Re: IM dev discussions?

[Ihor Radchenko]

Bastien <bzg@gnu.org> writes:

>> Ideally, it would be nice to
>> have ML front-end that looks similar to GitHub issues. I recall the
>> latest versions of mailman had somewhat familiar look. Sourcehut is also
>> trying to implement a web-based front-end (though is it not familiar at
>> all, unfortunately).
>
> Note that if the GNU project moves to using its instance of sourcehut,
> then we will also benefit from such a web-based front-end.

Yes. However, despite being web-based, Sourhut's frontend is not
intuitive at all. I also heard that the frontend accessibility is not
something they plan to improve upon much. See 
https://cadence.moe/blog/2022-07-03-git-forge-opinions-github-gitlab-gitea-sourcehut

>> Note that the opposite to the above is not true. We should not prefer
>> familiar front-ends at the cost of sacrificing technical accessibility.
>
> Agreed again.
>
> Another parameter I put in the equation: what do we want?
>
> If our priority were to redirect reports made on r/org-mode and SO to
> the Org maintainers, then switching to GitHub would probably be a good
> move: users that feel comfortable sharing reports and ideas on these
> platforms would create more issues on GitHub than emails we currently
> receive on the list.

I did a little experiment over last month by directing reddit users to
Org ML. When asked, a substantial fraction of people actually did post
to Org ML. My impression is that people first reach out to "casual"
resources like reddit because they are afraid to bother "hardcore" Org
developers on the mailing list with they humble little issues.

Maybe we can nicely ask moderators/active users of reddit/SO to redirect
people to Org ML when appropriate? Similar to our current effort with
contributor stewards.

> I believe our priority should be to motivate more Elisp hackers to
> become Org maintainers.  I expect potential candidates to be okay with
> the GNU recommendation of trying to avoid GitHub for ethical reasons
> and to be fine with working by email, the old way.  Especially if we
> have maintainers for small files: they certainly don't want to follow
> everything in Org's development but agree to be cc'ed occasionally.

I think you are missing one important category of contributors --
maintainers of third-party packages. I've got involved into several
Org-related discussions on Github because I got @mentioned in some
threads. My impression is that a number of package maintainers on Github
actively cross-link issues between repos and try to resolve problems
together. However, they rarely reach out to Org ML.

Notably, I managed to communicate on GitHub simply using email.

May we set a single account on GitHub and link it to Org ML so that
people can @mention Org team on GitHub, and we automatically get the
email directly to Org ML? Note that I do not suggest maintaining Org
mirror with its issues page. Just a user.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at https://orgmode.org/.
Support Org development at https://liberapay.com/org-mode,
or support my work at https://liberapay.com/yantar92