[swift-evolution] [Swift4] Mailing list vs. Forum

[Karl]

> On 2 Aug 2016, at 11:07, Tino Heth via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
>> I would love to have a great web archive for swift-evolution—something with a really solid search function, good threading, and most of the other niceties of forums. It'd even be nice to have an upvote feature. But these are all things that you could do without taking swift-evolution off of email.
> afair, the option of keeping a mail interface was mentioned in one of the first posts, so none of the positive aspects of email would be lost (it just wouldn't be possible to use the "bonus-features" that aren't available in the medium)
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The reason I don’t like mailing lists is because nobody has a good web UI for them. Gmane is clunky, the thing we have on lists.swift.org <http://lists.swift.org/> is awful — it’s incredibly hard to follow conversations, things are separated by week/month for some reason, making searching difficult (and making it harder to follow the conversation). None of them allow messaging from the UI, or PM-ing a particular person if you discover their post some months later and want to ask a follow-up. It’s so far behind where group collaboration is today it’s not even funny. Then, of course, you’re exposing your email address on a public forum. So you either need a good spam filter or a second email address. Every other kind of forum abstracts your identity and puts a couple of spam-limiting barriers between strangers on the internet and your inbox.

The “advantage” of a mailing list - that you use your email client often, is pretty weak. For almost everybody, the browser can beat their mail client for usage hands-down. Everybody is used to the idea of having particular tabs which you always go back to - Apple even introduced “pinned tabs” in Safari for exactly that. If having it separate from the browser is also a bigger concern over all of email’s disadvantages, many forums have native applications available (e.g. Slack) or JSON interfaces, with apps already compatible with them and the ability to read offline.

Ditching email is obvious. It’s like if you discovered Elon Musk rode to work on a Penny-farthing.
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