Re: Gitlab Migration

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Shouldn't it be easier to send an email than create an account, navigate
  > some web UI and fill in some form?

Yes it is.  However, it's more than just ease of use at stake.
You also need to have an internet connection at the moment that you
try to use the web forum.  Not so for sending email.

But those are merely practical considerations.  There are also
moral considerations.

To make an account on a web forum, you have to use that platform in
the way it is set up to require.  You have to accept its terms and
conditions, which may be morally unacceptable.

When you send email, you use your own choice of tools and platforms --
the same ones you used to send mail to a different forum the day
before.

This is why the GNU Project continues to specify that a GNU package
should have a published bug-reporting email address.

    > A mailing list does not allow this, so for newcomers the fear of
    > "doing something wrong" is high.  

It is ok to offer a web forum as an alternative interface for sending
a bug report, just as Emacs has M-x report-emacs-bug.  As long as the
forum's software and use conditions are ethical.

Another way to encourage users to report bugs is to focus on our
appreciation for bug reports, and show it whenever users give us a bug
report.  It's a GNU Project policy to state thanks for each bug
report.

                                        Many projects have an issue
    > reporting template now, and that can be nice.

That sounds good.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)