Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 00:16:47 +0300
From: Consus <consus@ftml.net>
To: j3s <j3s@c3f.net>
Cc: Ariadne Conill <ariadne@dereferenced.org>, Wolf <wolf@wolfsden.cz>,
	David Demelier <markand@malikania.fr>,
	~alpine/devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
Subject: Re: mailing lists, processes, modernization
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On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 03:38:23PM -0500, j3s wrote:
> Please tell me if I'm overstepping, but as a (very happy) Alpine user, I
> feel obligated to speak up here.
> 
> On 4/20/20 2:23 PM, Ariadne Conill wrote:
> > Well, the problem is that we do not own our own support
> > pipeline right now.  Yes, there is the mailing lists, but almost
> > nobody is using them.  Instead, they go to third-party websites
> > like StackExchange.  We would like to own our support
> > pipeline, so that we can ensure it continues to exist regardless
> > of what happens to some otherwise unrelated company.
> 
> My opinion is that this isn't going to happen regardless of the software
> that the Alpine project sets up. People like StackExchange, and if those
> users were interested in hearing from the Alpine folks, they'd probably be
> using the mailing list today.
> 
> Currently, it takes 3 clicks and two distinct webpages to get to the support
> mailing list. I bet that having a "support" header on your home page that
> provides a mailto: link would drive as many people to the mailing list as
> standing up Discourse would.
> 
> I guess my point is twofold; I don't think you can "own" the support
> pipeline, and I don't think that lack of a shiny forum is the solution to
> what I perceive as a UX problem.

This whole thing boils down to UX. Writing an email to the mailing list
is much harder than writing a post to reddit, mostly due to UX issues.

E.g. it's impossible to write a plaintext email in my mobile mail client
at all.

More to that, mobile clients mostly suck at displaying mailing lists due
to the hard newlines and 80 characters. You need a really BIG screen in
order to display an email properly. Yes, this looks ugly and makes
things harder to read.

What makes the situation even more complicated is that by default all
mail is coming to your inbox. And there is no standard protocol across
mail clients, you'll probably have to login to the web UI and setup a
filter there.  But first you need an example email to learn filter
conditions.

So joining a mailing list becomes kind of a big deal. You have to setup
a mailing list account, you have to configure your inbox filters, you
have to make sure that your client can even produce plaintext emails...

At this point most people just go to reddit and ask questions there.