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Date: Sun, 02 Aug 2015 17:22:06 -0500
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Subject: Re: Move internals discussion to a better medium
From: me@stephencoakley.com (Stephen Coakley)

On 08/02/2015 07:01 AM, Dor Tchizik wrote:
> Hello internals!
>
> I wanted to propose a change to how PHP discussions are made.
>
> Currently, PHP discussions are held on the various mailing lists, managed
> by an old mailing list system, without any proper alternative interface to
> follow and respond outside of mailing.
> The discussion is hidden away, deep within the mails and the archives,
> searching is nigh impossible for someone from the outside.
> Moreover, subscribing to internals and starting discussion has a *very high
> entry bar*, which is bad for any open source project (PHP is still
> considered an open source project, yes?). For example, ask a friend to try
> and find how to join in on the conversation, without mentioning the mailing
> list or the word "internals".
>
> I propose that internals discussion to be moved (eventually entirely) to a
> different medium, where the example I have in mind is GitHub issues (but
> that is up for discussion).
>
>
>     - Every developer worth his salt has a GitHub account. Finding the php
>     project and looking at the issues is trivial.
>     - GitHub issues can reference to people by name (triggering an explicit
>     notification).
>     - GitHub issues can reference other issues (currently impossible with
>     the mailing list, unless you link to some archive, and then you can't
>     really participate in the discussion, nor you have a guaranteed context for
>     the rest of the discussion)
>     - GitHub issues can be read and interacted with, from email. (Responding
>     to an issue/commit comment notification will actually respond to the thread)
>     - GitHub issues can reference commits directly.
>     - GitHub commits can reference issues directly.
>     - You can close GitHub issues.
>     - GitHub issues are searchable. You have tags.
>     - GitHub issues can be associated with milestones for easy reference.
>     - You can comment on specific lines of a commit, and can reference files
>     and line numbers from issue comments directly.
>     - You don't need to maintain GitHub, like you do with the current system
>     - Markdown formatting!
>
> There are probably more advantages I forgot to mention, but any developer
> who's familiar with GitHub (or BitBucket, or practically any other form of
> Git integration) knows of these free features and advantages, and most of
> them use them and take them for granted.
>
> Now, that's not to say the current system has no advantages over the
> current one.
> A few disadvantages of GitHub:
>
>     - GitHub may be down (although I can probably count on one hand how many
>     times that happened in the past several years)
>     - GitHub's mailing system is not as robust as the mailing-list software.
>     People who are exclusively used to emails will have to get used to a
>     slightly different interface.
>     - Moving to GitHub (or any other medium) would take some thinking and
>     work done on the side of the people of internals.
>
> Personally, I think the advantages would seriously overweigh the
> disadvantages. PHP would enjoy a more robust discussion system, and a more
> open form of discussion, involving more people and more opinions.
>
> (I also have a matching workflow adjustment for the RFC process, but that
> can be discussed later)
>

I made a similar suggestion (of using a new medium of discussion, the 
specifics differ) here: 
<https://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/3bxh5h/centralizing_php_discussion_and_communication/> 
and was basically turned down flat.

Personally, I'd like to see the mailing list move to a forum-type 
system. Lower barrier of entry, more visible archives, and more modern 
medium that supports other kinds of attachments and whatnot.

The mailing list has been here for a long time, and it will be an uphill 
battle if you want to have this discussion. I'm sure many people would 
be open to the idea, but many also will not be. I'd love to be proved 
wrong, though.

-- 
Stephen Coakley