Casting as wide a net as possible (was: First draft of the Emacs website)

Casting as wide a net as possible (was: First draft of the Emacs website)

[John Yates]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2758 bytes --]

Having first raised the issue of the merits of pitching Lisp
on the Emacs website allow me to chime in again.

My thought was that what Emacs needs before all else is more
users.  Period.  A large enthusiastic community of users will
spawn in time more accomplished, more advanced users.  Even if
the vast majority of those users never contribute to FSF nor
write any serious Lisp we still benefit from their spreading
the word.  And the larger the community the more the laws of big
numbers will guarantee we harvest some amount of new, younger
talent.

I would hope that our site would be not just a self-indulgent
love fest, a litany of all the things we - the advanced, deeply
committed users - love about Emacs.  Instead I imagine our site
as the place where a newbie becomes seduced by Emacs' clearly
wonderful and unique functionality, available "out of the box".
The site should make it clear and easy how to try out Emacs and
ensure as much as possible a very positive experience.  That
experience should be good enough to motivate some number of the
site's visitors to abandon permanently their current editor.
There might be some low key mention of future ecstasy to be
discovered down the road.  But the first order of business is
getting our newbie to try Emacs and conclude the (s)he likes it.

Do you seriously want to adopt the stance that if a would be user
does not drink the Lisp CoolAid then (s)he is not welcome to use
our editor?  Or at least (s)he has to get past our proselytizing?

A newbie following up a suggestion that (s)he checkout an editor
called Emacs should not be assailed by a religious pitch about how
(s)he should lust to use Emacs because its extension language is
superior to that used in other editors.  First off most users are
going to assess an editor based on what they came achieve right out
of the box.  After all until one has used a tool for a while one
has little sense of where one's personal itches lie.  Further, to
the extent the our newbie already has a favorable impression of
some other extension language pitching the virtues of Lisp could
well be a turn-off.  Net, we loose a potential convert who at the
least might have been another satisfied Emacs booster, and who
- were (s)he the sort of user prone to modifying tools - might
have come around in time to writing extensions and contributing
them back to the project.

For those who are interested (eg the 13 year old Drew postulated)
there are many easily discovered resources on the web describing
Emacs, Lisp, eLisp, etc.  We could easily include on our site a
curated list of links to the best of such resources.  If we feel
that there does not yet exist a sufficiently effusive description
of (e)Lisp we can write one and link to it.

/john

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3162 bytes --]

Re: Casting as wide a net as possible (was: First draft of the Emacs website)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2015 11:46:42 -0500
> From: John Yates <john@yates-sheets.org>
> 
> My thought was that what Emacs needs before all else is more
> users.

I don't think anyone disagrees.  I know I agree.

> I would hope that our site would be not just a self-indulgent
> love fest, a litany of all the things we - the advanced, deeply
> committed users - love about Emacs. Instead I imagine our site
> as the place where a newbie becomes seduced by Emacs' clearly
> wonderful and unique functionality, available "out of the box".

Again, I think everyone agrees with this.

> Do you seriously want to adopt the stance that if a would be user
> does not drink the Lisp CoolAid then (s)he is not welcome to use
> our editor? Or at least (s)he has to get past our proselytizing?

I don't think anyone suggested anything even close.  Richard proposed
3 sentences to be included, where the site talks about Emacs being
based on Lisp.  3 sentences out of a whole site is not too much.  And
we do want to seduce those who are already intrigued by Lisp -- this
is part of casting the kind of a wide net that you mention.

Other parts of the site should advertise other aspects of Emacs, of
course.

> A newbie following up a suggestion that (s)he checkout an editor
> called Emacs should not be assailed by a religious pitch about how
> (s)he should lust to use Emacs because its extension language is
> superior to that used in other editors. First off most users are
> going to assess an editor based on what they came achieve right out
> of the box. After all until one has used a tool for a while one
> has little sense of where one's personal itches lie.

That's one possible process.  But we don't want to build some single
model of it, because that would make the net more narrow.  We want to
appeal to people who are attracted by other means, including the
beauty of the extension language.  It doesn't have to be a
contradiction.

> Further, to the extent the our newbie already has a favorable
> impression of some other extension language pitching the virtues of
> Lisp could well be a turn-off.

Only if we push that too much.  But 3 sentences suggested by Richard
are not it.

> For those who are interested (eg the 13 year old Drew postulated)
> there are many easily discovered resources on the web describing
> Emacs, Lisp, eLisp, etc. We could easily include on our site a
> curated list of links to the best of such resources. If we feel
> that there does not yet exist a sufficiently effusive description
> of (e)Lisp we can write one and link to it.

We don't want anything even close to a description, we want just a
hint, to lure them to learn more.  There's no need in external links
for that, we could manage such a short passage ourselves.  At least we
should try.

RE: Casting as wide a net as possible (was: First draft of the Emacs website)

[Drew Adams]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2323 bytes --]

FWIW, I don't disagree with much of what you said, John. I, for one, never suggested that "if a would be user does not drink the Lisp CoolAid then (s)he is not welcome to use our editor".

 

I also did not suggest that we pit Lisp against other languages with arguments about superiority. (RMS suggested that, to some degree.)

 

What I suggested it that Emacs is particularly about customizing, and Lisp, yes, is a part of that. And it is a part not because one has to code Lisp to customize Emacs (that's false), but because one can customize Emacs more powerfully and more flexibly using Lisp.

 

I said that I think that we should mention what some important Lisp features offer to Emacs - essential features that make Emacs what it is.

 

I think your post indicates a somewhat black-&-white, and limiting, view of both the newbies we should be welcoming and how we should do so.

 

My only point is that Lisp features really do make Emacs what it is. To point out what Emacs is necessarily means pointing out some of those features (IMO). 

 

This does not imply a language war or an electric kool-aid acid test. Nor does it imply that potential users who might never be interested in some of those features will be, or should be, excluded or turned off. Far from it.

 

I would hope that our site would be not just a self-indulgent
love fest, a litany of all the things we - the advanced, deeply
committed users - love about Emacs....
Do you seriously want to adopt the stance that if a would be user
does not drink the Lisp CoolAid then (s)he is not welcome to use
our editor?  Or at least (s)he has to get past our proselytizing?


A newbie following up a suggestion that (s)he checkout an editor
called Emacs should not be assailed by a religious pitch about how
(s)he should lust to use Emacs because its extension language is
superior to that used in other editors.  

...

For those who are interested (eg the 13 year old Drew postulated)
there are many easily discovered resources on the web describing
Emacs, Lisp, eLisp, etc.  We could easily include on our site a
curated list of links to the best of such resources.  If we feel
that there does not yet exist a sufficiently effusive description
of (e)Lisp we can write one and link to it.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 6342 bytes --]

RE: Casting as wide a net as possible (was: First draft of the Emacs website)

[Drew Adams]

> > For those who are interested (eg the 13 year old Drew postulated)
> > there are many easily discovered resources on the web describing
> > Emacs, Lisp, eLisp, etc. We could easily include on our site a
> > curated list of links to the best of such resources. If we feel
> > that there does not yet exist a sufficiently effusive description
> > of (e)Lisp we can write one and link to it.
> 
> We don't want anything even close to a description, we want just a
> hint, to lure them to learn more.  There's no need in external links
> for that, we could manage such a short passage ourselves.  At least we
> should try.

Agreed.  And it's not just about luring potentially interested users.
It's about describing Emacs - its most important features.  No need
to glorify anything; it is sufficient to point out how Emacs is
different.

This description of Emacs includes what you can do with it, at the
most general level.  And this most general level of what-you-can-do
includes some Lisp features.  It does not mean just pointing out
that Emacs has lots of "plug-ins" etc.

RE: Casting as wide a net as possible

[Drew Adams]

> I think we should also mention the huge number of applications and
> packages included or available out there.  I don't think there's a
> computing related job that Emacs does not already do, given the right
> packages are installed.
> 
> Also, the fact that it presents more or less the same behavior on all
> supported platforms (modulo some system-specific features on each
> platform).

+1 to both points.  The latter is less obvious, IMO.

Re: Casting as wide a net as possible (was: First draft of the Emacs website)

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > My thought was that what Emacs needs before all else is more
  > users.  Period.

We would like more people to use Emacs, but we should never think
that we _need_ more users.  When developers of a free software package
think they _need_ more users, it is a lever that can be used
to push them into bad decisions.

When some people use Emacs, they are getting benefit from our work.
We are glad it benefits them, we intended it to benefit users, and we
hope to make it benefit them more, but we don't _need_ them to be
pleased with our work.  We're the ones who did them a favor -- not
vice versa.

Likewise, when some people don't use Emacs, that's their loss, not our
loss.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.