Re: Gitlab Migration

[Arthur Miller]

Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> writes:

> Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:
>
>> Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Daniel Fleischer <danflscr@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> Tim Cross [2021-08-27 Fri 11:01]  *wrote*:
>>>>
>>>>> I'm not sure this is true. I think virtually all developers are forced
>>>>> to suffer email, but a gorwing number don't use it. Often, all the
>>>>> discussions, notifications, comments etc are actually consumed via a
>>>>> mobile 'app'. For these users, logging into their inbox is frustrating
>>>>> and inconvenient because their inbox is full of pointless and old
>>>>> messages/notifications/alerts they have already seen/received via other
>>>>> channels. For these users, the primary reason they have an email address
>>>>> is to have something to put into the 'login' box for web services they
>>>>> use. Telling these users to use email to submit a patch is very similar
>>>>> to me being told when I started using email that I had to send in a hard
>>>>> copy via snail mail.
>>>>
>>>> It's a very intersting point about what email represent to different
>>>> people that arising from this discussion. I'm half your age and use
>>>> email for 2 reasons:
>>>>
>>>> 1. It's an identify for today's web. As such, it's becoming the main
>>>>    tool for tracking (especially as cookies phase out), so I use
>>>>    multiple boxes and regard them is disposable and spam-infected.
>>>>
>>>> 2. Receiving official documents from institutions.
>>>>
>>>> I don't talk to family, friends or coworkers via mail. Personally, I
>>>> think it's old, not secure or private by default, very inconsistent
>>>> (HTML rendering is arbitrary vs. text, multiple MUA) and just can't
>>>> imagine using it as a software engineering tool.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yep, that mirrors what I'm seeing as well. Many younger users really use
>>> it primarily to provide a unique identifier (login) and for when they
>>> have to deal with institutions that don't provide other alternatives.
>>>
>>> The other interesting trend I'm seeing is with many companies now
>>> working to minimise email as part of their internal/external workflows.
>>> Many companies are finding it a huge resource sink, cause of unnecessary
>>> stress/pressure on staff, source of significant security concerns and a
>>> real problem for records management.
>>>
>>> From the Emacs project perspective, providing alternative web based
>>> workflows similar to what github/gitlab/sourceHut provide would be
>>> beneficial. The challenge seems to be in finding software which meets
>>> FSF requirements. In particular, a solution which is mature enough and
>>> is not based on non-free Javascript libraries. 
>>
>> I wouldn't agree with you that young people don't know how to use email. 
>> That is
>> something you are deriving yourself. Sure Instagram, Facebook, Dicord, 
>> Twitter,
>> Slack etc might be very popular as a mean of communication, but saying that
>> young people don't know how to use email is stretching it too far.
>
> I never said they don't know how to use email - I said they were not
> interested in using email. They use it when they are forced to, but it
Ok. Fair enough. It was maybe oversimplification there by me.

> is not their preferred choice. We even asked students what they wanted
> and when you broke that information down by age, nearly 80% of under 25s
> indicated they would prefer non-email based communications. This is only
> one data point from one institution and only for one year, so there
> could be sampling error, cultural variation and possibly question bias
> based on wording etc. However, the results were in line with other
> feedback and comments. The preference for email also increased with age
> - older students showed a higher preference for email, which means the
> results could be related to experience and user maturity - we won't know
> until more time has passed.
>
> I cannot provide specific details because the information is classified
> as sensitive and internal only. It was part of analysis done at a
> smaller University (approx 25k students) where the main objective was to
> determine if providing students with an email account (actually o365
> account), was beneficial or not. The result was that the majority of
> students were not interested in the email account (either because they
> already had one or because email was not a comms channel they cared
> about), but they did want the o365 account because of the access it gave
> them to other things, most notably Office suite.

I understand, but that can also be interpretted as if they prefer mail as
they getting more experienced. I also don't really understand what is problem
with emails. Smartphones have almost removed distinction between a so called an
instant message and and email. Email has become just yet another messaging
media.

What I have suggested in several comments by now, is that it is maybe possible
to tuck git workflow on existing mail workflow. Maybe some tasks could be
automated I don't know.

So will your university listen to the students and open a discord channel or
was it snappchat they prefer? Sorry, hope you don't mind a joke.