
Mailing Lists vs. GitHub (2018) - shawxe
https://begriffs.com/posts/2018-06-05-mailing-list-vs-github.html
======
cytzol
There's one thing that keeps stopping me from adopting the mailing list
approach, in favour of GitHub Pull Requests, and that's this:

If, ten seconds after I've clicked Submit, I discover an embarrassing error in
the code, or that I've accidentally committed some personal information, or
I've sent the e-mail from the wrong address, or anything else I haven't
thought of yet, there's nothing I can do and it's _public forever_.

Some would see this as an anti-feature, but I really do like using GitHub
because I have the ability to go back and edit or delete my Pull Request if I
spot an embarrassing mistake. I know the solution to this is "be more
careful", but I still feel anxious sending e-mails to a mailing list, and calm
using GitHub.

Does anyone relate?

~~~
oweiler
More careful is actually a stupid advice. People make mistakes, it's
unavoidable. GH makes mistakes easy to correct, which is how it should be.

~~~
u801e
There are bots out there that scrape sensitive information from Github
repositories. If you inadvertently push up a commit with a secret in it, then
consider it compromised. Email is no different in that regard.

------
IshKebab
I think most of these advantages are overblown. Glad I read this though
because I didn't know about the 'patience' diff algorithm and I've been
looking for something like that for years!

> Finally, creating patches by hand with diff can take advantage of other
> options, like annotating the hunk headers with which C functions are
> affected (using the -p flag), and the choice of various algorithms such as
> “patience.”

~~~
u801e
> I think most of these advantages are overblown.

One thing that wasn't mentioned as an advantage of a mailing list is the index
a mail client provides for discussion. This allows one to easily see which
messages have been read, who has responded to whom and the ability to jump to
a particular message in the discussion.

Github, on the other hand, mixes the overall diff with comments, so if there
are a lot of comments, and the diff is large, then it requires a lot of
scrolling to find a given comment. It also takes some time to find a given
comment and see if it someone has responded to it.

------
techntoke
Always wanted to try using email for Git since it is built in and
decentralized. A lot of core Linux projects do this, but I wish there was a
better guide on getting started.

~~~
nix23
Have Fun:

[https://git-send-email.io/](https://git-send-email.io/)

