Re: Forums

06.01.2012, 22:20, "Sylvain Galineau" <sylvaing@microsoft.com>:
> [Marat Tanalin:]
>
>> šAs it's already said in this thread multiple times, properly implemented
>> šforum (not some existing one) would be identical to mailing list from
>> šperspective of those who prefer mailing lists.
>
> You might as well be saying "a proper Presidential candidate (not any of
> the known ones) would be as good as the incumbent from the perspective
> of those who prefer the latter". Until you identify what 'proper' means
> to those people, the assertion is rather meaningless.

[Just in case: I'm not a starter of this thread.]

See B. Zbarsky's comment for what people that like mailing lists could expect from forum equivalent of mailing list to be ok with such a forum:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2012Jan/0146.html

Principle here is quite simple: make forum to function transparently identical to mailing lists while providing more rich forum functionality for those who find mailing list functionality too limited/unusable.

> I'm just not convinced quantity will magically lead to higher quality or even
> increase the group's output since the latter is gated by the number of active
> editors (which increases at a slower rate than the number of WG members). At
> the margin, is it likely the current system causes us to miss valuable feedback
> from the community ? It's definitely possible. But if it also prevents us from being
> spammed with so much trolling and nonsense that the WG would have to retreat
> into a private space to do its work (as was the case in the past), shouldn't
> we think very carefully about what it is we're trying to fix and how we do it?
>
> As there is no shortage of forums where the barrier to entry is low, the volume high
> and the signal/noise ratio indistinguishable from zero it should be no surprise than
> any existing arrangement that doesn't exhibit these problems will be defended.

It's out of my authority to estimate such signal/noise ratio. But I would humbly note that spam should not prevented at the cost of usability for those who are not spammers.

> So while I have no problem in principle with your overall request, acknowledging the
> existing norms and goals in order to understand what makes the current setup work would
> be helpful imo. Alternatively, you could explain why you think the current system doesn't
> work i.e. why spec X missed the boat and how this would not have happened with the feedback
> we would have collected using a different communication platform.

Several benefits of forum over mailing list are already mentioned in this thread. If you want more, here is one of: it's impossible to use [pseudo]markup for at least such basic things as clickable links (not autolinked long URLs, but, instead, short meaningful in-text strings pointing to some URL), bold text and code blocks. Pure-text discussions are hard to read and therefore have limited demonstrativeness and usefulness.

Thanks.

Received on Friday, 6 January 2012 19:02:18 UTC