Separate repository on GitHub for discussions, voting, politics?

[daniel...@gmail.com]

Hi,

I noticed that many people really dislike this mailing list. There are many reasons:

* PHP community wants to see your GitHub profiles, be more open;

* no sane highlighting of the code (for discussions about code);

* very obsolete messaging system in general: it's like plain text vs native GUI;

* lack of on mailing lists: emoji system as voting mechanism for simple voting and for hot discussions where someone asks reasonable question, but it drowns and nobody sees it (on GitHub it's hard to avoid question with many 👍 signs);

* GitHub offers diffs for edited comments;

* moderators can tag issues there;

* mailing-list gives worse feedback by PHP community; don't be bad politicians: that's good when you have better feedback.

This question was raised not a once if I recall correctly: you planned to move somewhere like a modern forum. 

Why separate repository in the https://github.com/php-fig group can't be simple solution?

> I don't have account there!

That's weird (for PHP-dev). However, I had no account here too.

---

I'm sorry if I sound offensive, but mailing list hurts experience of discussion with PHP-FIG. PHP-FIG hides in this "grey" zone and nobody from my friends know what 's going on here. For example, many wants to see generic Promise PSR (HTTP, internals of GraphQL servers, interactive CLI apps, etc.), but after all these years is there any status of it or at least list of issues related to lack of such needed PSR?

Please, be more transparent, mailing list is a big issue.

[daniel...@gmail.com]

btw, IRC chat is almost dead. There are some people online (16), but nobody talks even when you asks about very PHP-FIG-related things. 

It's time to make a step from zone of comfort, ladies and gentlemen. So far it looks like elite club of people, 95% of them are unknown for majority of regular GitHub users..

And they vote for the future of some aspects of PHP community. 

Don't make it looks so similar to politics.

[daniel...@gmail.com]

+ I forgot to mention big advantage over this list: you can ping almost anybody and ask their opinion on the topic, when you decide something important and this person is a pro in specific domain.

Because we all know how many cool people left this list (for various reasons, of course, but you don't have easy way to ask opinion directly in the thread.. 

[Matteo Beccati]

Hi,

On 11/08/2020 17:18, daniel...@gmail.com wrote:
> btw, IRC chat is almost dead. There are some people online (16), but
> nobody talks even when you asks about very PHP-FIG-related things. 

IRC could be (almost) dead, but some people are still hanging out in it.

You just can't expect a quick reply as if it was a channel with hundreds
of active people at any given time.

However on sunday at 19:17 CEST someone joined the channel. At 20:07,
they asked a question. Between 20:15 and 20:17 they pinged a few channel
members typing their nicknames. They waited a whole 12 minutes and left
the channel.

I have randomly noticed at 21:06 that xchat was blinking, which was too
late... but I would have happily answered that the mailing list was the
place to discuss that.

I normally don't pass sunday evenings waiting if someone pops in on IRC
for a whole 20 minutes, asking php-fig questions. If I should, just
please let me know! ;-)


Cheers
--
Matteo Beccati

Development & Consulting - http://www.beccati.com/

[Philippe Cloutier]

Hi Daniel,

Le 2020-08-11 à 11:06, daniel...@gmail.com a écrit :
> Hi,
>
> I noticed that many people really dislike this mailing list. There are
> many reasons:
>
> * PHP community wants to see your GitHub profiles, be more open;
> * no sane highlighting of the code (for discussions about code);
> * very obsolete messaging system in general: it's like plain text vs
> native GUI;
> * lack of on mailing lists: emoji system as voting mechanism for
> simple voting and for hot discussions where someone asks reasonable
> question, but it drowns and nobody sees it (on GitHub it's hard to
> avoid question with many 👍 signs);
> * GitHub offers diffs for edited comments;
> * moderators can tag issues there;
> * mailing-list gives worse feedback by PHP community; don't be bad
> politicians: that's good when you have better feedback.
>
> This question was raised not a once if I recall correctly: you planned
> to move somewhere like a modern forum.
>
> Why separate repository in the https://github.com/php-fig group can't
> be simple solution?

I do not know GitHub much, but I do not understand your suggestion. A
GitHub repository is designed to store code, not discussions (nor
voting, nor politics).


> [...]

--
Philippe Cloutier
http://www.philippecloutier.com

[daniel...@gmail.com]

Hi,

GitHub is more than server with repositories, it's a social network 

for developers.

And even if discussions sound like not the main feature of GitHub, 

it have way more abilities in formatting texts, voting, etc.

Example of discussion there: https://github.com/php-fig/fig-standards/pull/1218

Quite readable, isn't it?

But then comes Creel and states: "To that end, please start a thread on the mailing list to discuss it,".

Author of PhpStan replied perfectly:

> Hi, I was already participating in the PSR-5 draft discussion and I found out that discussions

> about tech specs over mailing lists are not my cup of tea

> and I have other things with higher priority in my life :)

But you can create just empty repository with single file README.md and discuss everything

there if moving to normal forum engine like https://github.community is a so huge problem, that 

you can't fix it several years.

[daniel...@gmail.com]

Crell* sorry

[daniel...@gmail.com]

And sorry for 3 messages in a row, just I can't edit them.

But I want to describe what GitHub is.

It's dev community that like Octopus twines over codebase.

It gives synergy and best minds give better solutions.

How you can discuss development so far away from context?

Some of PHP-FIG members are always silent, they just sit here for status.

"Hey, I'm doing right things at least every day, look, I'm in PHP-FIG group".

On Wednesday, August 12, 2020 at 3:19:22 AM UTC+3 che...@gmail.com wrote:

[Stefano Torresi]

Daniel,

Il giorno mer 12 ago 2020 alle ore 08:22 daniel...@gmail.com <daniel...@gmail.com> ha scritto:

Some of PHP-FIG members are always silent, they just sit here for status.

"Hey, I'm doing right things at least every day, look, I'm in PHP-FIG group".

This is exactly how NOT to treat people, which you should care about a little more than the tools they use.

The FIG activity is very low volume nowadays and doesn't need much more than a mailing list.

MLs, by the way, are still very much in use for open-source projects, like, exempli gratia, PHP itself, or, just to mention one, the Linux kernel.

Discussions about specific FIG projects or things that need direct references to code happen on GitHub already.

Regards,
Stefano

[Philippe Cloutier]

Hi Daniel,

Le 2020-08-12 à 02:09, daniel...@gmail.com a écrit :

Hi,

GitHub is more than server with repositories, it's a social network 

for developers.

And even if discussions sound like not the main feature of GitHub, 

it have way more abilities in formatting texts, voting, etc.

The problem isn't that discussions are not GitHub's main feature. The problem is that [to my knowledge] GitHub does not offer discussion forums.

Example of discussion there: https://github.com/php-fig/fig-standards/pull/1218

Quite readable, isn't it?

It may be readable, but that is not a discussion, that is what GitHub calls a "pull request". This seems to be some cryptic designation for code change integration proposals, and the reason why it looks like a discussion is that the first tab of the "pull request" visualization page is the Conversation tab, which shows comments about the visualized proposal.

There would be no way to have a meta-discussion like this one on GitHub to my knowledge. If you like GitHub so much and want it to replace general mailing lists like this one, I recommend you start by adding a forum engine to GitHub.

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[daniel...@gmail.com]

> The problem isn't that discussions are not GitHub's main feature. The problem is that [to my knowledge] GitHub does not offer discussion forums.

"Issues" (if enabled) may act like discussion forum. You don't need make pull request in this case. Anyway, it's just cheap solution if open dedicated forum on php-fig.org is a problem. 

Just googled: https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions — GitHub provides in beta mode Discussions, so it is exactly what we may want (https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/06/github-gets-a-built-in-ide-with-codespaces-discussion-forums-and-more/) It looks like need to ask GitHub team to join beta. I believe they can do it for PHP-FIG.

[Philippe Cloutier]

Le 2020-08-14 à 06:31, daniel...@gmail.com a écrit :

> The problem isn't that discussions are not GitHub's main feature. The problem is that [to my knowledge] GitHub does not offer discussion forums.

"Issues" (if enabled) may act like discussion forum. You don't need make pull request in this case.

Issues are a collection of issue reports. They do enable discussion, but only about issue reports. If a discussion topic is not an issue, "Issues" will not help any more than Pull requests will help discussing topics other than "pull requests".

Anyway, it's just cheap solution if open dedicated forum on php-fig.org is a problem.

I see. I must say your proposal is unclear then. It helps for proposals to be concrete and to use examples, but it is important to be clear about what is merely an example or a possibility.

I would recommend you create a new clearer topic choosing a clearer Subject (either do not mention GitHub in the title, or only mention it parenthetically). And by the way, on a more general note, I think it would be best to have this forum alongside other PHP forums, so it may be more efficient to start by getting php.net to adopt "real" web forums. There are several web forum engines based on PHP engines, although free software PHP engines haven't evolved much in recent years to my knowledge.

[...]

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[Larry Garfield]

On Sat, Aug 15, 2020, at 9:05 AM, Philippe Cloutier wrote:
> Le 2020-08-14 à 06:31, daniel...@gmail.com a écrit :
> > > The problem isn't that discussions are not GitHub's main feature. The problem is that [to my knowledge] GitHub does not offer discussion forums.
> >
> > "Issues" (if enabled) may act like discussion forum. You don't need make pull request in this case.
>
>
> Issues are a collection of issue reports. They do enable discussion,
> but only about issue reports. If a discussion topic is not an issue,
> "Issues" will not help any more than Pull requests will help discussing
> topics other than "pull requests".
>
>
>
> > Anyway, it's just cheap solution if open dedicated forum on php-fig.org is a problem.
>
>
> I see. I must say your proposal is unclear then. It helps for proposals
> to be concrete and to use examples, but it is important to be clear
> about what is merely an example or a possibility.
>
> I would recommend you create a new clearer topic choosing a clearer
> Subject (either do not mention GitHub in the title, or only mention it
> parenthetically). And by the way, on a more general note, I think it
> would be best to have this forum alongside other PHP forums, so it may
> be more efficient to start by getting php.net to adopt "real" web
> forums. There are several web forum engines based on PHP engines,
> although free software PHP engines haven't evolved much in recent years
> to my knowledge.

I've recently done a survey of available OSS forum software for work. My conclusion is that they can all be grouped into one of a few categories: Bad, Worse, Terrible, and Effectively Abandoned. "Just use a forum" is a non-option.

For all their issues, mailing lists are still the least-bad option for open-threaded-discussions. There's a searchable permanent archive, it's easy to subscribe/unsubscribe, anyone can read, join, and post, there's a million possible clients, it's easy to filter so a folder so you can ignore it most of the time... The only solid argument against a mailing list is "it's old," which is not an argument.

"Signing up for yet another forum tool to remember a password for" is not my cup of tea, either. So it goes.

I think there's a misunderstanding here about how FIG operates. The mailing list is the primary official venue for discussion, but not the only. Most of the actual work on specs happens in Working Groups, and they are free to use whatever tooling they prefer. Some have set up a custom mailing list for themselves; some have done everything via regular hangout meetings. Some have used extensive GitHub PRs. Most have used a little of all of the above. Working Groups are deliberately allowed to use "whatever works."

Moving discussions from a public mailing list to a public unthreaded HTML form does not offer any meaningful benefits, and would only serve to make discussion more difficult.

This discussion comes up periodically and always ends in the same place: There's no actual value to changing other than a couple of people don't like using old tech, which is not sufficient for all of the other downsides finding something else would have.

--Larry Garfield

[fenn...@gmail.com]

If i may, GitHub has a discussion module which can be enabled for organizations

https://docs.github.com/en/github/building-a-strong-community/about-team-discussions

[Enrico Zimuel]

I'm with Larry on this discussion. I think a mailing list is a perfect technology for the scope of PHP-FIG.

IMHO an email is still the best form of communication if you need to write something "important".

Moreover, we are already using other channels like Twitter, IRC, Github as reported here: https://www.php-fig.org/get-involved/

If there is a problem of visibility, I think we should advertise our channels of communication better.

Regards,

Enrico

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[daniel...@gmail.com]

> The only solid argument against a mailing list is "it's old," which is not an argument. 

My argument list means nothing?

 > "Signing up for yet another forum tool to remember a password for" is not my cup of tea, either. So it goes. 

Nobody remembers password today, use password manager. Even in this case, make login via GitHub (OAuth).

So what do you think about Discussions on GitHub (beta)?

[daniel...@gmail.com]

Exactly!

[daniel...@gmail.com]

> I think there's a misunderstanding here about how FIG operates. The mailing list is the primary official venue for discussion, but not the only. Most of the actual work on specs happens in Working Groups, and they are free to use whatever tooling they prefer.

The problem is that we have quite good case for PSR (PHP 8 attributes). We had opinions by leaders in static analyzing (PhpStan, psalm, phan) and by author of AOP Go framework that we have something to discuss.

However, none of them wants to join this mailing list, some of them had bad experience already (PhpStan).

> Moving discussions from a public mailing list to a public unthreaded HTML form

https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions — this is threaded forum and you can ask GitHub support for that.

Also GitHub has team discussions: https://docs.github.com/en/github/building-a-strong-community/about-team-discussions

You can make working group as a team there and give us platform for discussions.

> does not offer any meaningful benefits

Well, "working group" as you said, see the benefits. Instead of bureaucracy, can help us with team discussion or, even better, with org discussions like https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions?

[daniel...@gmail.com]

Someone who owns php-fig may just ask here for Discussions: https://github.community/t/can-one-apply-for-github-discussions-beta/121120/26

Can we at least try this for an experiment for a new potential PSR?