So this is an issue that has been kicking around in my head for a while. It was raised briefly earlier this year on the list and it was decided to stick with the mailing list. I raised it again today during our IRC meeting to get a general pulse. So, I'm going to lay it all out and see what the larger team thinks.
I am proposing that we deprecate the documentation mailing list and use groups.drupal.org for our discussions instead. In order to not have conversations happening in two places we need to have one definitive "discussion" venue. Due to this, the current docs group is "read-only." To make it read-only we have to limit who can actually become a member of the group. Limiting membership like this severely hampers our use of all the tools that g.d.o could offer us.
If we allowed membership and free posting on the g.d.o group, we would:
- Still have email notifications of all discussions.
- Be able to use wiki posts to collaborate on one living document rather than having to attach separate iterations to an issue in the queue.
- Read threads all on one page rather than have to page through the mailman archive.
- Organize and categorize discussions to make it easier to find areas of interest.
- Replying to old threads that you didn't actually receive in email is clear and straightforward - just leave a new comment. (How to respond to archived mail threads is not an apparent thing.)
The only advantage that the mailing list provides that the group does not, is the ability to reply to a thread directly from your email. I feel that losing this feature is worth the advantages we would gain by shifting to g.d.o. I feel that this is true for actually collaborating as a team and to make it easier for new users to join in.
I am posting this to the mailing list as well as posting on g.d.o with comments turned on. This is one conversation that I'd like to see discussed wherever folks feel most comfortable.
Comments
Yes!
While I'm by far not the most active documentation team member, I'd love to see the discussions happening on groups - reckon there'd be more passing traffic that way, and I don't like mailing lists in general.
It's gotta work..!
Sorry to hijack this thread and state the obvious ... but I've had problems with both. I can't seem to post to the mailing list http://drupal.org/node/331413 and have had problems commenting on this site (or trying to edit a comment to be precise) - http://drupal.org/node/331560 - didn't even get a CAPTCHA, just told I was a spammer :O !
Back to the real question, each has its merits - once you are "in" a mailing list then contributing is very quick and easy without the distraction of having to visit a web page. Is there a module that lets you email your reply back to the discussion thread? Then we could have our cake and eat it. Certainly it's much easier for other people to see what's going on and get involved if the disucssions are more visible, i.e. here. Ane hey, it worked for me! :)
I'm going crazy
Sometimes I so get my wires crossed. . .
I know I posted this comment somewhere, but I've searched, can't find it and would rather think I'm going senile than be paranoid - hopefully I'm just being paranoid about going senile?
Anyway, my final (I promise) thought on this is that GDO should stay by-default read-only, used for announcements and highlighting important projects. Addi can choose to open particular topics for comment, particularly where we're seeking input from outside the docs team.
Our issue queue works better than GDO for discussions, and I don't think holding them there actually interferes with people getting real work done (much).
I don't tend to like mail lists much, and due to the recent low volume there that's probably true for a growing percentage of docteamers. Therefore I don't think it matters much, but in principle would still vote for deprecating it so all discussion is steered to the issue queue.
The one thing we're missing is a collaborative wiki space. I don't think GDO's great for that either, but it'll probably do for now, with teamers requesting a page be opened for that purpose and Addi setting appropriate permissions.
Now I'll shut up, at least about this topic :)