[License-discuss] Threading and topic drift (was: License licenses)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Luis Villa (luis at lu.is):

> Someone: "What day did you switch from 'meh' on mailing lists to 'burn them
> all down', Luis?"
> Me: "May 31, 2019"

Luis, you know I like you.  I hope you're not having a bad day, and hope
I didn't needlessly make one worse for you.

> I have a hard time imagining a non-IETF group of humans who are more deeply
> entrenched in email than this one.

Mild laziness and mild inattention are things, n'est-ce pas?  

My point was merely that what the upthread poster claimed was broken in
mailing lists was merely a case of a frequent poster having not bothered to
initiate a new thread, rather than any failure of SMTP technology to
support doing so.

I'm sorry if you once, somewhere, got castigated for deliberately
breaking threading when you had good reason to wish to do so.  If I'd
seen that happen, I'd have gently remonstrated with the person to say
that the mailing list was not supposed to remain one eternal united
thread forever and ever, amen, and that what you did was functionally
exactly the same as literally starting a new thread, which I'm not aware
of being verboten -- and that neither action qualifies in this universe
as bad netiquette.

(LBJ used the term 'Come, let us reason together', but rather hilariously
omitted the bloodthirsty framing of the Isaiah 1:18 original.  Me, I 
am slow to accuse anyone of bad netiquette.  I'd rather be friends.)


> In general, I'm so glad that most software designers have long since moved
> on from this user-hostile attitude.

I hope you don't mean me.  I wasn't out to express hostility to any users,
or even (at least on this fine day) to anyone at all.  In fact, that
parsing seems... a stretch?

I was just refuting the erroneous claim that mailing lists cannot
handle intentionally initiating a new thread, when it can do so very
easily and in an obvious fashion by simply editing what defines a thread
(the claim to the contrary being, as I said, ironic coming from a
Discourse proponent touting its abilities as better in that area, given
that said dynamic Web-forum software cannot handle threading really at
all).

> In OSI's specific case, requiring skill in antique mailing list norms,
> in order to discuss nearly completely unrelated topics (law,
> governance, etc.) is a deep dysfunction - it pointlessly excludes very
> skilled/relevant thinkers.

Again, I hope you don't mean me.  I wasn't requiring anything of anyone.
I merely corrected a badly mistaken factual claim, and sharing (and
demonstrating) useful information that I would have imagined was known
to just about everyone here -- and I suspect it was known to pretty much
everyone _except_ the gentleman to whom I addressed my correction.

> "pitched at smartphone users", aka "pitched at the vast majority of human
> beings". The Discourse folks are trying to reach users where they actually
> read and write.

So, you don't actually agree with what I said, but you're arguing
anyway.  It's almost like you're one of my lawyer friends.  ;->

-- 
Cheers,              "I am a member of a civilization (IAAMOAC).  Step back
Rick Moen            from anger.  Study how awful our ancestors had it, yet
rick at linuxmafia.com  they struggled to get you here.  Repay them by appreciating
McQ! (4x80)          the civilization you inherited."           -- David Brin