Re: GNOME discussions

On Sun, Oct 30, 2022 at 03:30:51PM +0000, Graham Perrin wrote:
> On 30/10/2022 13:54, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> 
> > … It was announced somewhere else way earlier. …
> > 
> Most likely.
> 
> 
> > Discourse in the way it's set up by the GNOME foundation is a PITA.
> 
> Not if you use the web interface.
> 
> My first post: <https://discourse.gnome.org/t/-/11889/3?u=grahamperrin>
> 
> > If you want to use the GNOME Discourse mailing list feature …
> Why not use the web interface?

Those of us, who are on many mailing lists, prefer to have it all in
one simple to use interface, called MUA (mail user agent). I really
have no time to jump on twenty or thirty tabs to see if something
changed, find where the change is, reload, reload, javascript restart,
javascript restart, page down, page down... The number of tabs - you
think I am making this number up? no, I am not...

With text-based MUA called mutt I can have it opened on terminal, have
a look every few hours and see, for example, two new messages posted
with subjects I want to follow. The software does the job it is
supposed to be doing and I am free to be doing what I am supposed
etc. Rather than spent many minutes a day sliding windows and what
not.

Since I never used Discourse, I have no idea if it can aggregate from
multiple forums/discussion lists. If not, I have to kick it out of my
sight. Because useless.

If it cannot let me quickly search over few thousands of posts,
useless - I do it more than once a day and few thousands is minimal
requirement.

If it does not work when the server is down, useless - ok, I cannot
get new mails when server is down, but I can still work on old ones,
write new ones and put them into send queue, and so on. They will be
sent out when server goes up, without any intervention or attention on
my side required.

If it requires Javascript to work, unsecure.

If it cannot reproduce text verbatim, if it cannot show itself up
properly with monospace font (like, Terminus, Dejavu Mono etc), then
it is also ugly and tiresome for my eyes.

Oh, BTW, if it cannot be driven from the keyboard _exclusively_, no
mouse touched for many hours in a row, then it is also slooooow and
poorly designed.

Last two points are more like my personal opinion, but I have never
seen web interface as fast as terminal based one. The closest to it
were pages served before Javascript took over everything but after
network speeds went into tens of megabits.

So, it is not about me disliking web or something. It is just that the
offer is so lacking in functionality and it cannot beat stuff written
years ago.

Thing may look differently from the point of forum admin, but I am a
user. 

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com             **