separate mailing list for fluffiness (was: lilypond-devel Digest, Vol 118, Issue 55)

[Graham Percival]

On Fri, Sep 07, 2012 at 06:03:23PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
> Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > However, some members of lilypond-devel are actively hostile to
> > novel crazy ideas.  I mean, I knew that there was no way that
> > people would like the /.\ prefix-postfix-neutral idea.  It was an
> > experiment to see whether we could have a polite discussion about
> > a crazy idea.
> 
> If you consider using the developer list as a social experimenting
> ground polite in itself...

I asked if we wanted to have discussion here or elsewhere.  There
was consensus that it should be here.  I then tried out the
prefix-postfix-neutral idea.  I think that was fair.

> > 1. social solution: force a radical "culture shift" on -devel
> > overnight so that we can have open discussions.  I think that
> > things have gotten better over the past few months, but it's still
> > not good enough.
> 
> In what respect is a discussion where voicing strong disapproval is
> prohibited "open"?

Han-Wen: "No; syntax discussions without understanding how the
lilypond parser works is just blowing around hot air and
discussing bike shed colors."
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2012-09/msg00109.html
Such language closes off discussion.

> > 3. alternate: hold these discussions on the -user list.  I
> > wouldn't mind that option, actually.
> 
> And what happens when discussions in some "opinioned experts unwelcome"
> forum come to a conclusion that will subsequently get the shaft in the
> developer list?  I honestly doubt that we will be able to counter the
> "developers don't take the users serious" impression you want to avoid.

The idea isn't to exclude opinionated experts; it's to exclude
opinionated experts who don't spend a certain amount of willpower
rewriting text to make it polite.  BTW, when it comes to policy
questions such as Jan's git-patch idea, I think I fall into that
category.  More on that later.

Assuming that the opinionated expert would have some good
technical argument against the idea, I think that's fine.  The
change from the status quo is that the idea would be discussed by
positive people first (perhaps experts, perhaps not).  Most idea
would be dropped at this stage.  I would be shocked if more than
20% of the ideas progressed to the point at which it made sense to
discuss them on -devel.


One of the problems with the current setup is that there's no real
indication of how serious an idea is.  I'm been somewhat out of
touch for the past few days, so I now have about 300 emails to
skim.  Most of those are not serious proposals, and if they were
on a lilypond-fluffy-discussion mailing list I would delete them
unread.  But since they're all on -devel or bug-, and since we
have thread drift, I feel that I should skim them all to see if
there's anything that needs replying to.

A better example is Jan's idea of dropping rietveld in favor of
email-only discussion of patches.  My first reaction (which I'm
*not* proud of) was to reply angrily to defend the status quo.
I still think that rietveld is better than email-only -- but in
the past few hours, I've realized that I was completely wrong to
try to close off that question.  The current setup *is*
problematic (it's the primary complaint of developers from the
anonymous survey!), so we should be open to discussing potential
replacements.  Even if I don't like one idea, I should have still
been encouraging more discussion, rather than a slightly-muted "no
you idiot, we tried it and it failed, now go away".  (again, I am
not at all proud of my reaction, and the irony of me replying like
that after spending the past few days talking about encouraging
open discussion is not lost on me)

A separate mailing list for initial ideas could allow people to
approach emails in a different frame of mind.  Am I really busy
and stressed?  ok, I'll only read -devel and deal with urgent
issues.  Do I have some spare time and feel like discussion ideas
in an unfocused, unhurried manner?  ok, I'll read
lilypond-fluffy-discuss.

Granted, I shouldn't force a new mailing list just to accommodate
my mental state.  But some people seem to like the idea of having
a separate place for positive discussions, so I'm not totally
alone.  That said, at the moment I guess I'm leaning towards
having such discussions on lilypond-user, since a few people have
come out strongly against having a new mailing list.

- Graham