Re: A More Welcoming Community

From: Vinnie Falco (vinnie.falco_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-09-23 14:43:06

On Sun, Sep 22, 2024 at 3:47 PM Andrzej Krzemienski <akrzemi1_at_[hidden]>
wrote:

> One more data point, which may help.
>
> My motivation for joining every mailing list I joined, as far as I can
> remember, was to communicate a bug or a problem that I found, and wait for
> a bit to respond to the replies. It was already inconvenient, that I only
> wanted to communicate something, and had to go through all the annoying
> process. I never thought about this action as joining a community.
>

That is definitely a data point and thank you for that. There are probably
several main reasons for joining the list, with each person having their
own individual motivations and needs.

You said that it was inconvenient to report a bug, and I agree. You have to
sign up for the list, wait for the email verification, then post by sending
an email, and then wait for the moderator to approve it. And then you have
to wait for the replies.

Here is an idea: we can present a web page "report an issue" which combines
the process of posting a message and signing up for the mailing list. We
can use OAuth, to also allow for Google or GitHub credentials to be used
for skipping the verification step. This would streamline the process. The
counter-argument is that these users should be using GitHub issues. There
are advantages to each method. Through the mailing list, we get more
activity and a consolidated view of needs. Through GitHub we get better
technology and global visibility.

Thanks