First of all, why would you possibly not want to "deal with mailing lists"? But also: You don't have to. For small contributions, there is no need to deal with mailing lists. Linux kernel development has one of the lowest barriers to entry ever. Except for some weird psychological effect apparently that keeps people from doing the trivial things required to contribute.
I find that mailing lists are such a poor medium for discussion that I participate in zero of them today.
Every time a community switches from a mailing list to a forum (like Elm lang recently), they seem to agree with me.
This statement is often met with nerd rage on HN (“why wouldn’t you want to deal with mailing lists?!”) but it’s something you’ll just have to understand or take for granted if you are going to understand what people want from a Github competitor, for example.
> Every time a community switches from a mailing list to a forum (like Elm lang recently), they seem to agree with me.
I don't disagree, but would point out that the mailing list/forum choice is a false dichotomy. Nix recently switched to using Discourse and I've found it pleasant enough to interact solely through its mailing list mode. Presumably there are other projects which provide a similar dual interface.
> I find that mailing lists are such a poor medium for discussion that I participate in zero of them today.
Which doesn't really answer the question why, does it?
> This statement is often met with nerd rage on HN (“why wouldn’t you want to deal with mailing lists?!”) but it’s something you’ll just have to understand
It's impossible to understand it if people don't explain themselves.
> or take for granted if you are going to understand what people want from a Github competitor, for example.
I personally don't care for a Github competitor that has the same terrible usability as Github, so I am not sure I'd be willing to take for granted some unjustified demand for bad usability.
