[Important] New behavior for spam handling on this list

[Steve Litt]

Jean-Marc Lasgouttes via lyx-users said on Thu, 7 Apr 2022 12:23:13
+0200


>> And what's the supposed upside? So non-subscribers can post. Look at
>> any netiquette guide and they'll roundly catcall the clowns who begin
>> or end their message with "please CC me because I'm not on the
>> list."  
>
>The upside is to try to be more welcoming to new users. It is not like 
>we have too many users, do we? As in my answer above, I agree that we 
>shall reconsider if things become unpleasant.

I'm on tons and tons of FOSS mailing lists. From my perspective, the
LyX list is one of the most welcoming to users new and old, and has one
of the most constructive attitudes of all mailing lists. In my
opinion, this list is so welcoming that there's little remaining low
hanging fruit remaining to make the list even more welcoming, so I
still think enabling non-subscribers to post is unnecessary and has
downsides.

<subject_change class="slight">
If we want to grow LyX usage and membership, and I'm not necessarily
saying we should, I think the way to do it is to grow the world's
impression of LyX beyond its perceived niche of scholarly thesis
production. As long as we speak only of PDF output, LyX is
spectacularly suitable for any consistent document beyond five a4 or
letter pages. When used with its defaults, *IT'S JUST EASY*. With
creative custom layouts, it can do almost anything. One of my fiction
books, which jumps all around in time, has the current date of the plot
printed in the header. Don't try this with Libreoffice.

Somebody could make a list of all types of possible long documents.
Legal documents. Books, articles. Specifications. Make a flowchart of
which document class to start out with.

Like every other free software project, LyX is underdocumented. The
lowest hanging fruit you have is to make a single index for all the
documents available under LyX' help menu. Every time I go there to look
something up, I spend 25 minutes going from document to document
looking for the subject. I'm sure I'm not alone. Armed with this index,
the project could credibly claim to have some of the FOSS world's best
documentation. Make the documentation good enough, and newbies will
quickly become evangelists. But wait: There's more...

I never learned to use LyX modules, and have always simply made complex
and detailed local layout files. Others should not follow in my
footsteps, because, from what I've heard, modules are a much easier way
to add specific document capabilities than layout files. There should
be a help=>modules, split into descriptions of how to use every
project-curated module, and how to make your own.

I can see value in a publicity campaign, beamed to the general populace
rather than current LyX users, explaining what fingerpainting is, why
it's bad, why styles-based authoring is good, what styles-based
authoring looks like in general, and how easy it is to do in LyX.

In this section I've merely scratched the surface of ways LyX could
become an everyday tool for millions of people. Just doing a few of
these things would go beyond making LyX welcoming --- they'd make LyX
extremely attractive for the general population.
</subject_change>

SteveT

Steve Litt 
March 2022 featured book: Making Mental Models: Advanced Edition
http://www.troubleshooters.com/mmm