Re: [Caml-list] Discourse instance for the OCaml community? (was: how to encourage adoption of OCaml?)

[Anthony Tavener <anthony.tavener@gmail.com>]

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I agree that email/list is better for the reasons Andreas listed...

However, one issue (pro and con) with the mailing list is that posting has
a barrier-to-entry with the knowledge that your are broadcasting to many
people. This is great for avoiding trivia, and keeping the signal-to-noise
ratio high...

But it might be good to have a place for more trivial or narrow-audience
topics. So people can banter about their projects or problems they
encounter which they don't deem worthy of trumpeting "Here ye! Here ye!"
for. Sometimes I want to waste some time reading about OCaml stuff... but
reddit and email have nothing new. :) But I'm also glad these aren't choked
with random crap either. A forum-like format reduces the
wideband-broadcast, providing some compartmentalization, and the step for a
reader to actively go looking. And if something important/interesting to
the wider community flares up in such a place, *then* it can be referenced
on this list, or reddit.

I, too, would not want to fragment this tiny community. But we seem to lack
a place for more voluminous banter, which might have the opposite effect:
of livening things up.

I'm not arguing for Discourse necessarily (I haven't looked into it at
all), but in general: that a forum might be a useful part of
community-building. Or do we have something already which I've missed?


On Sun, Jul 10, 2016 at 4:47 AM, SP <sp@orbitalfox.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 10, 2016 at 09:21:48AM +0200, Andreas Rossberg wrote:
>
>> To paraphrase Dijkstra, IMHO email and mailing lists are an improvement
>> over more “modern” forums in almost every way, once you get past the
>> “flashiness” thing:
>> - participation without having to constantly log into yet another account
>> (with potential tracking),
>> - all communication through the same tool/UI (that actually works), easy
>> cross-communication and cross-quoting, archiving in one place, etc
>> [..]
>> - no annoying gamification,
>> - open, standardised and guaranteed to still be around in 5 or 10 years
>> from now.
>> Also, IME, email generally encourages a slower, more considerate and more
>> comprehensive discussion style.
>>
>
> Exactly. Earlier in the discussion I expressed a similar opinion (didn't
> expand as much) but it was ignored and they are plodding on. I hope your
> message won't be ignored either.
>
> Discourse has an email gateway, but last time I looked, it wasn’t deemed
>> very usable.
>>
>
> Mailman 3 adds a web interface for those who prefer it. I think the
> OCaml lists at Inria don't use Mailman though.
>
> It would be sad to fragment the (not so huge) OCaml community just to
>> hop onto the latest train in forum fashion, be it Discourse or the next
>> thing. I’m sure we would lose some people on the way (happened with
>> Rust). I’m less sure about the people we gonna win over that way.
>>
>
> I concur. Again, I hope this time around this case won't be ignored.
>
> --
>         SP
>
>
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