Debian discusses Discourse

Posted Apr 20, 2020 0:37 UTC (Mon) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047)
Parent article: Debian discusses Discourse

I can see both sides of this argument. But one thing occurs to me: email is definitely showing its age. We need it, or rather, something like it: an asynchronous, decentralized, message delivery system that is not tied to any one provider and has open protocols.

But there are deficiencies to the current email standards that could be fixed if we replaced it with a new protocol altogether. Of course, then we risk running into the XKCD 927 problem: https://xkcd.com/927/

Regardless, I can understand why email's pain points would drive some people to move to a system like Discourse. I can also understand why email's advantages would drive other people to be wary of such a move.

A worthy discussion, but at the moment I remain hopeful that the Debian community will discuss it productively. We don't want a Panic! at the Discourse.

Debian discusses Discourse

Posted Apr 20, 2020 4:12 UTC (Mon) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (2 responses)

> But there are deficiencies to the current email standards that could be fixed if we replaced it with a new protocol altogether. Of course, then we risk running into the XKCD 927 problem: https://xkcd.com/927/

927 makes a (funny) joke about yet another 15th protocol. Applied to email that leaves room for 14 new protocols/data structure before we reach the xkcd point.

OK, maybe 13.5 if you count NNTP.

Debian discusses Discourse

Posted Apr 20, 2020 21:08 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (1 responses)

I am remembering all the NNTP vs Email fights of the 1990's with people arguing that one or the other was the superior choice and would eventually be the ONE TRUE PROTOCOL. This was later replaced with Choose-Your-Forum vs Email fights of the late 1990's and early 2000's. That was then replaced with the 'Choose-Your-Social-Media' versus Email fights of the late 2000's and early 2010's. The same arguments about Email being for "old people' and Y being the new thing that only new people can understand.. fights which proverbially missed the point every time.

Each one of those would probably be a different protocol (as the Usenet people will tell you it still exists, PHPNuke people seem to show up and say 'you can always use us', the various people wanting you to move to XMPP etc keep going. ) Each of those solutions have adherents and each gets regularly replaced with some new version which is supposedly easier to use. And each solves a different way of communicating which needs a different toolset.

The problem is that we want just one tool to do all these things. It is like we all looked over the house design, saw that it was way too complex with all these pipes, and we could just use one system. Then we wonder why the sewage, hot and cold water system doesn't work as well as we envisioned and no one is happy.

Debian discusses Discourse

Posted Apr 20, 2020 21:24 UTC (Mon) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> The problem is that we want just one tool to do all these things.

Right, so let's do one that does just code reviews really well. It would be like a... hub for git or something.