Use a different forum to help enforce code of conduct?

[Nate Finch]

(copied from the CoC thread, since it didn't really belong there)

So... the Code of Conduct is a great idea... but it seems like Google Groups is an exceedingly poor place to enforce such a thing.  There are effectively zero moderation tools (I think you might be able to ban people?).  What would people think of moving go-nuts to a more modern system that might give us more tools to make the community a welcoming and friendly place?   

My suggestion would be Discourse.  It was built specifically for the purpose of making online discussion groups more friendly and useful and has a ton of moderation features built-in (like community flagging of posts, etc).  There are a ton of Discourse forums out there being run for sites likely much larger than our little gopher hole, so I think the quality of the software is not a problem (I've even set up a couple, myself).  It can easily be used as a mailing list, similar to how Groups may be used as a mailing list, even though there is good web access as well.  Check out http://discuss.gohugo.io/ for an example of what you can expect.

Other than moderation features, I'll note one thing I love about Discourse - you write posts in markdown.  No more struggling with the formatting buttons on google groups to make your code look right!

Thoughts?  Obviously the answer doesn't have to be Discourse, if someone has an alternate answer.. I'd just like to see the goals of the Code of Conduct supported by the tools we use, and I don't think Groups does so.

[Jay Weisskopf]

I have no suggestions for alternatives, but I will say that I find the Google Groups experience somewhat painful. Often times it just gets stuck at "Loading" and I have to refresh it once or twice.

[Jason Gade]

Maybe it should be rewritten in Go? (I actually don't know whether it is or not.)

[andrey mirtchovski]

i think we just need a second mailing list named "golang-trolls" and
people with propensity for discourse would naturally gravitate to it.
it's fine if it's devoid of technical content.

[Anthony Martin]

We have one already. It's called "golang-nuts".

The technical content is on golang-(codereviews|dev).

Anthony

[andrewc...@gmail.com]

Wrong, technical content related to the Go sourcecode itself is there. golang-nuts is anything related to Go at all. The fact that Go is a programming language just means most things here are technical, even if it is helping beginners.

 

  Anthony

[Nate Finch]

Let's get out of this rathole.  There was a joke made, that is all.  Let's get back to the original question, please.

[Nick Craig-Wood]

On 20/06/15 02:54, Nate Finch wrote:
> ... but it seems like Google
> Groups is an exceedingly poor place to enforce such a thing. There are
> effectively zero moderation tools (I think you might be able to ban
> people?). What would people think of moving go-nuts to a more modern
> system that might give us more tools to make the community a welcoming
> and friendly place?

As far as I'm concerned this is a mailing list, one of dozens which I
read in my various mail clients. I never use the google groups web
interface.

I'd be unhappy to move away from the mailing list idea which I can read
offline and use tools I know really well.

So any new system would have to provide a perfect mailing list interface
to be of any interest to me!

--
Nick Craig-Wood <ni...@craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick

[Lars Seipel]

On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 06:54:04PM -0700, Nate Finch wrote:
> Thoughts? Obviously the answer doesn't have to be Discourse, if someone
> has an alternate answer.. I'd just like to see the goals of the Code of
> Conduct supported by the tools we use, and I don't think Groups does so.

In my opinion, a standard mailing list interface is a must. That's how
the vast majority of open source projects operate and I think Go should
follow along here. People have their tools setup to comfortably handle
huge amounts of mail. I can read the list offline on the train and write
replies in my text editor of choice. That's kind of a huge thing.

If the Go project decided to be an outlier here, that'd be a big
drawback. As a test, just imagine if everyone did that. Using a
different interface for every open source project I interact with would
be plain unworkable.

For better or worse, email is the established way of communication in
this space. Let's stick to that, please.

[Raffaele Sena]

ElasticSearch recently switched from google groups to Discourse. And after many years of following their progress and contributing when I could, I guess I don't know what's going on with the project anymore (I don't really need yet another login on yet another different discussion system).

-- Raffaele

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[Jason Gade]

I use internet forums for internet discussions; I use email for personal correspondence.

And even in email, outside of work, I've used a web interface for 20 years or so.

[Lars Seipel]

On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 06:54:04PM -0700, Nate Finch wrote:

> couple, myself). It can easily be used as a mailing list, similar to how
> Groups may be used as a mailing list, even though there is good web access
> as well. Check out http://discuss.gohugo.io/ for an example of what you
> can expect.

Just to make that clear: Discourse is not (and probably never will be) a
mailing list. Its email support is decidedly second class. It grew out
of a notification facility and while a couple of features were added
since then, it still works fundamentally different from a mailing list.

[Daniël de Kok]

On Sat, Jun 20, 2015 at 08:32:29PM +0200, Lars Seipel wrote:
> In my opinion, a standard mailing list interface is a must. That's how the
> vast majority of open source projects operate and I think Go should follow
> along here. People have their tools setup to comfortably handle huge
> amounts of mail. I can read the list offline on the train and write
> replies in my text editor of choice. That's kind of a huge thing.

Yep, I don't want to visit dozens of different sites to follow different
open source projects.

Although Discourse seems to offer a mailing list option, I would be worried
that:

- Lots of people will just use the option to answer 'below' the discussion,
wrecking threading. Threading is one of the most powerful tools:

http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/thread_patterns/

- The encouragement to use markdown, but especially BBCode, and HTML, makes
life miserable for people who use a text-based MUA.

- The moderation model is fundamentally incompatible with mailing lists. If
a message were to be removed, the mail would've already been sent to those
using the mailing list option. They can reply to the message as if nothing
happened. What are you going to do? Drop these messages?

Mailing lists are great: stuff gets pushed to you, it's no extra work. You
can answer with your favorite text editor. You have quick and easy search
interfaces (e.g. notmuch). You can quickly kill threads, ignore users, etc.
You can define your own keyboard shortcuts (at least in mutt). There is no
tracking.

Take care,
Daniël

[Nate Finch]

So, regarding the use like a mailing list - you can interact with Discourse entirely through a web interface (after creating an account on the website).  You can reply to topics and create new topics via email.  You can configure headers per-category to make it easier to write mail rules per category... 

Yes, if a reply gets deleted, then your response would likely bounce with an error, or depending on the order, might post and then the original get deleted... but that can already happen on Google Groups.

As for threading.. a lot of people already use the web interface for Groups, and may do the same things you worry they'll do using discourse (for example, I almost exclusively use the web interface for Groups, because it's easier for me to pick and choose what I read and what I skip).  And Discourse actually makes it easier for threading to be done correctly on the web interface, because replies pop up in a separate frame (or something that acts like a frame), so you can still scroll up and down the thread and not scroll your reply away, the way it works on Groups.

As for a text-based MUA... it's 2015.  I think the number of people still using text-only mail is quite small, and should not prevent us from implementing improvements for the vast majority of people using modern mail software.

All the benefits of mailing lists posited above only work for highly technical users, and users that care to learn how to set up a bunch of rules for their mail system.  The number of people who know and prefer this type of interface is dwindling, and relying on that as our main interface is going to turn away more and more potential gophers.  

Discourse is very user friendly, and offers an out of the box mailing-list style interface for those who prefer it.  It seems to be win-win.

[Nate Finch]

of course when I said "you can interact with Discourse entirely through a web interface" I meant "you can interact with Discourse entirely through am email interface"

...and if this was on Discourse, I could have edited that before the email notification had gone out, and not spammed everyone with a second email/post.

[Andrew Gerrand]

This seems premature. I would prefer to wait until we have some experience with the Code of Conduct before discussing this. I hope it is not necessary to move anywhere.

Andrew

--

[Nate Finch]

Fair enough.