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From: Schrom, Brian T (Brian.Schrom_at_[hidden])
Date: 2020-06-29 04:22:20


> The concrete items mentioned that have been known to inhibit
> participation appear to be:
> - Mailing lists

First. Thank you to everyone that continues to make, and has made,
Boost what it is and what it has provided. It takes an inordinate
amount of effort to produce quality and those efforts are under
recognized and not overtly appreciated often enough.

I'm a ML lurker and haven't contributed to any review[*], so probably
not the target audience and hence the [OT], but as a method for
consuming and very occasionally participating, the mailing list is the
perfect medium. It's an invaluable resource for me to keep my thumb on
what the issues are and what is coming down the pipe in new standards
and features.

I know that forums can be subscribed to in concept, but so far, I've
just stopped following when the switch happens. A recent example is
sqlite. Quite honestly, web interfaces are too obtrusive for this type
of content probably because I don't 'live' in a browser during my normal
computer time, a shell prompt ssh'ed to another shell.

My suggestion is that before turning off the ML, if not already done,
collect some data and follow up with some projects that have done that
and see if the results Boost desires manifested after changing to
forums. My speculation is that changing from ML to forums mostly
reduces to the preference/enthusiasm of the person that is maintaining
that part of the infrastructure much more so than results it produces.

I've observed a similar conversation happening in a number of technical
mailing lists and suspect there is something broader happening in
industry that results in these types of conversations, but not sure what
it is exactly. Maybe just advancements in Github capabilities.

[*] I've not contributed to any review because I'm not expert enough C++
or in the topic of the library under review. Often there a dozen or
more acronyms, special cases, etc that the experts on this list do
realize and have the ability to scrutinize. I'm appreciative and
grateful for the quality that this ensures and learn quite a bit
following along, but that doesn't make me qualified to do a review and
in my mind, doing so would just be wasting other experts scarce time.


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