Topic: Time for bitcoin to pivot from mailing lists? (Read 107 times)

For other reader, there's similar discussion about this topic on Mailing list migration.


Most Bitcoin developer don't mind outdated UI/UX. And most forum (including Bitcointalk.org) ask for email address anyway when you create an account.


These days, those technical/development discussion dominated by people (like me) who aren't developer or aren't qualified to be Bitcoin developer.

this forum is known for discussion, but not really the true Dev implementation decision stuff.... this forum is not heavy handed about banning and they know its not, they are unhappy with this forums light touch compared to other platforms they prefer to discuss on

however the mailing was easier at banning subscribers, heavy handed with its moderation. with lots of scripts to auto ban before posts go public

im not talking about trolling im talking about banning users for even daring to be critical, in scrutinising things. the mailing list would ban subscribers for not meeting their standards of etiquette

the core devs want and love moderation(especially achowe).. they want not only to delete a post but to ban a user where they cant even post.. and delete posts before posts get public.. this forum doesnt do that. and requires certain categories to manually delete post if a person who they dont like shouldnt be posting, but thats only after their post went public

they wont want to use this forum for real dev discussion. they need to control who gets to talk and who they deem is a dev, via banning subscribers that dont meet their standards

assuming the forum has enough funding, everything will be free here for a long time, but reality says otherwise, I don't think we will see more developers returning to the forum, as even old members disappear after every 1/2 ing.


The number of active developers here is very limited and it has been a long time that there were serious discussions from developers rather than users of the services or discussions related to users of the protocol/service.

Doesn't developmental discussion already happen on this forum tho? Or are you suggesting that developers should make a forum account and post regularly here?

I'm not familiar with how they are discussing with each other, but is the mailing list their only communication channel? I recall seeing GitHub discussion and other channels being used, albeit not as much as the mailing list I suppose.

Btw, if the goal is to provide an alternative, why don't you continue suggesting it on that thread? I don't see the need to make a new one just to suggest migrating to Bitcointalk since that topic is titled "Mailing list migration" to begin with.

Bitcoin is a free and open source project by its very nature. And the way open source project have historically been developed has since forever been mailing lists.
Mailing lists as platforms for coordination of development have many virtues. They're easy to access without an account, easy to filter incoming participation before publication and also easy to track your own responses with a personal configuration that needs to be no more than a mailing client.

Mailing lists have their disadvantages too
However, to the outside observer, they have quite a few disadvantages as well. For one, archiving of mailing lists, which is the main tool an observer can use to catch up with messages, have their own issues which are plenty, but no point in getting all these now. Needless to say however that the UI/UX experience is very outdated for today's standards. Another one is that it's not really that universal. While it might not require an account with a new password, it surely requires email, and email itself is not very universal as of lately, given that most providers ask for phone number registration and only accept a selection of phone providers from certain countries, or maybe they block certain territories outright. Perhaps even governments will outright block access to such services.

Bitcoin-dev mailing list under the Linux foundation coming to an end
The main issue with mailing lists however, is that someone has to host and maintain them. As highlighted by bitcoin dev achow101 in his response here, the maintaining and hosting for these mailing lists was done by a non-profit, and it's now been announced that they will cease to do so very soon.

And now developers are faced with the issue of having to decide how and if the mailing list should be replaced. Having the project's mailing list under the Linux foundation provided bitcoin devs with the ease of not having to worry about also developing and hosting a dedicated mailing list.

Incentive
Another issue here is that bitcoin's development isn't exactly funded by a specific dedicated organization and there are no dedicated endowments. Certain companies and organizations make grant contributions towards certain bitcoin-supporting initiatives and developers, but there's no active bitcoin foundation per se.

So for hosting a mailing list, neutrality can also be a concern. For instance, some bitcoin developers might not appreciate a certain grant-making organization's actions. We've seen this happen quite often actually, a recent example is how some developers have expressed skepticism towards how Satoshi Labs publishes external improvement proposals for bitcoin (so called SLIPs).

Satoshi's approach(!?)
It's always interesting to see what satoshi's approach was on certain issues. So on the subject of development discussion, satoshi always allowed for discussion on an open forum. When bitcoin was hosted in sourcforge, the platform had its own hosted forum. Later, a dedicated bitcoin forum was created and satoshi himself would maintain it alongside some people that offered to help like theymos. So it's important to note that ever since bitcoin's creation there has always been a dedicated forum for discussion of its development.

Of course, satoshi left since 2011 and interest in bitcoin has soared since then, but the openness and ease of use to participate in discussion related to bitcoin are important takeaways. Some might argue that with the increased interest in bitcoin, keeping access to dev discussion a little harder might be a feature.

Time for a comeback of bitcoin dev discusison on bitcointalk.org?
Surprisingly or not, bitcointalk solves most of the above issues.
It's hosted and maintained by people trusted by the community, it's dedicated to bitcoin, already hosted and adapted to the needs of bitcoin development and relevant discussion, and also it has its own dedicated funding and moderation.

Maybe now with mailing lists on the Linux foundation being no longer supported, a comeback could be a win-win. So will development discussion come back to this more modern but already familiar platform.