Subscribe to our mailing list, where we are rude and dismissive if you accidentally dare make a line longer than 50 characters, (didn't you read our netiquette?) as some members like to read their emails on outdated devices without text reflow capable display software. Also don't dare to use non-ASCII Unicode characters, or we will be rude and will ignore your request. Just spell your name in American, because that is what real programmers do!
Even better is when people post issues on Reddit or whatever asking for help because that's the most low friction way for them to ask, and then a project contributor replies with "hey can you send this to the mailing list?" and so the person sends it in and is met with exactly fucking this. It's just such a great use of everyone's time.
You don't need to subscribe. You are in CC when people want you to be notified, otherwise there are web interfaces you can browse. See https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/ for example. On each message there is a button: "reply via email to [...]".
I usually know, when the interface is not too shiny, that the content might be good. It's the same with HN. And those interfaces are still very easy to understand and use.
That being said, there is certainly room for improvement.
There's something to this idea, I think. The less polished a tool is, the more I'm inclined to think it was built by the community for community use. There's so much talk about enshitification, and I'm struggling to recall when a tool with a less-than-polished interface had that problem.
The example that springs to mind is spamgourmet, which has a FAQ about why they don't redesign their site. I've used the service for about 20 years, and while there is a bit of a gatekeeping vibe to it, there is also a good reason: they have very few resources for support, and want to attract a certain crowd to minimize the support burden. It seems it's been working for a couple of decades, at least.
> Q. Couldn't you make the whole thing a lot easier to understand by redesigning your site and providing instructions in a more clear way?
> A. Probably. Frankly, we're trying to build a user base of people like you, who probably have some familiarity with the way email works and who are willing to read FAQ's. This is to keep our support burden to a minimum (this is a non-commercial service). So far, the approach has worked well -- just about all our users hit the ground running with no need for support, and it's our belief that those users who would require support generally don't sign up in the first place, perhaps because of the geeky presentation of the site. That's not to say we don't provide support where it's needed -- after skimming this FAQ, please don't hesitate to write if you have a question or believe there's a bug.
I tend to actively seek out projects like this, since I don't mind the blow to usability, and very much appreciate that they provide the service and don't pepper me with annoucements about their new improvements or their changes to their pricing structure.
I have more than once subscribed just to report a bug or send a patch because the mailing list rejects emails from non-subscribers.
Edit: Btw, yes I have done the periodically-check-archive thing in the past, thank you. Hated it. Also missed a response once because I forgot to check and replier didn't CC. I realized like a month later.
It is unfortunate that there are poorly-managed projects with poorly-managed mailing lists (just like there are poorly-managed projects on Github), but sourcehut at least requires a properly-managed mailing list, and I think you should evaluate this workflow on that standard. Tell poorly-managed projects to move to sourcehut, if you want to fix this issue.
Even then, you’re free to opt into daily digests if you’re a subscriber.
The message ID allows you to reply to individual messages and threads nonetheless.
Reply-to-all is the standard policy on most mailing lists. Especially on -devel lists since you'll pull in (CC:) people outside of the mailing list (cross-project) into discussions from time to time.
Genuine question: why is this a problem? Every modern email provider allows you to set up filters that move all the mailing list emails into a seperate folder/tag, skip your Inbox, and set up auto-cleanup to delete emails older than X days so that the volume doesn't result in you exhausting your storage allocation. And if you find yourself never actually taking part in that software's discussion and it actually turns out to be completely irrelevant to you, then unsubscribe...