From: Ariadne Conill <ariadne@dereferenced.org>
To: j3s <j3s@c3f.net>, Consus <consus@ftml.net>
Cc: Wolf <wolf@wolfsden.cz>, David Demelier <markand@malikania.fr>, ~alpine/devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
Subject: Re: mailing lists, processes, modernization
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 00:22:56 -0600
Message-ID: <56714871.TiyEYPsqlG@localhost>
In-Reply-To: <20200420211647.GA13172@redacted>
References: <20200419090413.GA4104@kiwi.home> <2af23d66-1a00-85be-6d6d-a4b24c39192c@c3f.net> <20200420211647.GA13172@redacted>
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Hello,

On Monday, April 20, 2020 3:16:47 PM MDT Consus wrote:
> 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.

There are many people in the Alpine community that post on
StackExchange and similar websites.  People *do* want to hear
from "the Alpine folks," just not in the form of e-mail.

> > 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 really doubt it.  Interacting with mailing lists is inconvenient,
and the Sourcehut software has exacerbated that inconvenience
by being incompatible with the most commonly used e-mail
clients in 2020 (namely the ones built into your phone), due to
Drew's decision to fight political battles and use our mailing
lists (as well as anyone else who uses Sourcehut's mailing lists)
as a weapon in that fight.

If the mailing lists were unpopular in the ezmlm/mlmmj days, they
are basically terminally ill at this point.

> > 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.

We can certainly do a better job of it than what we are doing now.
This argument essentially boils down to "I like e-mail, so we shouldn't
try to do something else because it may not work."
 
> 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.

Right and this is really my point.  People were unhappy with the mailing
list solution we offer before migration to Sourcehut, the additional
restrictions added by the Sourcehut software have exacerbated that
unhappiness.

We need to focus on fixing our communications tools.  They were
unpopular before the Sourcehut migration, and they are less popular
now.  Asking the infra team to maintain resources that month over
month are seeing a continued decline in utilization because people
are using alternative tools (critical development discussion in IRC,
support on StackExchange, etc) does not make sense.

Ariadne