Erlang forums (was Re: PING TEST)

Fri Dec 17 03:32:10 CET 2021

> I understand the desire and intent but, frankly, the forum is an awful UX that feels like what we had in the 90s (and in which I never had nor would participate). I'm an old time Erlang dev having consulted to Ericsson in the early 90's and have recently caused my company to adopt Erlang with some core products. The quality of the Erlang email list has been outstanding. Having that history in my email has been an invaluable resource. Moving to the forum will greatly diminish this value for us - there's just no way of getting around that. I think there's a lot of people who feel the same way. I will, of course, try out the "forum as list" feature but we all know it's not designed for that and interactivity will not be as strong as the email list.

I'm sorry to hear you don't like UX Ben - but I reckon if you give it a chance you might be surprised. The forum is created by a renowned team (led by the same person who created Stack Overflow) and it has quickly become the industry standard. I would say with good reason too and while I could harp on all day about why I think it's so good, you really do need to experience it for yourself to fully appreciate it - which is why I would encourage anyone with doubts to give it a chance. If you do decide to give it a go and there's anything you are not sure about or get stuck with, just post a message in the Forum Help section and we'll do our best to help or offer advice/tips. 

> Frankly I don't get what value we're anticipating from the forum that is better than the current email list. If we wanted to move to something that captures discussion threads better then I would recommend gitter or discord. This forum software is horrible, imho. I'm sure everyone on this list wants to create the best experience for supporting Erlang/OTP. I don't doubt anyone's intentions here. But the forum solution just doesn't cut the mustard to me.

Again this is something that I could harp on all day about but I won't bore you with the details, other than to say platforms like this offer significantly more long term value than ephemeral chat based platforms like Gitter or Discord - because what you post on a forum could go on to help thousands of people in future - it's not uncommon for forum threads to be viewed  hundreds of thousands of times over the life of a thread. Thanks to a lot of experience in the space we can take this to the next level with things like SEO, which is something I personally do by what many would consider the extremely mundane task of reviewing every single thread posted on the forum to ensure its title acts as a short search engine friendly description and it is appropriately tagged. It's small things like this that can make a huge difference to things like discoverability, and can help make a language or a framework much more accessible. People often comment how whenever they search for something in Google they are almost always shown a link to the forum as the first result! It's what's led people to say things like they feel the forum is a 'game changer' for adoption (of course I'm speaking of the Elixir Forum here but there's no reason why the same couldn't be true for Erlang and this forum).

Again these are things that will become more apparent over time (and is in part why Kenneth and the team opted for this kind of forum managed in this particular way).

> thanks for listening

Thanks for checking out the forum and if you do decide to give it a try, just let us know if you run into any issues and we'll do our best to help. Remember you can still use the forum as a pretty decent mailing list too and it could even be argued that it's a much more modern iteration that offers many more features over this one as well. For instance you can do things like go to the web ui and edit/fix mistakes later, @mention people (and if they have notifications switched on they will be notified), add code in proper formatting, embed images, etc. You can even do things like mute certain tags or sections. Overall this platform offers much much more... you just need to give it a chance to see for yourself :-)

/Aston

> On 16 Dec 2021, at 07:38, Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@REDACTED> wrote:
> 
> I understand the desire and intent but, frankly, the forum is an awful UX that feels like what we had in the 90s (and in which I never had nor would participate). I'm an old time Erlang dev having consulted to Ericsson in the early 90's and have recently caused my company to adopt Erlang with some core products. The quality of the Erlang email list has been outstanding. Having that history in my email has been an invaluable resource. Moving to the forum will greatly diminish this value for us - there's just no way of getting around that. I think there's a lot of people who feel the same way. I will, of course, try out the "forum as list" feature but we all know it's not designed for that and interactivity will not be as strong as the email list.
> 
> Frankly I don't get what value we're anticipating from the forum that is better than the current email list. If we wanted to move to something that captures discussion threads better then I would recommend gitter or discord. This forum software is horrible, imho. I'm sure everyone on this list wants to create the best experience for supporting Erlang/OTP. I don't doubt anyone's intentions here. But the forum solution just doesn't cut the mustard to me.
> 
> thanks for listening,
> 
>   -- Ben Scherrey
> 
> On Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 11:03 PM Kenneth Lundin <kenneth.lundin@REDACTED <mailto:kenneth.lundin@REDACTED>> wrote:
> Thank you for your feedback about Erlangforums.com everyone. See some clarifications below: 
> 
> Erlangforums is setup by Aston with the Erlang/OTP team in full cooperation. The intention is to stimulate interest and discussions about Erlang and other languages running on the “beam”.
> 
> We are happy with the forum’s objective to foster a positive inclusive community. We reviewed the terms before the forum went live and feel they are fair and reasonable.
> 
> We are Admins on the forum and while we advise the forum team when necessary, we prefer to leave daily operation and forum management to the forum team. This was a major reason to why we chose this route instead running a forum ourselves at erlang.org <http://erlang.org/>: we want an experienced team to manage the forum, marketing, growing the community, policies, moderation, daily operation, and whatnot (Aston has been managing the Elixir Forum in a similar capacity for over 5 years and has 20 years' experience managing online spaces).
> 
> With a forum like this we are better able to focus on Erlang/OTP. We weighed up all the options before concluding this is the best option for Erlang, the Erlang community, as well as the overall BEAM community.
> 
> As indicated in the various announcements the mailing list will be deprecated soon and we hope you will join us on Erlangforums.com. The Erlang/OTP team will be focusing our efforts on the forum moving forward because we believe it is an exciting platform and has the potential to offer the most value.
> 
> For those who would like to use the forum as a mailing list please see this thread: https://erlangforums.com/t/how-to-use-this-forum-as-a-mailing-list/146 <https://erlangforums.com/t/how-to-use-this-forum-as-a-mailing-list/146>. However, keep in mind that the forum was never meant to be 1:1 copy of the mailing list (it is meant to be much more). To attain an experience similar to that of the mailing list you may want to subscribe to the following sections as a starting point: Erlang News, Erlang Libraries, and Erlang Help/Questions.
> 
> /Kenneth, Erlang/OTP Ericsson
> 
> On Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 6:23 PM Michael P. <empro2@REDACTED <mailto:empro2@REDACTED>> wrote:
> :-)
> 
> On Sun, 5 Dec 2021 16:57:11 +0100
> Loïc Hoguin <essen@REDACTED <mailto:essen@REDACTED>> wrote:
> 
> > The Erlang forums have this monstrosity: https://erlangforums.com/tos <https://erlangforums.com/tos>
> 
> Trying to understand the "monstrosity" I found it practical to keep in mind:
> 
> The basic right of freedom after speech does not give one
> the right to speak one's mind in anyone's living room;
> even after an invitation one can be shown the door at any time,
> for any reason or none.
> 
> And that it is not practical to go into detail, because:
> 
> People who do not want to live together cannot --
> by no amount of rules or force --
> be made to live together.
> 
> So ...
> 
> > are not owned by the Erlang/OTP team but instead by a third party (and
> > possibly set up by their initiative, not the Erlang/OTP team's).
> 
> ... to be fair:
> http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2021-October/101583.html <http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2021-October/101583.html>
> 
> 
> > If the Erlang/OTP team wants to make the forums a more
> > official/permanent venue to reach them then they should also ensure that
> > the conditions to use the forums are the same as their other venues.
> 
> Is the "monstrosity" not merely a paraphrasing of the conditions
> for staying in this old living room here?
> 
> Without a Sugarmountain of money or a space-dildo for Captain Kirk,
> one cannot afford to get to know the legal situation, or differences,
> or consequences, or do anything about them.
> And: Two lawyers -- three opinions.
> 
> So I will simply continue trying to do the Austin Powers ("Behave!").
> 
> :-)
> 
> ~Michael
> 
> --
> 
> Normality is merely a question of quantity, not one of quality.
> 
> 
> 
> 

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