[Haskell-community] Request for comment: New haskell.org download page

[Simon Peyton Jones]

Friends

I’m a little worried at how many cycles we might burn to determine the order of three items in a list, when

·         hopefully it’ll become largely irrelevant when we get the new HP (months not years)

·         if the consequences of choices are clearly articulated, the order is not very important


I know that high-contributing members of our community have differing, strongly held views; and that these differences are not mere whims but are based on a thoughtful judgements.   If we can’t come to a common view (and we should not take that as failure – professional judgements often differ), perhaps the two points suggest a path to a holding position we can all live with?

(John: that might mean that the download page has more info than you’d really like, but I think that’s a lesser evil.  In any case, as a possibly-weird user, I think that most download pages are dismayingly short of information.)

Simon

From: Haskell-community [mailto:haskell-community-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Michael Snoyman
Sent: 25 September 2015 06:42
To: John Wiegley
Cc: haskell-community at haskell.org
Subject: Re: [Haskell-community] Request for comment: New haskell.org download page



On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 8:23 PM, John Wiegley <johnw at newartisans.com<mailto:johnw at newartisans.com>> wrote:
>>>>> Michael Snoyman <michael at fpcomplete.com<mailto:michael at fpcomplete.com>> writes:

> Secondly, I'd like to make clear what I think the goal for the downloads
> page should be: new users. Experienced Haskellers are unlikely to even visit
> this downloads page, and are likely well aware of the situation around
> tooling to make an informed decision regardless of what this page says. I'd
> like us to constrain discussion to "what's best for a new user." I haven't
> heard anyone object to this idea before.

I couldn't agree more, Michael. The new user is first in my mind with all of
this.

Perhaps we need a poll. So far the presented options are:

    1. HP       Stack    Minimal
    2. Stack    HP       Minimal
    3. Stack    Minimal  HP
    4. Minimal  HP       Stack
    5. Minimal  Stack    HP

I'll open voting at the current state, choosing #4. My reason is that HP and
Stack will soon merge, and I'm willing to put Minimal first based on
Christopher's and Gershom's arguments.

Further, the reason HP is staying on the list for now is that I'd prefer not
to conflate issues. I'm happy to start a new discussion, recommending to the
committee that we remove HP, if others wish to.

John

There was a lot of discussion on Twitter about this thread, but almost none of those participants wrote into this discussion. When I asked why[1], I got (at least[2]) two forms of response:
1. I don't want to sign up for another mailing list just to vote
2. Previous actions made it seem like the voting would be inconsequential to the outcome
To try and lower the barrier to entry, I created a Google Form with the same questions as above:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1w2wKSxn5YN4LtSXYHvFT2IFw_BDaT_2cjUkP9pDeqLQ/viewform?usp=send_form<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3a%2f%2fdocs.google.com%2fforms%2fd%2f1w2wKSxn5YN4LtSXYHvFT2IFw_BDaT_2cjUkP9pDeqLQ%2fviewform%3fusp%3dsend_form&data=01%7c01%7csimonpj%40064d.mgd.microsoft.com%7c9698b16b5e4e4294ffba08d2c56c0b66%7c72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7c1&sdata=CPki0hqUyLiyUsklBCLrJID7BgvkL0iJ2PkXLvTFlrU%3d>
I've avoided sending it to "obviously biased" sources, like the Stack mailing list itself. It has 21 responses so far (including one from me for "Stack Minimal HP", so please don't count my vote twice).
Given the obvious sentiment around (2) mentioned above, I think it's important to pay attention to what people are saying outside of this mailing list.
Michael

[1] https://twitter.com/snoyberg/status/647243155734155266<https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3a%2f%2ftwitter.com%2fsnoyberg%2fstatus%2f647243155734155266&data=01%7c01%7csimonpj%40064d.mgd.microsoft.com%7c9698b16b5e4e4294ffba08d2c56c0b66%7c72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7c1&sdata=EGGyQKaJI51A1lkrXXq1%2fb08GFGViynlO37qz5%2fWlyQ%3d>
[2] One person commented that "If they are arguing against you, they aren't going to take my opinion seriously...". That might imply a variant of (2) above.
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