Apple Shuts Swift Mailing List, Migrates to Online Forum (swift.org) 25
An anonymous reader writes:
Apple's Swift project "has completed the process of migrating to the Swift Forums as the primary method for discussion and communication!" announced a blog post on Friday. "The former mailing lists have been shut down and archived, and all mailing list content has been imported into the new forum system."
While they're still maintaining a few Swift-related mailing lists, they're moving discussions into online forums divided into four main categories: Evolution, Development, Using Swift, and Site Feedback. Forum accounts can be set up using either email registration or GitHub accounts.
It was one year ago that Swift creator Chris Lattner answered questions from Slashdot readers.
While they're still maintaining a few Swift-related mailing lists, they're moving discussions into online forums divided into four main categories: Evolution, Development, Using Swift, and Site Feedback. Forum accounts can be set up using either email registration or GitHub accounts.
It was one year ago that Swift creator Chris Lattner answered questions from Slashdot readers.
Re: And nothing of value has been lost (Score:1)
Huh? Works better than web based forums.
Re: And nothing of value has been lost (Score:1)
I totally agree. Mailing lists are most efficient.
Re:And nothing of value has been lost (Score:5, Insightful)
Before you kids' webmail made e-mail cumbersome and inefficient to deal with, there was a thing called local mail clients. Managing a large amount of mail messages in a decent client is much more efficient than doing click-clicks in a forum. Maybe you should ask Linus why the kernel mailing list is not moved to a forum yet.
Now get off my lawn.
Re: (Score:1)
Holy crap this made my night XD
Preach it - a local mail client streamlines email to the point of sanity. It's amazing compared to webmail.
Re: (Score:2)
NNTP you insensitive clod!!!!
Re: (Score:1)
At least we have gmane for that.
OK. (Score:1)
Thanks for the update. (Score:1)
Super informative. Don't know what I'd do without you, Slashdot.
I prefer forums over mailing lists (Score:2)
But I know lots of other people who are the exact opposite.
Forums are easier to moderate, though, which appeals to manager types.
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt that the Swift mailing list was getting a lot of GNAA trolls or people whining about Trump/Obama/B
Re: (Score:2)
a lot of the other shit that gets posted here regularly.
Are you by any chance talking about a controversial init system that was born in the desktop world and managed to spread like a cancer into the server world?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If people really do not want to abandon their email, perhaps an email bot could automate forum posts from an email reply. Perhaps they could write it in Swift?
they could call it iSlack
Re: (Score:1)
Forums have the advantage of being easier to search for those just observing the conversation.
How does that differ from using NNTP to access mailing list archives through a service like gmane? My local email and news client has no problems searching through past messages and is faster than an online forum is.
Having a known viewing platform also has it's advantages - when using email one has to assume text only.
Usually forums have a subset of markup that's available and it seems to differ from platform to platform (i.e., how do I use bold, italic, or underlined text). For a text based mailing list or newsgroup, the standard was *bold*, /italic/, and _underline_. Some clients would even support that
Re: (Score:2)
As a modern developer, I prefer moderatable forums myself - people have gotten a bit more extreme over the years and while you used to not need developer forum moderation, nowadays I think that tool has to be in place.
Looks like it makes it easier to edit or delete st (Score:2, Informative)
Looks like it makes it easier to edit or delete stuff after the fact
Forums are more censorship-friendly (Score:2)
It is, and this alone is a big reason why an organization keen on controlling its image favors shifting the control to their favor. This certainly includes a more censor-friendly forum over the typically quick turnaround of an unmoderated mailing list. Unmoderated mailing lists offer no means of cancellation, editing (including edits by non-posters such as sysadmins) and mailing lists typically send out posts to subscribers very quickly. Add in the use of Javascript for even more control over the user's com
Re: (Score:1)
Mailing lists aren't as free speech friendly as netnews (particularly when one considers newsgroups carried by many netnews servers such as Usenet) but unmoderated mailing lists are typically more free speech friendly than web forums.
Usenet also had moderated groups. For a discussion list, moderation may be necessary if there's too much spam or spew directed at the group. But if they were to set up an NNTP server instead and limited who they peer with to limit the spam, then they probably could get away without having to moderate the group at all.
Do people actually like this style of forum? (Score:1)
I get it, they look pretty, but usability, at least for me, is severely hampered compared to a traditional forum layout. They are categorized, but every landing page is a mass clumping of every category below it and only when you drill down a few times do you actually get to anything specific, leading to people posting everywhere.
It just seems to me that they were designed more with first impression in mind before any other consideration, which often means some manager