Proposal to deprecate the docs mailing list

[Addison Berry]

So this is an issue that has been kicking around in my head for a
while. It was raised briefly earlier this year (http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/documentation/2008-March/thread.html#5900
) on the list and it was decided to stick with the mailing list. I
raised it again today during our IRC meeting to get a general pulse.
So, I'm going to lay it all out and see what the larger team thinks.
I am proposing that we deprecate the documentation mailing list and
use groups.drupal.org for our discussions instead. In order to not
have conversations happening in two places we need to have one
definitive "discussion" venue. Due to this, the current docs group
is "read-only." To make it read-only we have to limit who can
actually become a member of the group. Limiting membership like this
severely hampers our use of all the tools that g.d.o could offer us.
If we allowed membership and free posting on the g.d.o group, we
- Still have email notifications of all discussions.
- Be able to use wiki posts to collaborate on one living document
rather than having to attach separate iterations to an issue in the
queue.
- Read threads all on one page rather than have to page through the
mailman archive.
- Organize and categorize discussions to make it easier to find
areas of interest.
- Replying to old threads that you didn't actually receive in email
is clear and straightforward - just leave a new comment. (How to
respond to archived mail threads is not an apparent thing.)
The only advantage that the mailing list provides that the group
does not, is the ability to reply to a thread directly from your
email. I feel that losing this feature is worth the advantages we
would gain by shifting to g.d.o. I feel that this is true for
actually collaborating as a team and to make it easier for new users
to join in.
I am posting this to the mailing list as well as posting on g.d.o
with comments turned on. This is one conversation that I'd like to
see discussed wherever folks feel most comfortable.

- Addi (add1sun)
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[Heather]

Okey, I am strongly in favor of working with the team on a wiki page to focus on, for example, a review of the getting started guide. Being able to keep a list, suggest reordering, etc, through wiki its superior.

Also, having the mailing list, when there is so much productive activity on g.d.o feels a bit like a back channel to me, which goes counter to the transparent open policies of Drupal.

But... Here I am, I have access through my phone and I'm responding via email. That's the irony. Wish we could have it both ways. Hmm.. Wish I could browse g.d.o on my phone, but that's another problem!

Can we sort of turn on wiki pages in the group, and see how it goes? Hey if you used g.d.o you could make a poll. Heh.

- Heather


-----Original Message-----
From: Addison Berry <***@rocktreesky.com>

Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:42:02
To: <***@drupal.org>
Subject: [documentation] Proposal to deprecate the docs mailing list

So this is an issue that has been kicking around in my head for a
while. It was raised briefly earlier this year (http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/documentation/2008-March/thread.html#5900
) on the list and it was decided to stick with the mailing list. I
raised it again today during our IRC meeting to get a general pulse.
So, I'm going to lay it all out and see what the larger team thinks.
I am proposing that we deprecate the documentation mailing list and
use groups.drupal.org for our discussions instead. In order to not
have conversations happening in two places we need to have one
definitive "discussion" venue. Due to this, the current docs group
is "read-only." To make it read-only we have to limit who can
actually become a member of the group. Limiting membership like this
severely hampers our use of all the tools that g.d.o could offer us.
If we allowed membership and free posting on the g.d.o group, we
- Still have email notifications of all discussions.
- Be able to use wiki posts to collaborate on one living document
rather than having to attach separate iterations to an issue in the
queue.
- Read threads all on one page rather than have to page through the
mailman archive.
- Organize and categorize discussions to make it easier to find
areas of interest.
- Replying to old threads that you didn't actually receive in email
is clear and straightforward - just leave a new comment. (How to
respond to archived mail threads is not an apparent thing.)
The only advantage that the mailing list provides that the group
does not, is the ability to reply to a thread directly from your
email. I feel that losing this feature is worth the advantages we
would gain by shifting to g.d.o. I feel that this is true for
actually collaborating as a team and to make it easier for new users
to join in.
I am posting this to the mailing list as well as posting on g.d.o
with comments turned on. This is one conversation that I'd like to
see discussed wherever folks feel most comfortable.

- Addi (add1sun)
--------------------------------------
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[Ryan Cross]

Well, i can see the benefits to using g.d.o but currently we are not really
using it, so its hard to see whether or not people will rally to it.

It might seem small, but one of the biggest drawbacks is that in order to
reply to a message I would have to leave my email, then open a browser or
tab, then log in to g.d.o, then potentially need to find the thread, then
post my comment. This is very burdensome when just wantign to make a short
response or the occasional "+1" on a topic.

I am also realizing now that I am replying via email, so whatever that is
worth...

[Shai Gluskin]

+1

Shai

Shai Gluskin

Post by Heather
Okey, I am strongly in favor of working with the team on a wiki page
to focus on, for example, a review of the getting started guide.
Being able to keep a list, suggest reordering, etc, through wiki its
superior.
Also, having the mailing list, when there is so much productive
activity on g.d.o feels a bit like a back channel to me, which goes
counter to the transparent open policies of Drupal.
But... Here I am, I have access through my phone and I'm responding
via email. That's the irony. Wish we could have it both ways. Hmm..
Wish I could browse g.d.o on my phone, but that's another problem!
Can we sort of turn on wiki pages in the group, and see how it goes?
Hey if you used g.d.o you could make a poll. Heh.
- Heather
-----Original Message-----
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:42:02
Subject: [documentation] Proposal to deprecate the docs mailing list

So this is an issue that has been kicking around in my head for a
while. It was raised briefly earlier this year (http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/documentation/2008-March/thread.html#5900
) on the list and it was decided to stick with the mailing list. I
raised it again today during our IRC meeting to get a general pulse.
So, I'm going to lay it all out and see what the larger team thinks.
I am proposing that we deprecate the documentation mailing list and
use groups.drupal.org for our discussions instead. In order to not
have conversations happening in two places we need to have one
definitive "discussion" venue. Due to this, the current docs group
is "read-only." To make it read-only we have to limit who can
actually become a member of the group. Limiting membership like this
severely hampers our use of all the tools that g.d.o could offer us.
If we allowed membership and free posting on the g.d.o group, we
- Still have email notifications of all discussions.
- Be able to use wiki posts to collaborate on one living document
rather than having to attach separate iterations to an issue in the
queue.
- Read threads all on one page rather than have to page through the
mailman archive.
- Organize and categorize discussions to make it easier to find
areas of interest.
- Replying to old threads that you didn't actually receive in email
is clear and straightforward - just leave a new comment. (How to
respond to archived mail threads is not an apparent thing.)
The only advantage that the mailing list provides that the group
does not, is the ability to reply to a thread directly from your
email. I feel that losing this feature is worth the advantages we
would gain by shifting to g.d.o. I feel that this is true for
actually collaborating as a team and to make it easier for new users
to join in.
I am posting this to the mailing list as well as posting on g.d.o
with comments turned on. This is one conversation that I'd like to
see discussed wherever folks feel most comfortable.

- Addi (add1sun)
--------------------------------------
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A large scale, curated education event
December 10-12, New Orleans
http://www.doitwithdrupal.com
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[Joshua Brauer]

Comments below. I'm NOT a fan of the idea of deprecating the mailing
list for the reasons below.

[...]
If we allowed membership and free posting on the g.d.o group, we
- Still have email notifications of all discussions.

Notifications from g.d.o are a real mixed bag. First of all they are
*notifications* which means I can't participate from email using the
tools that provide the ability to create drafts, save drafts and
can't, as in this example, easily note which part of something is
being discussed. Having email fill up with notifications of yet
another place to go look at information is sub-optimal and greatly
increases (as it gets read twice) the work involved in participating.

- Be able to use wiki posts to collaborate on one living document
rather than having to attach separate iterations to an issue in the
queue.

In short Wikis on g.d.o are broken. At the start of Summer of Code we
talked a little about fixing it but there is a reason (that I don't
recall) we were told no. In short a Wiki page with no editing history,
which is what the vast majority of us see, is much worse than a
threaded discussion or iterations being attached to an issue. A wiki
page without history presents very little chance of understanding what
the arguments for or against an issue were or how the decision was
made. As it is Wikis on g.d.o make things opaque not transparent. The
other thing with the wiki model when it does work, is there is very
little place to really explain a change, or to propose a change and
discuss without making it.

- Read threads all on one page rather than have to page through the
mailman archive.

On the other hand it means going somewhere else to read the threads.
On the other hand as it is now I can read the threads on one page in
my email box. And I can effectively search and use the information in
the same ways as other areas of the Drupal community. It's not a
matter of "oh that's doc so it's on the web" but that other issue
which was discussed was development so it's in email.

- Organize and categorize discussions to make it easier to find
areas of interest.

I find the threading of mail much easier to follow. In a system with
comments the branches of comments fork and frequently go in multiple
directions. So there is much more scrolling, jumping and having to
reply in multiple places to follow one thread.

- Replying to old threads that you didn't actually receive in email
is clear and straightforward - just leave a new comment. (How to
respond to archived mail threads is not an apparent thing.)

This is the only good point about the web in my opinion. But even this
is marginal. If I'm new and I want to revisit a thread there is
nothing wrong with opening a new email thread. If on the other hand I
comment on a long-past web page few people are really likely to pay a
lot of attention.

The only advantage that the mailing list provides that the group
does not, is the ability to reply to a thread directly from your
email. I feel that losing this feature is worth the advantages we
would gain by shifting to g.d.o. I feel that this is true for
actually collaborating as a team and to make it easier for new users
to join in.

I actually think this is the opposite. Many users on the web are very
comfortable with email lists. Mailing lists are also much easier to
lurk and get comfortable on. It's certainly *possible* to do this on a
web page, but it takes effort. And if one has to consistently revisit
the same wiki page to see what's changed even more so... However
something that is in email makes it much easier to pick up wherever
one is and read and even respond.

Oh and finally as a frequent flyer... g.d.o doesn't work nearly as
well on a plane as email lists.

In sort my vote would be that the email list should remain the primary
workspace and wiki pages, when appropriate, can serve a valuable
purpose as a supplement.

Thanks,
Josh

[Addison Berry]

Post by Joshua Brauer
In sort my vote would be that the email list should remain the
primary workspace and wiki pages, when appropriate, can serve a
valuable purpose as a supplement.

Well the main problem is that we can't "occasionally" use wiki pages
as a supplement. You have to be a member to use a wiki page and if we
open up membership then folks can create any kind of group content
which will end up spawning some discussions on g.d.o and some on the
mail list.

I think the bottom line, no matter what we do is that there will
always be a group that prefers either email lists or web based. I'm
not sure how to accommodate everyone (we can't). A lot of feedback
that I get when trying to recruit new members to our discussions
though is that they don't want to join an email list. Or even if they
are willing to, it is very frustrating to tell new members "oh yeah,
we are talking about that. you can read up on this nasty piper mail
interface and then join the mail list and create a new thread
referring to the archive version that you read." So, um, how many
people have you seen jump into our discussions like that? *me hears
crickets chirp* That is seriously one of my main motivations, in terms
of getting new people involved, that I have to deal with all the time
when talking to people who want to help out.

I do get the strong arguments in favor of the mail list and no, g.d.o
is not ideal, but I do still feel that the advantages of g.d.o are
greater in terms of collaboration and getting new people involved.
Unfortunately it is also hard to reach out to get the opinion of
people who don't use the mail list since, de facto, they have limited
ways of getting involved in discussions. If they don't subscribe to
the RSS feed for the doc group, they have no idea this discussion is
even happening right now. That seems pretty limiting in and of itself.

- Addi
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[Nathaniel Catchpole]

I already answered on groups ;)

However for those who still want e-mail, I think it would be worth filing
feature requests on groups for two things - full messages in notifications,
and mailhandler to allow people to reply to notifications via e-mail and
have those posted on groups. Both would involve some work, but that would
then give people a complete choice - and I'm sure it's not only the docs
team which feels a need for this.

Nat

Post by Addison Berry

Post by Joshua Brauer
In sort my vote would be that the email list should remain the
primary workspace and wiki pages, when appropriate, can serve a
valuable purpose as a supplement.

Well the main problem is that we can't "occasionally" use wiki pages
as a supplement. You have to be a member to use a wiki page and if we
open up membership then folks can create any kind of group content
which will end up spawning some discussions on g.d.o and some on the
mail list.
I think the bottom line, no matter what we do is that there will
always be a group that prefers either email lists or web based. I'm
not sure how to accommodate everyone (we can't). A lot of feedback
that I get when trying to recruit new members to our discussions
though is that they don't want to join an email list. Or even if they
are willing to, it is very frustrating to tell new members "oh yeah,
we are talking about that. you can read up on this nasty piper mail
interface and then join the mail list and create a new thread
referring to the archive version that you read." So, um, how many
people have you seen jump into our discussions like that? *me hears
crickets chirp* That is seriously one of my main motivations, in terms
of getting new people involved, that I have to deal with all the time
when talking to people who want to help out.
I do get the strong arguments in favor of the mail list and no, g.d.o
is not ideal, but I do still feel that the advantages of g.d.o are
greater in terms of collaboration and getting new people involved.
Unfortunately it is also hard to reach out to get the opinion of
people who don't use the mail list since, de facto, they have limited
ways of getting involved in discussions. If they don't subscribe to
the RSS feed for the doc group, they have no idea this discussion is
even happening right now. That seems pretty limiting in and of itself.
- Addi
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[Steven Peck]

My reasons from before still stand. I rarely visit group at all. I
found it alien to my work flow process in the past and while I will
look again, I do not see that core facet changing for me.

Up to you.

On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 5:18 PM, Nathaniel Catchpole

Post by Nathaniel Catchpole
I already answered on groups ;)
However for those who still want e-mail, I think it would be worth filing
feature requests on groups for two things - full messages in notifications,
and mailhandler to allow people to reply to notifications via e-mail and
have those posted on groups. Both would involve some work, but that would
then give people a complete choice - and I'm sure it's not only the docs
team which feels a need for this.
Nat

Post by Addison Berry

Post by Joshua Brauer
In sort my vote would be that the email list should remain the
primary workspace and wiki pages, when appropriate, can serve a
valuable purpose as a supplement.

Well the main problem is that we can't "occasionally" use wiki pages
as a supplement. You have to be a member to use a wiki page and if we
open up membership then folks can create any kind of group content
which will end up spawning some discussions on g.d.o and some on the
mail list.
I think the bottom line, no matter what we do is that there will
always be a group that prefers either email lists or web based. I'm
not sure how to accommodate everyone (we can't). A lot of feedback
that I get when trying to recruit new members to our discussions
though is that they don't want to join an email list. Or even if they
are willing to, it is very frustrating to tell new members "oh yeah,
we are talking about that. you can read up on this nasty piper mail
interface and then join the mail list and create a new thread
referring to the archive version that you read." So, um, how many
people have you seen jump into our discussions like that? *me hears
crickets chirp* That is seriously one of my main motivations, in terms
of getting new people involved, that I have to deal with all the time
when talking to people who want to help out.
I do get the strong arguments in favor of the mail list and no, g.d.o
is not ideal, but I do still feel that the advantages of g.d.o are
greater in terms of collaboration and getting new people involved.
Unfortunately it is also hard to reach out to get the opinion of
people who don't use the mail list since, de facto, they have limited
ways of getting involved in discussions. If they don't subscribe to
the RSS feed for the doc group, they have no idea this discussion is
even happening right now. That seems pretty limiting in and of itself.
- Addi
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[Ryan Cross]

Post by Addison Berry

Post by Joshua Brauer
In sort my vote would be that the email list should remain the
primary workspace and wiki pages, when appropriate, can serve a
valuable purpose as a supplement.

Well the main problem is that we can't "occasionally" use wiki pages
as a supplement. You have to be a member to use a wiki page and if we
open up membership then folks can create any kind of group content
which will end up spawning some discussions on g.d.o and some on the
mail list.

I think it would be worth while to open up the group membership and see if
there is a natural migration towards them. In the same experimental mindset
as opening up the editing rights to everyone, lets try it out and see how it
goes. Yes, there may be problems with cross posting and etc, but lets see
what people gravitate towards and the evolutionary tendency.

I completely agree with Josh's assesment (especially about wiki competency)
and I am not a fan of deprecating the mailing list, but I'm willing to let
the masses speak and change my thinking. I would also point out that often
the reason for people's reluctance to joining a mailing list is the
perceived high traffic of them (which it usually isn't) and it would be
quite easy to setup the mailing lists to have a better archive interface by
joining services like mail-archive.org or nabble, so I don't think those are
solid reasons for deprecating the list.

One possibility would be to initially setup the group to only allow new
members to collaborate on wikis, so we can use it as a supplement (instead
of a full discussion forum).

[Angela Byron]

Post by Joshua Brauer
Comments below. I'm NOT a fan of the idea of deprecating the mailing
list for the reasons below.

While I was originally in favour of the move to g.d.o on the grounds
that most people find web interfaces more friendly than e-mail, I
actually found myself nodding along with basically all of Josh's points.

If the main idea is to have central rallying points for organizing
stuff, then... why not do so right on Drupal.org?

For example, http://drupal.org/please-review-my-patch is a sort of "ad-
hoc" page that members of the Drupal 7 core development team use to
escalate issues up to me that are either "quickies" that could be
committed while I'm on one of my many daily phone calls, or that
really need core maintainer intervention because they are dead-locked
in discussion or need architectural advice. And, unlike
groups.drupal.org, drupal.org has no problem displaying the revision
log: http://drupal.org/node/309321/revisions. And finally, it's really
nice because you can do short-hand [#xxxxx] to automatically link to
relevant issues.

Not sure if this will address the current needs of the docs team, but
it's worth a thought?

But the bottom line is that g.d.o's current subscription and
collaboration options are pretty lackluster compared to the power e-
mail affords; until the situation improves, we are probably jumping
ship too soon. The Documentation issue queue can be used for web-based
conversations and comes complete with a very clear signal of whether
an issue is dealt with or not, and handbook pages work better than
g.d.o anyway for wiki-style collaboration.

-Angie

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[Addison Berry]

Post by Angela Byron
If the main idea is to have central rallying points for organizing
stuff, then... why not do so right on Drupal.org?
For example, http://drupal.org/please-review-my-patch is a sort of "ad-
hoc" page that members of the Drupal 7 core development team use to
escalate issues up to me that are either "quickies" that could be
committed while I'm on one of my many daily phone calls, or that
really need core maintainer intervention because they are dead-locked
in discussion or need architectural advice. And, unlike
groups.drupal.org, drupal.org has no problem displaying the revision
log: http://drupal.org/node/309321/revisions. And finally, it's really
nice because you can do short-hand [#xxxxx] to automatically link to
relevant issues.
Not sure if this will address the current needs of the docs team, but
it's worth a thought?

Hm. Hm. Well, yeah it works in certain ways, but the main uses we have
for wiki pages is for temporary stuff, like drafting up a forum post
announcement to go to the front page or working out a new outline for
a section of the handbook. How would we handle not cluttering up with
lots and lots of these kind of pages that will never be used as real
handbook pages? I guess we could just have a doc team book. That isn't
as "stumble-upon-able" by casual contributors (which is one of my
goals). Hm. The only other disadvantage would be that there is no
email notification from handbook pages, but at least people could see
them in their d.o tracker, which would be nice.

I still feel like that is harder for casual contributors to notice and
get involved, but yeah, we could give that go in terms of at least
being able to work together. Something to consider.



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[Shai Gluskin]

This whole conversation is just screaming out to mobilize advocating for a
few basic improvements on g.d.o. I agree with Nat's suggestions for pushing
through full messages in notifications and installing mailhandler.

I agree that Wiki functionality on g.d.o without history and diff is
useless. I'd like to hear more details about what is holding this up? Is it
a problem specific to OG? It's pretty basic functionality.

*I think we should use whatever clout we have as an important group within
the Drupal community to get the needed changes to g.d.o. As Nat also said,
every other group is probably screaming for this also. Let's band together.*

What kind of example are we setting when tasks that clearly fall into the
realm of "Community Plumbing" are not being handled by Drupal?

Yes, e-mail has been the killer ap for a whole generation. It can be hard to
move away from it. But the future is server and not client. It's the
"Semantic Web" and not the junk heap on your (my) hard drive. We aren't
there yet, but I feel like it helps move everything forward when we are
willing to be guinea pigs in attempting to actually use the technology we
are developing.

It was interesting hearing Angie's story of how the D7 core folks use
drupal.org pages for a similar need. Clever! But I would call that a
"community plumbing hack." I don't want to start replicating hacks. I'd
rather try to get g.d.o fixed!

My 3 cents,

Shai

Post by Addison Berry

Post by Angela Byron
If the main idea is to have central rallying points for organizing
stuff, then... why not do so right on Drupal.org?
For example, http://drupal.org/please-review-my-patch is a sort of "ad-
hoc" page that members of the Drupal 7 core development team use to
escalate issues up to me that are either "quickies" that could be
committed while I'm on one of my many daily phone calls, or that
really need core maintainer intervention because they are dead-locked
in discussion or need architectural advice. And, unlike
groups.drupal.org, drupal.org has no problem displaying the revision
log: http://drupal.org/node/309321/revisions. And finally, it's really
nice because you can do short-hand [#xxxxx] to automatically link to
relevant issues.
Not sure if this will address the current needs of the docs team, but
it's worth a thought?

Hm. Hm. Well, yeah it works in certain ways, but the main uses we have
for wiki pages is for temporary stuff, like drafting up a forum post
announcement to go to the front page or working out a new outline for
a section of the handbook. How would we handle not cluttering up with
lots and lots of these kind of pages that will never be used as real
handbook pages? I guess we could just have a doc team book. That isn't
as "stumble-upon-able" by casual contributors (which is one of my
goals). Hm. The only other disadvantage would be that there is no
email notification from handbook pages, but at least people could see
them in their d.o tracker, which would be nice.
I still feel like that is harder for casual contributors to notice and
get involved, but yeah, we could give that go in terms of at least
being able to work together. Something to consider.
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