Re: [Zope-dev] mailing list 'noise'
Ken Manheimer <klm@digicool.com> writes:
On Thu, 28 Sep 2000, Chris Withers wrote:
Toby Dickenson wrote:
I dont see this as a problem: You only create a new list when the traffic for that proposal gets too great for zope-dev. Threading is good enough before that point.
Yes, but zope-dev has a relatively high traffic load... Why should you have to put up with all that 'noise' if you're only interested in posts for your comparatively small discussion?
Yeah - maillists flow by, and not everyone can follow all the traffic all the time!! The cool thing about "content-based" mailling lists, where people can subscribe to notifications about changes in subthreads, is that you just subscribe to the part of the discussion that has your interests!!
I haven't understood this gripe ever since I started reading mail with Gnus. Before anyone groans, I'm not sure that Gnus is ready for general use by anyone who doesn't want to learn elisp - but surely there's anther reader with these features? The point that I'm trying to make is that a mailing list has all the strucure needed to keep abreast of an important thread. I don't think it's perfect when you can't afford to miss a single important article, but it works great for general lists. Gnus treats mail & news as the same, and allows you to score posters, threads, messages, etc. both manually and adaptively. Threads can be presented by order of their score. Adaptive scoring is what really makes it work. The normal reading commands - read article, kill thread, save article, catchup (mark unread articles as read) can affect the scores. So, reading articles in a thread tends to make it float to the top, and posters who contribute to well-read threads elevate future threads that they contribute to. The inverse for killed threads, less so for caught up threads. I can read comp.lang.python when it has 3000 unread articles, by skimming 100-500 articles, reading some, catching up or killing the rest, and saving other 2500 for later. I draw in what I'm interested in from the mass of unread articles first, each time, and the stuff that I rarely get around to is the stuff that I don't miss. Same with rec.bicycles.soc - when the article count gets to 200-300, I read the 2-10 articles that I'm probably interested in, and miss the 95% which is almost always noise. That's why I resist moving to other fora. I've never seen one that lets me use better tools. Okay, my download finished while I wrote this, back to work :) -- Karl Anderson karl@digicool.com
Karl Anderson wrote:
Ken Manheimer <klm@digicool.com> writes:
I dont see this as a problem: You only create a new list when the traffic for that proposal gets too great for zope-dev. Threading is good enough before that point.
Yes, but zope-dev has a relatively high traffic load... Why should you have to put up with all that 'noise' if you're only interested in posts for your comparatively small discussion?
Yeah - maillists flow by, and not everyone can follow all the traffic all the time!! The cool thing about "content-based" mailling lists, where people can subscribe to notifications about changes in subthreads, is that you just subscribe to the part of the discussion that has your interests!!
I haven't understood this gripe ever since I started reading mail with Gnus. Before anyone groans, I'm not sure that Gnus is ready for general use by anyone who doesn't want to learn elisp - but surely there's anther reader with these features?
most have features a bit/lot/sufficiently like this. They (apparently) do not work for everyone. Moreover,not everyone works the same way.
The point that I'm trying to make is that a mailing list has all the strucure needed to keep abreast of an important thread. I don't think it's perfect when you can't afford to miss a single important article, but it works great for general lists.
as long as you can follow it. But for prolonged and diverging discussions? Not quite IMO/Experience. Or for discussions that you fall into in the middle? And what if you want to follow discussions at different places, with different tools and you depend on a POP Server or differential access (POP/IMAP/Web) to a mailserver?
I read the 2-10 articles that I'm probably interested in, and miss the 95% which is almost always noise.
The question is why you'd want to receive all this if you don't have to (as remarked above). As I understood it, the discussion is less about tools and more about modes of discussion. Rik
On Fri, 29 Sep 2000 10:23:52 +0200, Rik Hoekstra <rik.hoekstra@inghist.nl> wrote:
Karl Anderson wrote:
Ken Manheimer <klm@digicool.com> writes:
I dont see this as a problem: You only create a new list when the traffic for that proposal gets too great for zope-dev. Threading is good enough before that point.
Yes, but zope-dev has a relatively high traffic load... Why should you have to put up with all that 'noise' if you're only interested in posts for your comparatively small discussion?
I read the 2-10 articles that I'm probably interested in, and miss the 95% which is almost always noise.
The question is why you'd want to receive all this if you don't have to (as remarked above).
...because it is usually a mistake to categorize any discussion as small, to exclude it from the mainstream zope-dev. I started this thread with a request that developers use zope-dev in the way requested by the Fishbowl Process document - but (I assume) it has also been valuable to people thinking about a next-generation wiki. That would not have happened if discussion was partitioned into Wikis (Todays wikis - not VaporWikiNG) unless some WikiNgWiki person was (by coincidence) keeping up with the FishbowlWiki. Are you really advocating that?
as long as you can follow it. But for prolonged and diverging discussions? Not quite IMO/Experience.
Can you explain why?
Or for discussions that you fall into in the middle?
Agreed - Todays Wikis are better than todays email list archives.
And what if you want to follow discussions at different places, with different tools and you depend on a POP Server or differential access (POP/IMAP/Web) to a mailserver?
Its true that the web model is increasingly becoming a lowest common denominator. Are your suggesting that a majority of Zope developers actually need that? (Agreed, a VaporWikiNG that does both would be nice)
As I understood it, the discussion is less about tools and more about modes of discussion.
But we couldnt be having this discussion (in any mode) without tools. *My* email and news tools support the mode of discussion that we are advocating *better* than *Todays* Wikis Toby Dickenson tdickenson@geminidataloggers.com
I dont see this as a problem: You only create a new list when the traffic for that proposal gets too great for zope-dev. Threading
is
good enough before that point.
Yes, but zope-dev has a relatively high traffic load... Why should you have to put up with all that 'noise' if you're only interested in posts for your comparatively small discussion?
I read the 2-10 articles that I'm probably interested in, and miss the 95% which is almost always noise.
The question is why you'd want to receive all this if you don't have to (as remarked above).
...because it is usually a mistake to categorize any discussion as small, to exclude it from the mainstream zope-dev. I started this thread with a request that developers use zope-dev in the way requested by the Fishbowl Process document - but (I assume) it has also been valuable to people thinking about a next-generation wiki.
That would not have happened if discussion was partitioned into Wikis (Todays wikis - not VaporWikiNG) unless some WikiNgWiki person was (by coincidence) keeping up with the FishbowlWiki.
Are you really advocating that?
No, did I sound like I did?
as long as you can follow it. But for prolonged and diverging discussions? Not quite IMO/Experience.
Can you explain why?
Because discussion change topics. Because most people only answer parts of the post. Because you throw away parts of the posts (I know you shouldn't but the mail client is not under your control). Because you loose overview and you can't step back and take a look at the whole thread.. Because no one ever summarizes the discussions. They could, but they won't. I have done these kind of summaries for several intricate Zope related discussions and when you start summarizing it gets very clear that for a larger discussion only parts of the issues involved ever get discussed. Or, to summarize my point, maillist discussion are hardly ever consolidated. It's like having a meeting without an agenda or a chairman who gets the thing going. In the case of a meething once in a while a good chairman/moderator takes back the discussion, summarizes and puts up the open points for further discussion. If you ever experience a meeting that needed someone to guide it, but didn't have one, then you probably know what I mean.
Or for discussions that you fall into in the middle?
Agreed - Todays Wikis are better than todays email list archives.
Ha! ;-)
And what if you want to follow discussions at different places, with different tools and you depend on a POP Server or differential access (POP/IMAP/Web) to a mailserver?
Its true that the web model is increasingly becoming a lowest common denominator. Are your suggesting that a majority of Zope developers actually need that?
Um, I couldn't tell with any certainty. In light of the adoption of Wikis, I suppose so yes. People seem to have been unsattisfied by the maillist and or other discussion tools. It's also remarkable that DC did not adopt Squishdot as a discussion forum, yes. And apart from this, a WikiNG would benefit a much larger community, of which I _am_ sure that it needs it.
(Agreed, a VaporWikiNG that does both would be nice)
Agreed that for now there are no tools that do such thing. That is also why it's worthwile to get WikiNG out of the vapor notwithstanding the myriad of discussion tools that have been around for many years already.
As I understood it, the discussion is less about tools and more about modes of discussion.
But we couldnt be having this discussion (in any mode) without tools.
did I say that?
*My* email and news tools support the mode of discussion that we are advocating *better* than *Todays* Wikis
I think everyone agees about that, but at least some of the participants in this discussion also agree that most of the existing discussion tools for any mode of discussion are frustrating and insufficient at times. Moreover, apparently not everyone favours the same mode of discussion and this alone would be more than enough justification for a product that would cater different modes of discussion _at_the_same_time_. Rik
On Fri, 29 Sep 2000, Rik Hoekstra wrote:
Karl Anderson wrote:
I read the 2-10 articles that I'm probably interested in, and miss the 95% which is almost always noise.
The question is why you'd want to receive all this if you don't have to (as remarked above). As I understood it, the discussion is less about tools and more about modes of discussion.
That's my impression, too. In fact, this would make a good case in point - this is part of a rambling discussion originally about, as best as i can tell, current wiki deficiencies for interactive discussions ("I feel your Wiki Pain:-)"). Focus in this thread has moved to merits and deficiencies of mailling lists for discussions - wiki is no longer the center in this branch, the zope-dev list was for a bit, and use of gnus for effective filtering of mailling lists is perfect fair game. I'm glad, though, that rik brings back in the issue that really concerns me - modes of discussion. I'm interested in what they serve. In fact, i'm *really* interested in "turning answers into stories". That is, not just getting answers to questions, but preserving them in a way that makes them easy to find when they're next needed - organizing them so they collectively serve to describe the topic they're about, to make the topic, as a whole, discoverable. While i think there are many modes of discussion that can serve this purpose, depending on the application and collaborative context, i think mailling list discussion threads need more. They're a step towards that building-together, but fail to organize beyond that - so the answers they provide are fragmentary glimpses into the topic at hand. One key way wiki documents help bind the fragments is by providing more "fixed points" around which discussions can range. The fixed points are not immutable - they can evolve - but they're easy to point at, and provide a definite manifestation of the topic at some stage of its life. The dev.zope.org proposals site is one example where definite subjects are at hand. As someone behind the WikiNG proposal, who *wants* to be able to reap the suggestions and details from a discussion, but knows i won't have the time for a while to actually concentrate attention on it, i dread having to collect all the messages, for later review for harvesting. Furthermore, messages on the mailling list tend to diverge more and farther from the topic, than they do when placed within the wiki. What i'd like the best, for now, is to have discussion happen on the mailling list *when someone wants to feel something out*, *and then they're responsible for summarizing in the wiki discussion page, if they have anything to harvest*. (Sorry if this message is a bit scattered - i think i saw an opportunity to tie together a lot of thoughts i have on this subject, but not sufficient time to do so cleanly, so i'm erring on the side of just-throw-it-in...) Ken klm@digicool.com
participants (4)
-
Karl Anderson -
Ken Manheimer -
Rik Hoekstra -
Toby Dickenson