Is it reasonable to poll the community on this ML?

Paolo Giarrusso

29 Aug 2016 29 Aug '16

10:55 a.m.

Replying to https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-community/2016-August/000127.html (I can't reply properly otherwise as I just subscribed):

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2) This really just boils down to the political gridlock between HP and Stack. Unless the actual parties involved in that gridlock can hammer out an actual decision directly, why have an obscure vote on an obscure mailing list? Such an act comes off as clandestine.

As per: https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell.org_committee the list serves as a forum for the committee, which is the historical body in charge of haskell.org and its subdomains, to discuss actions under its purview with a broader group of interested people.

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There is no polling mechanism as such — the committee is empowered to act, but this forum was created as a way to ensure that people had a single unified venue to discuss publically such actions.

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It was announced both to haskell-cafe as well as the reddit at the time of its creation.

If the poll was announced there, there would still be extra friction. But IIUC only the mailing list was announced there.

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We can’t expect committee members to follow discussions all over reddit/twitter/etc nor can we expect such discussions to archive well and uniformly so we have a future record.

If you want to have a poll over a mailing list, what about e.g. haskell-cafe? Or naming any other place where more people have access? I might understand the concern about archiving, but haskell-cafe solves that. And "the committee can't be expected to follow discussions" and "is empowered to act" does sound like "the committee can't be expected to listen to the community". Cheers, -- Paolo G. Giarrusso - Ph.D. Student, Tübingen University http://ps.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/team/giarrusso/

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Gershom B

29 Aug 29 Aug

11:21 a.m.

New subject: Is it reasonable to poll the community on this ML?

On August 29, 2016 at 11:15:19 AM, Paolo Giarrusso (paolo.giarrusso@uni-tuebingen.de) wrote:

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If the poll was announced there, there would still be extra friction. But IIUC only the mailing list was announced there.

There is no poll. There is a modest discussion kicked off by Jason Dagit (who used to serve on the committee, but has not been on it for some time now) about a modest change (at this point swapping the bitrotted minimal installers for the HP minimal installers which are current). The committee does not operate by poll, it operates on the basis of broad discussion (with this list being the preferred venue) and then making choices amongst committee members as informed by that discussion. This is laid out at https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell.org_committee

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I might understand the concern about archiving, but haskell-cafe solves that. And "the committee can't be expected to follow discussions" and "is empowered to act" does sound like "the committee can't be expected to listen to the community”.

It means that committee members should be expected to chase all over social media and sort through lots of poor signal/noise ratio to find potentially relevant discussions at all times. Rather, it is better to centralize these things to the extent possible.That’s all. —gershom

Kosyrev Serge

11:39 a.m.

New subject: Is it reasonable to poll the community on this ML?

Gershom B writes:

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I might understand the concern about archiving, but haskell-cafe solves that. And "the committee can't be expected to follow discussions" and "is empowered to act" does sound like "the committee can't be expected to listen to the community”.

Technical issues ought to be decided on their technical substance, not through popularity contests, aren't they?

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It means that committee members should be expected to chase all over social media and sort through lots of poor signal/noise ratio to find potentially relevant discussions at all times. Rather, it is better to centralize these things to the extent possible.That’s all.

Requiring the committee to maintain quality discussion across a spectrum of $RANDOM_MEDIA_OF_THE_DAY sounds like punishment to me, indeed. And if we are to choose one medium -- repeating points made on reddit:

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There is a number of reasons to prefer mailing lists to the more ephemeral mediums. Those immediately coming to mind are:

- slower pacing positively affects elaboration of thought - real names nudge towards responsibility - well-tuned tools to deal with long, complex conversations - a non-ephemeral paper-trail that can be dealt with at one's own pace - absence of distracting noise like "thumbs up" buttons

-- с уважениeм / respectfully / Z poważaniem, Косырев Сергей

Adam Bergmark

11:41 a.m.

New subject: Is it reasonable to poll the community on this ML?

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And if we are to choose one medium -- repeating points made on reddit

As far as I know it is not allowed to use voting like this on Reddit On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 5:39 PM, Kosyrev Serge wrote:

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Gershom B writes:

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I might understand the concern about archiving, but haskell-cafe solves that. And "the committee can't be expected to follow discussions" and "is empowered to act" does sound like "the committee can't be expected to listen to the community”.

Technical issues ought to be decided on their technical substance, not through popularity contests, aren't they?

...
It means that committee members should be expected to chase all over social media and sort through lots of poor signal/noise ratio to find potentially relevant discussions at all times. Rather, it is better to centralize these things to the extent possible.That’s all.

Requiring the committee to maintain quality discussion across a spectrum of $RANDOM_MEDIA_OF_THE_DAY sounds like punishment to me, indeed.

And if we are to choose one medium -- repeating points made on reddit:

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There is a number of reasons to prefer mailing lists to the more ephemeral mediums. Those immediately coming to mind are:

- slower pacing positively affects elaboration of thought - real names nudge towards responsibility - well-tuned tools to deal with long, complex conversations - a non-ephemeral paper-trail that can be dealt with at one's own pace - absence of distracting noise like "thumbs up" buttons

-- с уважениeм / respectfully / Z poważaniem, Косырев Сергей _______________________________________________ Haskell-community mailing list Haskell-community@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-community

Jason Dagit

12:44 p.m.

New subject: Is it reasonable to poll the community on this ML?

On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 8:41 AM, Adam Bergmark wrote:

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And if we are to choose one medium -- repeating points made on reddit

As far as I know it is not allowed to use voting like this on Reddit

I suppose the users of a subreddit (or equivalently thread) could agree to use votes that way, but you are correct about the site-wide policy of reddit. Votes are intended to give a sense of whether a comment (or thread) is on topic and providing value to the discussion (or community).

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On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 5:39 PM, Kosyrev Serge wrote:

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Gershom B writes:

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I might understand the concern about archiving, but haskell-cafe solves that. And "the committee can't be expected to follow discussions" and "is empowered to act" does sound like "the committee can't be expected to listen to the community”.

Technical issues ought to be decided on their technical substance, not through popularity contests, aren't they?

...
It means that committee members should be expected to chase all over social media and sort through lots of poor signal/noise ratio to find potentially relevant discussions at all times. Rather, it is better to centralize these things to the extent possible.That’s all.

Requiring the committee to maintain quality discussion across a spectrum of $RANDOM_MEDIA_OF_THE_DAY sounds like punishment to me, indeed.

And if we are to choose one medium -- repeating points made on reddit:

...
There is a number of reasons to prefer mailing lists to the more ephemeral mediums. Those immediately coming to mind are:

- slower pacing positively affects elaboration of thought - real names nudge towards responsibility - well-tuned tools to deal with long, complex conversations - a non-ephemeral paper-trail that can be dealt with at one's own pace - absence of distracting noise like "thumbs up" buttons

-- с уважениeм / respectfully / Z poważaniem, Косырев Сергей _______________________________________________ Haskell-community mailing list Haskell-community@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-community

_______________________________________________ Haskell-community mailing list Haskell-community@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-community

Paolo Giarrusso

30 Aug 30 Aug

1:24 a.m.

New subject: Is it reasonable to poll the community on this ML?

On 29 August 2016 at 17:39, Kosyrev Serge wrote:

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Gershom B writes:

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I might understand the concern about archiving, but haskell-cafe solves that. And "the committee can't be expected to follow discussions" and "is empowered to act" does sound like "the committee can't be expected to listen to the community”.

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Technical issues ought to be decided on their technical substance, not through popularity contests, aren't they?

Such discussions should be based on appropriate evidence. And for software, user satisfaction is certainly relevant. In particular, if a technical argument suggests a software should satisfy its users better, and users aren't satisfied, the argument seems poorly predictive.

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And if we are to choose one medium

I specifically mentioned haskell-cafe since it's a mailing list. Of course, if you really wanted to poll the community, a mailing list has no support for aggregation and won't scale. Cheers, -- Paolo G. Giarrusso - Ph.D. Student, Tübingen University http://ps.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/team/giarrusso/

Paolo Giarrusso

2:13 a.m.

New subject: Is it reasonable to poll the community on this ML?

On 29 August 2016 at 17:21, Gershom B wrote:

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On August 29, 2016 at 11:15:19 AM, Paolo Giarrusso (paolo.giarrusso@uni-tuebingen.de) wrote:

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If the poll was announced there, there would still be extra friction. But IIUC only the mailing list was announced there.

There is no poll. There is a modest discussion kicked off by Jason Dagit (who used to serve on the committee, but has not been on it for some time now) about a modest change (at this point swapping the bitrotted minimal installers for the HP minimal installers which are current).

One might initially think that "what's the best entry point into using Haskell" is a simple question. However, even without taking a side, we all know the topic is in fact highly contentious and it has been in the past. And since you're a community leader and I'm just a modest Haskeller, I'm sure you realize the discussion topic is not perceived as modest. At best one could argue the discussion *should* be modest, but there's technical content to it. It's also known that the committee's decision have been questioned for allegedly not listening to the community on this topic. I dislike the allegations (and find the tone unproductive), yet I think community input would be important and it's in the committee's best interest to both listen and be perceived as listening.

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The committee does not operate by poll, it operates on the basis of broad discussion (with this list being the preferred venue) and then making choices amongst committee members as informed by that discussion. This is laid out at https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell.org_committee

Are these procedures the best to achieve the Committee's stated goals?

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I might understand the concern about archiving, but haskell-cafe solves that. And "the committee can't be expected to follow discussions" and "is empowered to act" does sound like "the committee can't be expected to listen to the community”.

It means that committee members should be expected to chase all over social media and sort through lots of poor signal/noise ratio to find potentially relevant discussions at all times. Rather, it is better to centralize these things to the extent possible.That’s all.

I think that's a strawman. I didn't propose to spend the day on Twitter, but to solicit input on questions of general relevance in venues where the community is. To send a post to haskell-cafe and follow the discussion—that doesn't imply following the rest of the ML (at least with the Google Groups interface, I'm sure there are many other solutions). I realize that might require time, but I frankly don't expect that "seeking to service the open source Haskell community" is easy. Cheers, -- Paolo G. Giarrusso - Ph.D. Student, Tübingen University http://ps.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/team/giarrusso/

Gershom B

2:30 a.m.

New subject: Is it reasonable to poll the community on this ML?

On August 30, 2016 at 2:13:22 AM, Paolo Giarrusso (p.giarrusso@gmail.com) wrote:

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It's also known that the committee's decision have been questioned for allegedly not listening to the community on this topic. I dislike the allegations (and find the tone unproductive), yet I think community input would be important and it's in the committee's best interest to both listen and be perceived as listening.

Yes! That’s why its so useful to have this mailing list where we can all discuss things. Thank you for you input, by the way. Best, Gershom

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participants (6)

Adam Bergmark
Gershom B
Jason Dagit
Kosyrev Serge
Paolo Giarrusso
Paolo Giarrusso