing lists suffer from many issues. Editing or deleting messages is impossible, which means moderation is also impossible unless you force pre-approval for every post. There is no reasonable way to categorize discussions after the fact, only creating separate lists and hoping people post in the correct place. Trying to share code is the worst, you have a few options here: * Attach it and hope everyone's clients handle attachments properly (especially the online archive will likely not include them). * Include it inline and hope people aren't using a proportional font and it's formatted correctly in the archive. (I've recently had the displeasure of the python-ideas mailing list archive "helpfully" formatting >>> [which is the Python REPL prompt, so you'd think they would have thought of this] into a 3 levels deep blockquote. Thank god we're using such ancient technology in 2021 which makes it impossible to edit the message to correct it!) * Post it on a pastebin, and hope the link isn't dead in a few years when someone is trying to find a solution to their problem in the mailing list archives a few years later.
  - rcarmo 5y ago
    None of those are real problems, IMHO, and Discord or chat certainly don't solve them either. Then again, I've used mailing lists since UUCP and VMS, so maybe I'm just exp^Wold.
    - pie_flavor 5y ago
      Editing messages and sharing code isn't a real problem? Seriously? And how does Discord not solve them, when it's one button to edit and three backticks to share code?

rcarmo 5y ago

Mailing-lists are the most effective way to keep track of things long-term and “catch up”, and they are trivial to filter into a folder IMHO.

nyuszika7h 5y ago
I disagree, mailing lists suffer from many issues. Editing or deleting messages is impossible, which means moderation is also impossible unless you force pre-approval for every post. There is no reasonable way to categorize discussions after the fact, only creating separate lists and hoping people post in the correct place. Trying to share code is the worst, you have a few options here: * Attach it and hope everyone's clients handle attachments properly (especially the online archive will likely not include them). * Include it inline and hope people aren't using a proportional font and it's formatted correctly in the archive. (I've recently had the displeasure of the python-ideas mailing list archive "helpfully" formatting >>> [which is the Python REPL prompt, so you'd think they would have thought of this] into a 3 levels deep blockquote. Thank god we're using such ancient technology in 2021 which makes it impossible to edit the message to correct it!) * Post it on a pastebin, and hope the link isn't dead in a few years when someone is trying to find a solution to their problem in the mailing list archives a few years later.
- rcarmo 5y ago
  None of those are real problems, IMHO, and Discord or chat certainly don't solve them either. Then again, I've used mailing lists since UUCP and VMS, so maybe I'm just exp^Wold.
  - pie_flavor 5y ago
    Editing messages and sharing code isn't a real problem? Seriously? And how does Discord not solve them, when it's one button to edit and three backticks to share code?