Re: [boost] [text] [review] Text formal review result

On 2020-06-27 05:02, Zach Laine via Boost wrote:

On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 6:05 PM Jeff Garland via Boost wrote:

However, where we might improve would be in lowering the bar to entry required just to submit a library for review. These hurdles currently exist:

- This list is not very welcoming.

Personally, I like Boost ML very much, compared to some other mailing lists I'm subscribed to. It has been very professional, technical and helpful over the years that I'm participating, with remarkably little spam, politics, rudeness and personal attacks. I can see it could be intimidating for newcomers to join because of the level of technical scrutiny this list exercises. But that scrutiny ultimately leads to better libraries, which I think is a good thing.

One committee proposal I know of that is exactly the right kind of thing for Boost did not submit to Boost because they felt this list was rude and combative. I don't know the details, so I don't know if this particular complaint is warranted. More generally, this list is hard for outsiders to penetrate; pretty good evidence for this is the fact that we have posts here mostly from the usual suspects, and new voices don't appear very often. I have no suggested fixes for this, unfortunately.

It is true that ML activity has reduced lately, but I suspect that some amount of discussions have simply migrated to other platforms, like GitHub and Slack. Specifically on GitHub, I'll note that some of the bad reputation of Boost comes from the lack of support of some libraries. People create issues and PRs that are left unattended for years, which gives a bad impression of Boost as a whole.