HyperKitty a step back in usability [LWN.net]

HyperKitty a step back in usability

Posted Apr 3, 2015 21:19 UTC (Fri) by sjj (guest, #2020)
In reply to: HyperKitty a step back in usability by lacos
Parent article: Mailman 3.0 to modernize mailing lists

>> "HyperKitty looks more like a web discussion forum than Mailman 2's list-of-links archive pages"
>> and that's *exactly* its biggest problem. Web discussion forums are inappropriate for technical exchange.

Sorry if this is nitpicking but I don't get this point. Can you elaborate? One reason I can see for a web forum being inappropriate is that the messages are stored in one place only. If that goes away, the history is lost. This is true with most discussion media today. But Mailman/Hyperkitty doesn't work like that - it only looks like it from a particular angle. Is it that "things that LOOK like web discussion forums are inappropriate for technical exchange"? Most people these days seem to find forums more comfortable to participate in and do engage in technical exchanges in all sorts of places (github issues, IRC, LWN comments, etc) without too much harrumphing.

I don't think this is necessarily a good trend, but there it is. Future historians will gnash their teeth at the lack of primary sources in the crucial era of building our global information infrastructure.

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HyperKitty a step back in usability

Posted Apr 3, 2015 22:19 UTC (Fri) by lacos (guest, #70616) [Link]

>> Web discussion forums are inappropriate for technical exchange

> Can you elaborate?

Two reasons:

(1) in conveying ideas, *form* matters. I usually take great care to lay
out my messages. I'm fully conscious about whitespace use, about what
lines up with whatever else, both vertically and horizontally, and so
on. I like to draw simple diagrams, tables, occasionally even graphs /
charts.

This is perfectly possible to do in plaintext email, and in commit
messages. However its presentation depends on monospace font.

Forum software is usually geared towards users who click the "Quote" or
"Reply" button, then (if we're lucky) jump to the end (or their cursor
is placed there by default), then emit an unkempt string of "words". If
they separate their thoughts into paragraphs, we can consider ourselves
lucky.

In short, I spend a lot of time on "form", because it is a channel to
support my thoughts. Forum software throws the form (the ASCII layout)
away, corrupting the perception of my thoughts.

Yes, yes, the forum UI might give you buttons and even some kind of
markup to insert numbered or unnumbered lists, etc. They *all* suck.
I've been a reddit user, and archlinux bbs user, and I've been on other,
much less known forums as well. They all suck.

For me, ASCII emails are the ultimate form of What You See Is What You
Get. I have simple text editor macros that help me lay out things. Doing
the same (or approximately the same...) in whatever markup might be
possible, but it takes five times the effort. Also, markup is *code*
after all, and proportional font and code do not mix.

(2) You might want to insert code snippets, patches, even attach a small
text file or binary file, *in-line* with your message. In my experience,
no forum software will *both* enable you to do that *and* keep your
content pristine.

> people these days seem to find forums more comfortable to participate
> in and do engage in technical exchanges in all sorts of places (github
> issues, IRC, LWN comments, etc) without too much harrumphing.

I've never worked with github issues.

IRC is great, but for any discussion where there's a structure to
arguments, I tend to ask people to switch to email, especially if I need
background, or would like to give them background.

I edit my bugzilla comments in my programmers' editor. I wrap them
manually at 76 characters (an empirical value).

Sometimes I need more columns for a drawing (or for "perverse" command
lines); in those cases I make a note at the top of the comment for the
reader to click "unwrap comments". Because I've manually wrapped my
flowing text anyway, this won't result in a 200 character wide wall of
text; only the diagram will take up as much horizontal space as it
needs.

I also edited this LWN comment in said editor.

... Sorry about derailing the discussion; it should have been about
Mailman 3.

In order to close this comment with something relevant: can you imagine
doing patch review (or reading it, after the fact) in anything but
plaintext?

(Yes, I know about Gerrit. I won't speak about it.)

HyperKitty a step back in usability

Posted Apr 4, 2015 7:31 UTC (Sat) by mbunkus (subscriber, #87248) [Link]

For me forums have several drawbacks:

1. Most forum software is unthreaded. Means that you cannot easily tell which post a person is replying to; posts are simply appended at the end. It is impossible to skip whole sub-discussions if one goes off-topic. It's also extremely easy to lose track of a request or a question made a couple of posts ago if some other sub-discussion is lively and inserts a lot of messages after that request (because it's not obvious that there is an open sub-thread that hasn't been answered yet).

2. Most forum software doesn't allow me to do individual things to posts. I cannot mark a post as important, or to be answered later. I cannot move or copy a post to my folder named »important stuff«. I cannot remove posts that I consider irrelevant in order to keep the number of posts I may have to look through later small. I cannot remove obvious spam and have to rely on moderators doing their job.

In short: the forum software doesn't support me in organizing myself at all. I have to rely on external tools a lot (e.g. manage some kind of TODO list in which I use URLs pointing to individual forum posts).

3. People can often remove their own posts. While this has its use, it also has the potential to make a whole discussion seem nonsensical later on. »What the hell are all those guys replying to?« is a question I had to ask myself in the past, only because the question that was asked had been removed later by the poster.

4. Search functions vary in usefulness. There are too many forums in which it is frowned upon to have multiple topics about the same piece of software, for example. This leads to topics with literally thousands of messages, and the forum's search functionality is often not up to it. »Sent by myself between January and March with a topic that matches XYZ and the body that matches ABC« is something I can do in my email program; it's nothing I've ever been able to do properly in a forum.

5. Nefarious moderators may remove content they consider inappropriate for whatever reason. Granted, this is not often a real issue, but if you do have a personal problem with a moderator then good luck getting anything done on that forum.