The Fedora project grapples with change
21 points by chmaynard a day ago | 4 comments
  • em-bee 20 hours ago |
    it's surprising that there is still an issue with mailing list and forum split. that's am issue we already had 30 years ago. and i thought by now it's a solved problem. google groups solved it for example. is there no FOSS platform out there that does it too?

    the platform i am working on could do it too, but i thought it's not worth the effort because there should be enough alternatives. am i wrong? what stops fedora from using a platform that integrates email and forums?

    • dasyatidprime 15 hours ago |
      I don't have experience with the Fedora version specifically, but forum/email bridges tend to run into problems with differing expectations of the medium. This is even more true if it's not clear from the beginning that other users are experiencing the same conversation completely differently. For a viscerally annoying example, imagine someone posting “bump” to a mailing list.
      • em-bee 9 hours ago |
        that's an interesting point, but the problem in my opinion is not the medium but the people that gravitate to one or the other and the culture they bring along. i am annoyed by a bump posts in forums just as much, on the other hand, sometimes you do want to revive an old thread on a mailinglist too.

        in the end, i think splitting a community is more problematic than trying to align the discussion cultures of different people.

        we do need to accept that there is diversity in the fedora or any other community, and we need to account for that and make allowances. if that means tolerating a bump post on a mailinglist, then so be it. (and in the forum version bump posts specifically could be approached by an interface that offers a "bump" button, and maybe pops up a textfield asking: "why should this be bumped?"

        i know that is finding a technical solution for a social problem which doesn't always work, but community building is a topic that i am very interested in so i would like to explore this further, from the technical and from the social side. what do people who prefer email expect vs people who prefer forums and how can we accommodate them without dividing the community?

  • type0 10 hours ago |
    Fedora community has a terrible apartheid problem, there's RH employees / social justice activists at the top then there's everybody else.