[swift-evolution] [Discussion] mailing list alternative

[Zach Drayer]

Anything that encourages people to participate is a good thing in my book. Mailing lists are nice, but also not a thing many people are comfortable with.

A system that better supports threads means there is less of a cost to people having a back-and-forth than there is today, which also seems to be hugely beneficial (whether it be letting people hammer out ideas without disturbing everyone, or asking a question about something without pulling attention away from the main topic at hand).

I understand that there’s only so much bandwidth to go around, that the team may like to focus energies elsewhere (and maybe that technical problems are easier to solve than social ones), but use of a mailing list has been a topic that the community has been bringing up since the very beginning (the earliest thread I can find is from a few days after the list was announced: titled “Mailman?”, and from Dec 10, 2015; https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mon-20151207/001537.html <https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mon-20151207/001537.html>). Since then, we’ve had a number of Swift proposals, manifestos, and releases (not the least of which is Swift 3, which was a tremendous amount of amazing work).

Managing communities is definitely hard work, and I really do appreciate how much energy everyone already puts into this  —  especially when it’s not necessarily a core part of anyone's job. That said, it really would be great if some attention could be given to how the community itself works, to come up with new ways to let people be involved and to double check that the processes we’ve been using are good to go for the next year (for example: I’m still not sure of the correct way to revisit an enhancement is after it’s acceptance and implementation, and some enhancements like `fileprivate` warrant revisiting).

Thanks,
-z
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