Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:119987
Message-ID: <31518116-53ca-ca6a-a54d-032d9d2e0b91@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2023 19:42:37 +0100
MIME-Version: 1.0
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/102.9.1
To: internals@lists.php.net
References: <CABigaAUZAC-UgcajT5anUFJOxzTxMzNip34Jcst16A23ogpSLQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <20230412140920.GD2480@phcomp.co.uk>
 <CABigaAWR6cn735WKY7G0EpYucJ49qoX=WrTw3uR_vHooy8Pr2Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <CALKiJKoWexu8vOYqtEFnRnz1=+O1_srkLgfgCEz6bSDDnpNSkQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <1f0773ce-5d3c-ae8c-d908-7489d580d0ba@processus.org>
 <CABigaAWJXJaxAbkax1=G4UyHpo5OOdzrSjSVbMWO=8fayOivSg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAO__Xv5oEpFPVr3reNew63C7xna58ufwhBSgtvUWTFgXv=VZDA@mail.gmail.com>
 <001701d96d68$a4cbb420$ee631c60$@roze.lv>
 <CAO__Xv7asMe0J_p8kt6LGV=Ut+Pi4vHhotjN1_U5_Dy3-1ig8Q@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Language: en-GB
In-Reply-To: <CAO__Xv7asMe0J_p8kt6LGV=Ut+Pi4vHhotjN1_U5_Dy3-1ig8Q@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Moving PHP internals to GitHub
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Tommins)

On 12/04/2023 19:05, tag Knife wrote:
> I say this as someone who was trying to onboard themselves the other day
> (web-php and php-docs).
> The entire process is archaic and uses "tools" from 20 years ago.
> Onboarding for anything you're interested in doesn't really give a
> direction at all (unless you're a dev).
> It mostly boils down "do this, do that, after that figure it out yourself".


I'd like to draw attention to a non sequitur between the above, totally 
valid criticism, and the below:


> It really shows php's age that you have to join a mailing-list to even get
> generic user support, let alone participate in development.


None of the above has anything to do with it being a mailing list per 
se. You could have just as bad an experience trying to sign up for a web 
forum, or a chat room, or something-something-blockchain-ai-javascript.

But to repeat: the complaints about the sign-up process are totally 
valid. I don't know enough about the system involved to make them 
smoother, but there's no reason signing up for a mailing list can't be 
as simple as enter address, confirm address, done. By all accounts, the 
PHP ones are not.


> Look at the "Make WordPress" page compared to php's "Get Involved" page and
> the overall onboarding experience is so much nicer and improved.
> People can get a general idea of how teams works, their goals, who's
> leading who,
> with helpful guides and direction to get people started.


I agree to a point. My first impression of the Wordpress page you 
mention is that it's kind of overwhelming with the number of different 
teams, and it's mostly a directory of Slack channels, I think? (Hurrah, 
another Slack workspace to separately sign into on every device!) A more 
apt comparison is probably to https://www.php.net/mailing-lists.php

What is probably lacking both there and the "Get Involved" page is a 
more direct statement that Internals is the central communication hub 
for the project. The mailing list page describes it as "A medium volume 
list for those who want to help out with the development of PHP" which 
is accurate but entirely unhelpful.


Which brings me back to my earlier point: I wonder how much of the 
reaction is really about e-mail itself, and how much is just the 
documentation and sign-up forms you encounter *before* you hit the list. 
Because if it's the latter, migrating the entire community to a new 
platform won't help - we'll still suck at introducing anyone to that 
platform - and most of what we need is someone who's good with words to 
update some website copy.

Regards,

-- 
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]