Email Gateway (Aug 19 2022 at 10:18): Email Gateway (Aug 19 2022 at 10:18):From: Christian Sternagel <c.sternagel@gmail.com>
Dear all,
in my opinion we have two distinct issues which got accidentally merged in
http://www.mail-archive.com/isabelle-dev@mailbroy.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/msg03860.html
While I agree with Makarius on
I am more concerned about this wiki here:
https://isabelle.in.tum.de/community since it is provided by one of the
established Isabelle sites.I would still like to see a genuine Isabelle community contributing here,
and doing serious maintenance. Right now it is just a scribbling
board for
people who were discontent with some of the official READMEs or
manuals, and
even that is often pointless already due to continuous updates of the
official versions.
I don't see why isabelle user communication should change from the (in
my opinion) very well working mailing lists to anywhere else. I did
never use stackoverflow or stackexchange myself (i.e., have no account)
but of course occasionally arrive there via web searches. Today I read
their "about" section and it seems to be mostly their goal that
questions get professional answers fast. I would say that is exactly
what is currently happening on the mailing lists.
Of course this is specific to Isabelle. And some of the suggestions in
earlier e-mails did more sound like building a more general community
(e.g., all users of any kind of proof assistant). In principle that
sounds good. A good thing about the current setting is that it is
focused (I do not have enough reading capacity to go through answers
concerning other proof assistants while being concerned with some
isabelle specific question). Of course if questions occurred (on one of
the isabelle lists or any list of another proof assistant) that were not
tool specific, they could be forwarded to this overflow/exchange thingy
(after that was established).
To summarize my opinion. There are the following different issues:
1) Isabelle user communication, including Q&A. (I think: well covered by
the current lists.)
2) Isabelle community content (potentially, tips and tricks, tutorials,
resources, ...) which is currently maintained in a wiki and could be
improved.
3) Building a more general community (not Isabelle specific).
cheers
chris
Email Gateway (Aug 19 2022 at 10:19):From: "Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57 )" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>
Technically speaking, I favour Usenet over mailing list, because I already
follow some other Usenet groups, and using the Isabelle mailing list
through the Gmane interface, often present issues. A mailing list is not
what's the more handy, and I personnaly would better enjoy a forum or a
Usenet group (a real one, not Gname interfacing a mailing list to make it
look like a Usenet group).
This is just a technical matter by the way, nothing wrong with people
here, who I enjoy a lot ;)
Email Gateway (Aug 19 2022 at 10:20):From: John Wickerson <jpw48@cam.ac.uk>
Hi,
Can I just add my two cents on the {mailing-list/stack-exchange/wiki}-issue?
I have often thought that it would be quite nice to move Isabelle support
from the mailing-list to something like Stack Exchange (SE), so I am
pleased to hear it being discussed as a possibility.
SE pages (e.g. [1]) are a pleasure to read (and I reckon that's a big
factor behind the success of SE). In contrast, the Isabelle Wiki [2], to my
mind, looks out-of-date and unappealing. Also, compared to the
mailing-list, code snippets in SE can be formatted as code snippets, and
math symbols can be formatted properly too.
I think SE might be less intimidating to beginners. Maybe it's just me,
but I think the idea of sending a newbie question to any mailing-list,
knowing that it will appear in hundreds of people's inboxes, is
significantly scarier than just posting it on a website (yes, even if those
same people subscribe to the website's feed).
The ability to edit questions and answers would be quite useful. Among
other benefits, questions can be later tagged with keywords, making them
more likely to show up in Google searches.
The reputation system might be quite fun.
As Gottfried has pointed out, the SE idea would only work if all the
support migrates over from the mailing-list. This would be quite a radical
change, and as Chris says, the mailing-list does generally work very well.
A lightweight way to implement this change would be just to start asking
and answering Isabelle questions on Stack Overflow, e.g. here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/isabelle
Alternatively, one could propose a dedicated Isabelle SE site, e.g.:
http://isabelle.stackexchange.com/
cheers,
John
Email Gateway (Aug 19 2022 at 10:20):From: Gergely Buday <gbuday@gmail.com>
John Wickerson wrote:
As Gottfried has pointed out, the SE idea would only work if all the
support migrates over from the mailing-list. This would be quite a radical
change, and as Chris says, the mailing-list does generally work very well.
Isabelle-users is quite academic where a general knowledge of logic,
lambda calculus, rewriting and type systems is expected. A stack
exchange site would be the place where real newbies could pose their
questions. Having the SE site need not empty the mailing list, only
shape it to have mostly power-user discussion. I guess.
Alternatively, one could propose a dedicated Isabelle SE site, e.g.:
http://isabelle.stackexchange.com/
How about a computational logic site, for proof theory, model
checking, theorem proving theory and actual systems question? Isabelle
is too narrow a topic for an SE site. There is a CS and a Theoretical
Computer Science section already:
http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/
Email Gateway (Aug 19 2022 at 10:20):From: Makarius <makarius@sketis.net>
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013, John Wickerson wrote:
As Gottfried has pointed out, the SE idea would only work if all the
support migrates over from the mailing-list. This would be quite a
radical change, and as Chris says, the mailing-list does generally work
very well.
I did not fully understand that reasoning. Gottfried's plan was for a
separate SE site, and that requires substantial community behind it.
Although I like the idea of all prover people joining in one site, they
will probably still be too small and insignificant, even if the
fragmentation is overcome.
A lightweight way to implement this change would be just to start asking
and answering Isabelle questions on Stack Overflow, e.g. here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/isabelle
Indeed, that is already there. Some guys started asking questions and
some other answered them. I don't see any conflict with isabelle-users
here.
Makarius
Last updated: Oct 31 2025 at 20:23 UTC