Switch to forum software?

[Alexander Makarov]

Mailing list has many issues:

1. Really hard to read conversations since everything is cited and different mail clients are doing it differently.

2. Everything is a big sticky pile of mud. In a forum we'll be able to have separate categories for separate proposals so it will be **much** easier to focus.

3. No permissions management. In a forum we'll be able to have a "voting members" group with which has permission to post to voting threads.

4. Hard to browse history. In a forum it's all structured so it's much easier. No need to dig much.

These are only the surface, I'm sure other members have their own concerns about mailing lists.

What I propose: archive mailing list, create a forum with a good structure. Choose one which has ability to work as a mailing list so people who love MLs would be happy.

[Alessandro Pellizzari]

On Sat, 25 Jun 2016 07:59:16 -0700 (PDT)
"'Alexander Makarov' via PHP Framework Interoperability Group"

<php...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Mailing list has many issues:
>
> 1. Really hard to read conversations since everything is cited and
> different mail clients are doing it differently.

We just need to decide and impose a quoting style, and Netiquette
already suggests one.

> 2. Everything is a big sticky pile of mud. In a forum we'll be able
> to have separate categories for separate proposals so it will be
> **much** easier to focus.

That's what threads are for, and threading capabilities in email
clients have been there for decades.

> 3. No permissions management. In a forum we'll be able to have a
> "voting members" group with which has permission to post to voting
> threads.

We can have a separate mailing list for votes. Or, better, a website.

> 4. Hard to browse history. In a forum it's all structured so
> it's much easier. No need to dig much.

Again. Threading helps a lot, and many email clients have grouping
capabilities (static and dynamic), search, tagging.
In a forum, you are limited by what the forum software gives you.

> These are only the surface, I'm sure other members have their own
> concerns about mailing lists.

In contrast, forums:

1. Make it harder to know which articles are new in a
discussion.

2. Makes it harder to understand to which message a reply
refers to.

3. Makes it harder and slower to go from one thread to another.

4. Makes it much slower to read sequentially.

5. Makes it impossible to mark a thread as read when you are not
interested.

6. Makes it harder to archive, star, mark, blacklist a message or a
thread

7. Makes it hard or impossible to take a part of a discussion in
private without needing to copy-paste it.

And probably much more.

My suggestion: if you are not happy with your client software, change
your client software, don't try to force everybody else to change
theirs.

Bye.

[Alexander Makarov]

On Sunday, June 26, 2016 at 11:30:55 AM UTC+3, Alessandro Pellizzari wrote:

On Sat, 25 Jun 2016 07:59:16 -0700 (PDT)
"'Alexander Makarov' via PHP Framework Interoperability Group"
<php...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Mailing list has many issues:
>
> 1. Really hard to read conversations since everything is cited and
> different mail clients are doing it differently.

We just need to decide and impose a quoting style, and Netiquette
already suggests one.

> 2. Everything is a big sticky pile of mud. In a forum we'll be able
> to have separate categories for separate proposals so it will be
> **much** easier to focus.

That's what threads are for, and threading capabilities in email
clients have been there for decades.

Same as forum topics, yes... But how to group all the threads on PSR-7? That's what subforums are for. It's way better than a current mess.

 

> 3. No permissions management. In a forum we'll be able to have a
> "voting members" group with which has permission to post to voting
> threads.

We can have a separate mailing list for votes. Or, better, a website.

Actually yes. I have a free evening soon so I'm going to implement website version of it. If it would be adopted — great. If not, it's fun.

 

> 4. Hard to browse history. In a forum it's all structured so
> it's much easier. No need to dig much.

Again. Threading helps a lot, and many email clients have grouping
capabilities (static and dynamic), search, tagging.
In a forum, you are limited by what the forum software gives you.

> These are only the surface, I'm sure other members have their own
> concerns about mailing lists.

In contrast, forums:

1. Make it harder to know which articles are new in a
discussion.

Nope. Every good forum software marks these. Also there's usually a capability to "Get what's new since my last visit".

 

2. Makes it harder to understand to which message a reply
refers to.

Same as MLs. I found myself lost about it multiple times.

 

3. Makes it harder and slower to go from one thread to another.

Why? 

4. Makes it much slower to read sequentially.

Nope. You have all the posts on topic in a single list. Why is it hard to read sequentially? If you mean globally, why reading sequentially if messages are about different topics?

5. Makes it impossible to mark a thread as read when you are not
interested.

Wrong. Every forum software has that capability. 

6. Makes it harder to archive, star, mark, blacklist a message or a
thread

Most forums have it. 

7. Makes it hard or impossible to take a part of a discussion in
private without needing to copy-paste it.

There's "PM with quote" button in most of the forums. 

And probably much more.

My suggestion: if you are not happy with your client software, change
your client software, don't try to force everybody else to change
theirs.

I'm not forcing anyone, just suggesting. Also, note that I've suggested forum software with ML support.

Bye.

[Andreas Heigl]

Hi Alexander.

Perhaps you have seen the thread "[IDEA] Transition  Google Groups to Slack/Gitter/Discourse" (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/php-fig/uN0EykvQkAA/rCHFHLvRAwAJ).

That thread is also about moving the current GoogleGroup to a different medium. And during the discussion the move to a forum was discussed as well. 

For one thing: This mailinglist is already available via a forum-like interface at GoogleGroups. 

And besides that: I've asked a questions there that are still not answered, but I might as well ask it here again:

So to get down to the point: What actually is the issue with the 
mailinglist/GoogleGroups? Is it really the user-base? Or is it a certain 
"messyness"? Perhaps we can first try to analyze what exactly the issue 
is, before we throw some technology at it. 

 

And no, in my eyes the points you raised are not answers to that question but raise the question why you want others to change their habit so that you do not need to change yours.

Am Samstag, 25. Juni 2016 16:59:16 UTC+2 schrieb Alexander Makarov:

Mailing list has many issues:

1. Really hard to read conversations since everything is cited and different mail clients are doing it differently.

With a decently configured email-client that works out pretty good.

 

2. Everything is a big sticky pile of mud. In a forum we'll be able to have separate categories for separate proposals so it will be **much** easier to focus.

That's already available via threading which works fine in the GoogleGroups web-interface and works also fine in my email-clients.

 

3. No permissions management. In a forum we'll be able to have a "voting members" group with which has permission to post to voting threads.

Why do you want a permission management? The point is that everyone can see everything. There's nothing to hide. 

I'm with you though that it might be an idea to have separate mailinglists for public announcements and for internal affairs so people not interested in the internal affairs do not need to dig through tons of stuff to find the information they want. But that's not something a forum would solve.

 

4. Hard to browse history. In a forum it's all structured so it's much easier. No need to dig much.

If you would have used the search on GoogleGroups you would have found at least two other threads that where discussing movement of the mailinglist to a different medium. So it doesn't seem to be as easy in a forum as you said.

 

These are only the surface, I'm sure other members have their own concerns about mailing lists.

What I propose: archive mailing list, create a forum with a good structure. Choose one which has ability to work as a mailing list so people who love MLs would be happy.

Fine, then we're already done. The GoogleGroup is a forum which also works as a mailinglist. Or the other way around? So what's all this fuss about? 

Cheers

Andreas

[Alexander Makarov]

On Sunday, June 26, 2016 at 2:36:01 PM UTC+3, Andreas Heigl wrote:

Hi Alexander.

Perhaps you have seen the thread "[IDEA] Transition  Google Groups to Slack/Gitter/Discourse" (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/php-fig/uN0EykvQkAA/rCHFHLvRAwAJ).

No, I did not. Was at vacation at that time. Thanks!

 

That thread is also about moving the current GoogleGroup to a different medium. And during the discussion the move to a forum was discussed as well. 

For one thing: This mailinglist is already available via a forum-like interface at GoogleGroups. 

 

Yes and I'm using it. It sucks compared to forums.

And besides that: I've asked a questions there that are still not answered, but I might as well ask it here again:

So to get down to the point: What actually is the issue with the 
mailinglist/GoogleGroups? Is it really the user-base? Or is it a certain 
"messyness"? Perhaps we can first try to analyze what exactly the issue 
is, before we throw some technology at it. 

 

And no, in my eyes the points you raised are not answers to that question but raise the question why you want others to change their habit so that you do not need to change yours.

It isn't about habit. I'm using this ML for years and I use other MLs as well. I just see issues and complaints that could be solved by using forums:

- Messiness. No categories. Editors are asked to create separate MLs to discuss PSRs, people are asked to self-throttle etc.

- No voting engine, secretary have to manually count votes, check post times, stop people from commenting in voting threads etc. (It's better to be solved by custom voting engine, as was noted above and I'm gonna try implementing it today).

 

Am Samstag, 25. Juni 2016 16:59:16 UTC+2 schrieb Alexander Makarov:

Mailing list has many issues:

1. Really hard to read conversations since everything is cited and different mail clients are doing it differently.

With a decently configured email-client that works out pretty good.

Does decently configured email client re-format other messages that were composed using not so decent mail clients?

 

 

2. Everything is a big sticky pile of mud. In a forum we'll be able to have separate categories for separate proposals so it will be **much** easier to focus.

That's already available via threading which works fine in the GoogleGroups web-interface and works also fine in my email-clients.

Threading works for a single discussion but it doesn't solve an issue of existence of many topics on a certain PSR. If you want to read all these, you have to rely on search and the fact that all these topics were named "[PSR-7] Something" which is often not true.

 

 

3. No permissions management. In a forum we'll be able to have a "voting members" group with which has permission to post to voting threads.

Why do you want a permission management? The point is that everyone can see everything. There's nothing to hide. 

I'm with you though that it might be an idea to have separate mailinglists for public announcements and for internal affairs so people not interested in the internal affairs do not need to dig through tons of stuff to find the information they want. But that's not something a forum would solve.

I was more concerned about voting threads but that's better to be solved by other means...

 

 

4. Hard to browse history. In a forum it's all structured so it's much easier. No need to dig much.

If you would have used the search on GoogleGroups you would have found at least two other threads that where discussing movement of the mailinglist to a different medium. So it doesn't seem to be as easy in a forum as you said.

I did and I've found many old topics but not the one you've linked to. Probably wrong search terms. In a forum all these would've ended up in a single category...

 

 

These are only the surface, I'm sure other members have their own concerns about mailing lists.

What I propose: archive mailing list, create a forum with a good structure. Choose one which has ability to work as a mailing list so people who love MLs would be happy.

Fine, then we're already done. The GoogleGroup is a forum which also works as a mailinglist. Or the other way around? So what's all this fuss about? 

GoogleGroup is a shitty UI for a ML. It's hardly to be called a forum.

 

Cheers

Andreas

[Robert Korulczyk]

> That's already available via threading which works fine in the GoogleGroups web-interface and works also fine in my email-clients.

How can I ignore all (including future) topics relating to politics or PSRs, which I'm not interested? If your answer is "you can not" it means that
threading does not solve this problem at all.

> Fine, then we're already done. The GoogleGroup is a forum which also works as a mailinglist. Or the other way around? So what's all this fuss about?

The problem is that Google Groups is a terrible forum, and at most a decent mailing list. Fans of mailing lists always have some control over the
interface and functionality thanks to their email clients, but we can not do anything with "forum" interface. At this point, it is easier to find the
forum engine with a good mailing list support than to pretend that Google Groups is a forum.

--
Regards,
Robert Korulczyk

[Alessandro Pellizzari]

On 26/06/2016 16:21, Robert Korulczyk wrote:

> How can I ignore all (including future) topics relating to politics or PSRs, which I'm not interested? If your answer is "you can not" it means that
> threading does not solve this problem at all.

We can just agree on a list of tags, and you will be able to ignore the
tags.

I know what you are going to say: what if people don't use tags?

To which I reply: what if people don't use the correct sub-forum?

I had some experience with forums, and usually the "General" sub-forum
gets the biggest part of messages.

Bye.

[Alessandro Pellizzari]

On 26/06/2016 11:52, 'Alexander Makarov' via PHP Framework

Interoperability Group wrote:
> On Sunday, June 26, 2016 at 11:30:55 AM UTC+3, Alessandro Pellizzari wrote:
>
> On Sat, 25 Jun 2016 07:59:16 -0700 (PDT)
> "'Alexander Makarov' via PHP Framework Interoperability Group"

> <php...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>> wrote:

> Same as forum topics, yes... But how to group all the threads on PSR-7?
> That's what subforums are for. It's way better than a current mess.

With tags, as it's already starting to happen now. We just need to get
used to use them, and have a handy list of them somewhere on the website.

> Nope. Every good forum software marks these. Also there's usually a
> capability to "Get what's new since my last visit".

Yes, but, at least in my experience, they then show up as a mess, as
they look to be all in the same sub-forum, and you lose the visual
threading an email client has.

> 3. Makes it harder and slower to go from one thread to another.
>
> Why?

Because you have to click around and wait for the pages to load.
Going to the next unread message in thunderbird or claws-mail takes me
less than 1/10th of a second. Can you do the same with forums?

Again, maybe I had some bad experiences, but going from a thread to
another never took me less than 5 seconds, with any forum software.

> Nope. You have all the posts on topic in a single list. Why is it hard
> to read sequentially? If you mean globally, why reading sequentially if
> messages are about different topics?

Because I am following multiple topics, and with a mail client I always
have a tree view of the thread on the top/left of my screen (ignore new
Outlook-like shitty interfaces that collapse threads in a list...)

> I'm not forcing anyone, just suggesting. Also, note that I've suggested
> forum software with ML support.

Maybe it's fear of the unknown, but I don't see how a forum software
(usually laid out as a list of messages) be 2-way compatible with a
tree-based organisation of threads.

Do you have some examples I can check out?

Thanks.
Bye.

[Alexander Makarov]

I don't see any tags in Google Groups web UI...

[Alessandro Pellizzari]

On 27/06/2016 10:45, 'Alexander Makarov' via PHP Framework

Interoperability Group wrote:

> I don't see any tags in Google Groups web UI...

I mean in the subject: [PSR-7], [PSR-15], [PSR-17], [Internal], [Vote]

Bye.

[Robert Korulczyk]

> We can just agree on a list of tags, and you will be able to ignore the tags.
>
> I know what you are going to say: what if people don't use tags?

No, I will say that this is a half-measure to desperately keep current status quo.

But you're right - people may don't use tags or do it wrong. In the case of forum it is much less of a problem, because the user must select a
category (so he can not forget it) and it is much easier to choose the correct category (because the list of it is easily accessible). And finally, on
forum mods can always move topic to the correct subforum - you can not do it on mailing list.

--
Regards,
Robert Korulczyk

[Stefano Torresi]

This discussion a bit of a beating on a dead horse.
This proposal has been brought up time and time again, and people participating in it have been always the more or less the same.
I've never seen more than a handful of list participants advocating for it, and I don't think this is going to change anytime soon.
I may be wrong but, as far as I can tell, people are mostly ok with the Google group; moving to another medium is major change that probably needs to be endorsed by most of the FIG members before being realistically evaluated.

Personally I am in favour, but I can understand why others are not. I am convinced that achieving the best of both worlds is possible, though.
Maybe we could start a gradual change by only using a different medium for voting threads, but again, I think we need strong voices from most of the members to gain enough traction to move this forward.

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[Alexander Makarov]

Let's start with voting. I've coded about 40% of it yesterday evening...

[Daniel Plainview]

> For one thing: This mailinglist is already available via a forum-like interface at GoogleGroups. 

I find this interface not user-friendly.

Email messages are not really supposed to be parsed automatically,

they are supposed to be "parsed" by human beings in the first place.

I think it's fundamental flaw of mailing lists.

Some features can be implemented only with agreements: tags, quoting, etc.

It's like C++ interfaces, if you want. Yes, they are "enough" for OOP modelling.

However, we know that language-based (Java, PHP, ...) interfaces are more handy.

Clarity of intent is the thing.

On Sunday, June 26, 2016 at 2:36:01 PM UTC+3, Andreas Heigl wrote:

[Woody Gilk]

It's worth noting that Discourse will host open source projects for
free: http://blog.discourse.org/2016/03/free-discourse-forum-hosting-for-community-friendly-github-projects/
--
Woody Gilk
http://about.me/shadowhand

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[scott molinari]

Hi, 

I'd like to suggest that a PHP group use a PHP software as a forum software.

Also, a forum software can help a lot, when it comes to moderation of the group discussions. That is a win-win situation. 

I would also like to suggest getting off the mailing list type of system. A good PHP forum software can journal conversations and also inform about replies. To reply is only a click away. This saves a good bit of time.

In that vein, I'd like to suggest one of the best forum software as a solution. https://xenforo.com/community/

Don't be put off too much by the design. It can be highly customized. I've worked with this software extensively and would be glad to offer my services for any implementation work. I could also speak with the Xenforo team to see if they would donate a license to the PHP-FIG group. Otherwise, yes. The software is paid. I know that sort of goes against the OSS premise of the FIG, but the software is quite good and it promotes good discussions, which is what is most important for the FIG.

Scott

[Dracony]

We also already had a member of the Vanilla forums team offering free forum hosting for the FIG.

[scott molinari]

Great! That means you have more options. :-)

Scott

[Michael Cullum]

Hi all,

We [the secretaries] have been keeping this [changes to the discussion channels] in mind for a little while [since the last discussion topic] but we've not moved forward on it in public [we've just discussed it in our monthly meetings] as we have a potential large number of changes which could be about to occur with the structure of the FIG (FIG 3.0) and we'd like to introduce it at the same time as a coded voting system that we've been working on.

Once FIG 3.0 has, or has not (if the FIG membership rejects it), passed we'll have a look into the different solutions [different softwares and hosting options] and then present a vote to the members with a conclusion. As pointed out there are a whole range of options so rushing into a vote without analysing the different options means people don't even know what they are voting on; there are some voting members in the previous topic who said they'd vote +1 if there were certain features included for example.

In summary, we believe it would be better, and would rather, to hold off on a vote for this until after FIG 3.0 has been voted on, and we are ready to implement our custom voting system simultaneously (which will be necessary for the Core Committee vote anyway if FIG 3.0 passes as it's a nightmare to do by hand).

Thanks,

The Secretaries

[Alexander Makarov]

> at the same time as a coded voting system that we've been working on

Wait, so you're implementing it? I've started it as well :) If you're on it, I'll spend time on something else...

[scott molinari]

A good forum software would also have polls in them, so voting is a matter of creating the poll and only letting certain members vote (the voting members). No need to program it.

Scott

[Michael Cullum]

Hi Scott,

A normal forum poll would be inadequate as polls don't necessarily have a full record of votes, of vote changes etc.

They also don't handle things like Single Transferable Vote.

Thanks,

Michael

[scott molinari]

The software I suggested, Xenforo, has everything except STV. 

If I may ask, why is STV needed? Sounds awfully complicated for the purposes of FIG. Or would the usage of STV mean, anyone in the community will be able to vote?

Scott

[Stephen Rees-Carter]

STV is useful when voting on multiple options or candidates, rather than a single yes/no vote, such as with the upcoming secretary election: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/php-fig/m6ezWrBEshQ

It is a lot fairer than a raw votes count - as it allows you to order your preferences for the different candidates, rather than having to pick only one.

As an aside, I've had to implement an STV voting system before, it's quite a fun programming challenge! :-)

Thanks,

~Stephen

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[scott molinari]

Ah, Xenforo also has multiple choice voting, if that is all that is meant with STV. Xenforo also has timed voting, which I believe is also necessary. You're going to also need some sort of permissions system too, right? Read only. Voting. Administering. That is also already done and ready to be used in Xenforo too, naturally. ;-)

If there is any interest, I can also put up a demo of Xenforo to play with. 

Scott

[Roman Tsjupa]

Even if we can't get the forum with all the features in one go, at least it will have some features. We could just keep using regular messages for voting until something is implemented.

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[Carl Wuensche]

On Sunday, 26 June 2016 01:30:55 UTC-7, Alessandro Pellizzari wrote:

On Sat, 25 Jun 2016 07:59:16 -0700 (PDT)
"'Alexander Makarov' via PHP Framework Interoperability Group"
<php...@googlegroups.com> wrote:


In contrast, forums:

1. Make it harder to know which articles are new in a
discussion.

No it doesn't. There are post dates associated with posts/items, and there are icons that show you which item is new.
 

2. Makes it harder to understand to which message a reply
refers to.

If someone is replying to a specific message, then they quote that post. It's easy to understand.

3. Makes it harder and slower to go from one thread to another.

I don't see how this is true.

4. Makes it much slower to read sequentially.

I don't agree.

5. Makes it impossible to mark a thread as read when you are not
interested.

This is a built-in feature of most modern forums. How is it impossible?

6. Makes it harder to archive, star, mark, blacklist a message or a
thread

This is a built-in feature of most modern forums. It's easy.

7. Makes it hard or impossible to take a part of a discussion in
private without needing to copy-paste it.

This isn't true.

[scott molinari]

I can confirm what Carl just wrote. 

There is a whole lot more that can be done, which would help keep the FIG discussions "in control", if the email listing functionality would be approved to get dropped. This change would also mean the members would need to visit the forum to actually participate, instead of just writing an email. That isn't a big issue though, as participating is one click away, either when the forum's unread posts page is saved as a favorite or directly from the notification emails, which a user of the forum can get, when they subscribe to certain forums or have participated in certain threads. All of this is adjustable. If you want, you can also get a journal for the day's activities in one email each day (with a good forum software). 

Another big advantage is also splitting up topics into sub-forums and being able to "hide" some forums just for staff/ leadership and/ or just for the voting members or allow some people write permissions and some only read, that way you don't have to write [Internal] in the thread titles.

It would also be a strong basis for making any customizations towards special features, like the voting stuff. A good forum software will have polls integrated. It's just a matter of extending that feature to fit the FIG's purposes. Everything else if finished and ready to use, like an all important permissions system. 

Scott 

[Alessandro Pellizzari]

On 03/08/2016 05:19, 'scott molinari' via PHP Framework Interoperability

Group wrote:

> This change would also mean the members
> would need to visit the forum to actually participate, instead of just
> writing an email. That isn't a big issue though

This, for me, is a huge issue. I would abandon FIG if there were no
mailing list access to the forum.

To be honest, I am not happy with the current multi-channel discussions
(part here, part on github, part on irc, part on some other channels I
don't even know exist), so I am thinking of quitting nonetheless, so
don't bother me.

Bye.

[scott molinari]

Just to understand your reasoning Alessandro (for my own curiosity, for matters even beyond this topic). 

What is it that you like about the mailing list type of discussion or dislike about getting a notification email for the same things, but have to click on a link and go to a web site to actually reply? 

Scott

[Alessandro Pellizzari]

On 05/08/2016 06:35, 'scott molinari' via PHP Framework Interoperability

The time I waste.

Clicking reply on a mail client I start writing 1/10th of a second
later. On a forum it takes at least 10-20 seconds to load.
Usually I start doing something else while I wait, and lose the will to
respond, or the idea I had in mind.

Repeat for n times a day.

Also, with a ml I see the thread tree. I can easily navigate the
subthread up to the point I am interested in. In a forum it's all at the
same level and I end up reading a lot of unrelated messages belonging to
other subthreads.

Plus, I just press "n" on my client to go to next unread, while on the
web I have to click around.

As I read the ml during my 5-min or 15-min pomodoro pause or my lunch
break, I need it to be fast. If I am running out of time and I want to
answer, I mark it as unread/important and come back to it after lunch,
in the evening or the morning after.

With the ml I can read most of the messages in less than 5 mins. With a
forum I can probably read 10 messages in 5 minutes, tops.

Bye.

[scott molinari]

Thanks for the feedback. 

Although I can't deny clicking and moving to a browser takes a bit more time, 10-20 seconds is extreme. It takes my worst computer about 5 or so seconds at most to move to the thread and reply. Replying on a good forum software also does a much better job with the referencing/ quoting. And, once I am on the forum, it takes me only one click to find all of the discussions I am interested in or am taking part in. You don't have that with emails. I have a feeling you've been on forums built with lesser quality forum software.

I've also heard a number of comments from people, who used to use mailing lists before, who later said they'd never go back to them, after using, at the time, the market leader in forum software. 

Scott

[Daniel Plainview]

> Clicking reply on a mail client I start writing 1/10th of a second 
> later. On a forum it takes at least 10-20 seconds to load. 

Please, fix you net and upgrade computer, respect yourself.

We shouldn't tolerate racism and slow computers.

[Amanda Folson]

Some people want a web UI, some people want a mailing list...may as well use GitHub issues so people who want email can still use email and people who want web UI can have their web UI+unread issue/PR notifications. (Half serious, people have mentioned that it's hard to follow things between the mailing list, GitHub, and IRC so this would combine ML and GH.)

There are pros and cons to both, but I think a tiny bit of effort on everyone's part to 1) Stick to an email quoting/reply style and 2) Figure out some tags that people can use to filter would solve many of the problems people are having with the mailing list. Forums just seem like unnecessary overhead.

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[Paul Jones]

> On Aug 6, 2016, at 10:06, Amanda Folson <amanda...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Some people want a web UI, some people want a mailing list...may as well use GitHub issues so people who want email can still use email and people who want web UI can have their web UI+unread issue/PR notifications. (Half serious, people have mentioned that it's hard to follow things between the mailing list, GitHub, and IRC so this would combine ML and GH.)

This was suggested years ago (was it by some of the Symfony folks here?) and I recall being against it at that point. I have changed my mind since then; I think your idea is a pretty good middle-ground.


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[Alessandro Pellizzari]

On Sat, 6 Aug 2016 07:51:37 -0700 (PDT)
Daniel Plainview <daniel...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Clicking reply on a mail client I start writing 1/10th of a second
> > later. On a forum it takes at least 10-20 seconds to load.
>
> Please, fix you net and upgrade computer, respect yourself.
> We shouldn't tolerate racism and slow computers.

I have an 2016 Core i5 and 32 GB RAM on a 16 MBit internet connection,
thank you very much.

But it could happen that I connect on mobility, with 1-2 Mbit
connection, and paying by the MB.

Or I could be visiting my parents in the countryside in Italy,
where I have 1 MBit ADSL when it's not raining, or 100 Kbit with rainy
weather.

Or I could be at a conference, where 500 people with 2-3 devices each
try to connect through a 100 MBit connection.

I don't understand why people insist on wasting bandwidth and time
basing the decision on their 100 Mbit home connection.

Downloading an email is 20-30 KB. Opening a forum page could be 1
MB or more.

Bye.

[Michael Cullum]

Daniel,

Please keep it professional here. This kind of discussion isn't constructive.

--

Michael C

PHP FIG Secretary

[Roman Tsjupa]

> Downloading an email is 20-30 KB. Opening a forum page could be 1MB or more.

Honestly this is kind of a ridiculous argument. But even if you consider it, still a forum page is not 1MB per page, the css and js files will get cached after your first request, so browsing subsequent pages won't require nearly 1MB per page. Also to stretch your argument even thinner, there do exist really lightweight forum themes. It doesn't have to be megabytes of background photos and heaps of JS per page anyway.

At any rate, we should really consider the percentage of people who browse FIG on a wooden PC with dialup internet before optimizing the UI to that setup.

> I don't understand why people insist on wasting bandwidth and time basing the decision on their 100 Mbit home connection.

It's 2016, people browse Facebook and Instagram on their phones all day. 5 Instagram pictures are the same size the JS and CSS are for the forum (and remember you only need to download the JS and CSS once)

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[Alessandro Pellizzari]

On 08/08/2016 10:14, Roman Tsjupa wrote:

>> Downloading an email is 20-30 KB. Opening a forum page could be 1MB or
> more.
>
> Honestly this is kind of a ridiculous argument.

Fair enough. One point down.

But I can continue:

A forum is a single point of failure. If the forum is down I cannot read
any message and can't reply.

With a ml I have all the messages available offline for reading and
searching. I can write a reply and keep it in the out queue.

If the forum goes down while I write a reply I need to press "back" on
the browser, hope for the textarea to have kept my message, copy-paste
it somewhere, wait for the forum to come up, find the message I replied
to previously, reply again and paste the old message.

With a ml it goes automatically in the out queue and gets retried next
time. Automatically.

Same if I am underground or on a plane while replying. Need to wait to
arrive, connect and reply. By then I am probably busy with something else.

> At any rate, we should really consider the percentage of people who
> browse FIG on a wooden PC with dialup internet before optimizing the UI
> to that setup.

And those that sooner or later find themselves in the scenarios I
listed. I bet at least half of the people in this list found themselves
at a conference with poor connectivity at least once in their life.

I still don't see any killer feature that makes forums much superior to
mailing lists. And I still see a lot of problems.

Except maybe the possibility to have animated GIFs in the signature. :P

As I said, if the forum has a working read-write mailing list gateway
system, we can have the best of both worlds. If it doesn't, it's a huge
step backwards, IMO.

Bye.

[Roman Tsjupa]

> A forum is a single point of failure. If the forum is down I cannot read any message and can't reply.

So? I mean, it's not like it will be down for more than a few hours. FIG is not some sort of a HFT software that needs 100% uptime to function. Also all forum platforms have subscription and digest features, where you can get an email when a new thread/reply pops up. 

> If the forum goes down while I write a reply I need to press "back" on the browser, hope for the textarea to have kept my message, copy-paste it somewhere, wait for the forum to come up, find the message I replied to previously, reply again and paste the old message.

This is again a 0.01% problem. 

A single feature of voting that could be easily added to the forum would tremendously outweight the availability downside.  Or being able to group threads into categories? Imagine if we had a separate category for PSRs and a separate one for off-topic drama, and you could subscribe only to the first one, wouldn't that be awesome?

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[Amanda Folson]

With regard to uptime, since FIG members are so distributed across many different timezones I'd argue that this uptime is pretty important. Something being down for a few hours is actually a big deal for distributed teams.

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[Roman Tsjupa]

I dont see how posting anything with a day or twoof delay would change the outcome of any discussion or vote here.

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[Alexander Makarov]

That actually may work very well and has many pros. Cons... none?