From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Karl Fogel Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2020 15:27:41 -0600 Message-ID: <87eekao7qq.fsf@red-bean.com> References: <10e79eeb32b5d8f49453fe62f145172d@skeletons.cc> <87pn3vr605.fsf@red-bean.com> <837dq3ldvh.fsf@gnu.org> <87y2ijo3tr.fsf@red-bean.com> Reply-To: Karl Fogel Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="3279"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/28.0.50 (gnu/linux) Cc: pwr@skeletons.cc, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Mon Nov 30 22:28:21 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1kjqib-0000kp-3A for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Mon, 30 Nov 2020 22:28:21 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:43138 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kjqia-00022P-5c for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Mon, 30 Nov 2020 16:28:20 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:52272) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kjqi3-0001ao-Pv for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 30 Nov 2020 16:27:47 -0500 Original-Received: from newsp.red-bean.com ([45.79.25.59]:40392 helo=sanpietro.red-bean.com) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kjqi1-0000HR-Br; Mon, 30 Nov 2020 16:27:47 -0500 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=red-bean.com; s=202005newsp; h=Content-Type:MIME-Version:Message-ID: In-Reply-To:Date:Reply-To:References:Subject:Cc:To:From:Sender: Content-Transfer-Encoding:Content-ID:Content-Description; bh=cGpvtaYV4vCnLVKSSmkx/1a4GaZdwI53ajlPkLTUKU4=; t=1606771664; x=1607981264; b=EFS19sC7hSPrHLDSpdsbVRHy1pLTrdsCxKOwGTuJgi3wxyIA9TqwCqIZgn0lD7ZInPp/71Mj7p U/NprLMYL37tHbV9mA4bQRQf2TtTDBAgXtaD1+fDIlfu8w/BUGw7mL44KIpob602vERO0awnPjW/A TVtjUWnZyKZR2ijJGM87bMf6HFNvzvxKzzHn7qJt16dJ+hT+aqWvJ8N4R0oStjAkrK7z9fkANx3Xz bC/GCWZhHz80dyLwQNx2s4kJfPHN0ZkdUZnDVYx2FLrmNcw58Cf4vmsGS+TkzJFiPmGJI5WWLin3k u1R+wRwsEfcvkR1dsy2NxYTt+rEvgVIl5HAeA==; Original-Received: from 99-112-125-163.lightspeed.cicril.sbcglobal.net ([99.112.125.163]:49446 helo=floss) by sanpietro.red-bean.com with esmtpsa (TLS1.3:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1kjqhz-00078R-30; Mon, 30 Nov 2020 21:27:43 +0000 In-Reply-To: (Eli Zaretskii's message of "Mon, 30 Nov 2020 07:41:27 +0200") Received-SPF: pass client-ip=45.79.25.59; envelope-from=kfogel@red-bean.com; helo=sanpietro.red-bean.com X-Spam_score_int: -20 X-Spam_score: -2.1 X-Spam_bar: -- X-Spam_report: (-2.1 / 5.0 requ) BAYES_00=-1.9, DKIM_SIGNED=0.1, DKIM_VALID=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_AU=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_EF=-0.1, SPF_HELO_PASS=-0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no X-Spam_action: no action X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:260098 Archived-At: On 30 Nov 2020, Eli Zaretskii wrote: >On November 30, 2020 6:40:00 AM GMT+02:00, Karl Fogel wrote: >> On 30 Nov 2020, Eli Zaretskii wrote: >> >However, I don't understand what is expected from the active Emacs >> >developers wrt this list. It sounds like they will need to subscribe >> >to this new list, for it to be useful? >> >> I don't think we need to assume that. Emacs's extensibility and >> customizability mean that there are plenty of beneficial suggestions >> that users can make to each other without getting active core >> developers involved. And when a topic does warrant the attention of a >> maintainer, then someone from the new list can come find one (perhaps >> by posting on Emacs Devel if appropriate). > >Do you really think this will work? I don't, FWIW. How can a group of >people not involved with development answer non-trivial questions, >suggest reporting useful bugs and feature requests etc.? Yes, I think it could work. To your second question, there are two non-mutually-exclusive answers: First, plenty of free software (and even non-free software) applications have domain-specific users groups that don't involve a lot of participation from active maintainers. It's normal for there to be expert users who, although they are not maintainers, still have collectively a large body of knowledge to share. For example, on this proposed list, I would expect a lot of people who have expertise in using TeX / LaTeX modes in Emacs to answer questions -- and there is probably only slight correlation between having that expertise and being an Emacs maintainer. Second, in the particular case of Emacs, the software's extensible architecture makes it especially probable that non-maintainer users would have deep expertise in certain areas. There are so many specialized modes available, and so many domain-specific usage tips and configuration tricks, that whether a person is or is not an active *maintainer* of Emacs might not correlate very strongly with that person participating usefully in a discussion. (Also, don't code contributions regularly come in from people who are not maintainers?) >Even help-gnu-emacs would not be the same without several developers >dwelling there. Posting to emacs-devel is a slippery path to making >this new list a branch of the existing ones, something that this >initiative wants explicitly to avoid. I'm probably missing something >here. The cost if the experiment fails is a dead list sitting on a server. That cost doesn't seem very high to me in any case, and given the enthusiasm we've heard so far for it, I think the chances that the experiment would fail -- or at least that it would fail quickly -- are probably at worst 50%. Remember, someone *from* the domain in question is coming to us and saying that there is interest (and others have corroborated). If we say "yes" 10 times, and 9 of those times fail, and 1 time there is a new mailing list that turns out to be the right watering hole for a sub-community of users, well, that seems like a pretty good outcome to me. (Unless the list creation/admin overhead is much higher than I would normally assume.) I understood the 'emacs-tangents' list to be basically a default place to get certain discussions off of 'emacs-devel'. But this proposed new list is different. It's not defined by a negative space, it's defined by a positive space: a semi-cohesive group that is likely to have various usage needs in common, and whose needs may eventually make their way back to Emacs Devel in the form of beneficial suggestions for Emacs. I could be wrong about this, of course; I'm just saying the chances look good enough that IMHO creating the list and seeing if it works is worth it. Best regards, -Karl