mailing list

[jin_xi]

for technical discussion *prior* to writing any code there is no suitable channel and it hurts minetest development.

the forum is too noisy for serious discussion, github issues are mostly useful for code details and IRC is problematic because of timezones and other factors. none of those are very good for serious discussion regarding longer term or larger scope issues.

so i propose to create a mailing list for the project in hopes to achieve better communication for developers. this has come up on IRC somewhat regularly and i think we should give it a try.

[Zeno]

Please, no :( I already get 100 fairly useless emails from GitHub a day (perhaps I can turn them off?) without extra stuff to check.

[Evergreen]

Please, no :( I already get 100 fairly useless emails from GitHub a day (perhaps I can turn them off?) without extra stuff to check.

Yes, github's email notifications can be turned off.

[jin_xi]

i am not proposing notifications or other spammy stuff. you can read and participate in discussions on a mailing list without receiving all the messages as actual mail in your inbox.

[sofar]

As a professional Open Source developer, I'm all for it. Forums are absolutely the wrong place to discuss code development and more complex issues. Mailing lists are not ideal, but far better suited. It's not for nothing that most serious open source projects entirely work by mailing lists. Try finding a Linux Kernel Forum :).

-> Wiki's and Forums work best to connect and inform users.
-> Mailing Lists and git are tools for developers.

[jin_xi]

so, even though there has not been much discussion in this thread some things have been said on IRC. Some do not want to read a mailing list in addition to what channels already exist for mt, and everybody does not want to receive additional emails, which is understanable.

However, communication in this project is suboptimal, and again, i think its hindering progress and introducing friction:

Recently some dispute about whether its legit to ignore core devs on irc has come up. Its officially legit (which is good as mt-dev sucks and logs are kept forever). Some discussion about proceeding with versioning scheme here and there and stuff about which bugs to fix for the next bugfix release.

None of this has been done in a way that all who have to say something on the matter could do so in a timely manner, or be sure that what they said reached whoever needs to be aware. None of the points discussed have been solidified in form of some conclusion or plan.

So expect another shitty release, more dispute / developer exodus about very pointless issues, no movement whatsoever in some of the oldest bugs we might as well call features at this point, no direction to ever release with a different subgame than the good old mt_game apart from some vague plan.

[TriBlade9]

So expect another shitty release, more dispute / developer exodus about very pointless issues, no movement whatsoever in some of the oldest bugs we might as well call features at this point, no direction to ever release with a different subgame than the good old mt_game apart from some vague plan.

Precisely.
Some excellent features are available in PR's, but are hampered and in limbo because the author does not know how to proceed due to lack of communication and conflicting recommendations. (Such as colored chat, now in limbo for the second time.)
I don't want to waste time writing code that will never be used for anything.

[rubenwardy]

A mailing list just seems archaic to me. I'm for increased communication, but is mailing lists the only solution? Github issues could be better utilised. Http://Freepo.st is meant to be similar to mailing lists.