Say you want to contribute to a project and find out the only way to do so is by discussing the issue on IRC or the mailing list, then submitting the patch per email.

  • Piatro@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    I agree with those saying mailing lists are intimidating. I don't know if others are using dedicated tools or something but I find web based mailing list UIs just incomprehensibly bad and difficult to navigate.

    • dsemy@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Most web-based mailing list UIs are honestly incredibly bad, but you don’t need to use them, you can choose any email client you want.

      • o11c@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        The problem with mailing lists is that no mailing list provider ever supports "subscribe to this message tree".

        As a result, either you get constant spam, or you don't get half the replies.

        • dsemy@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I sort messages from mailing lists into different mail folders, and my client (Gnus) supports a threaded view of messages (and I can press ‘k’ on a message to mark the entire thread as read), so this isn’t a big issue for me.

    • onlinepersona@programming.devOP
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      1 year ago

      If mailing lists had a view like reddit / lemmy / slashdot / hackernews, I might be more willing to use them, but that wouldn't solve contributions for me. I have no idea how to format emails to comment on code and then follow ensuing discussions. And how would CI work?