HyperKitty a step back in usability

> 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.)