bug#20968: 25.0.50; Be able to specify the output directory for `byte-compile-file'

[Alexis]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> What's more, I don't understand why people use those places. 
> The Emacs forums are quite friendly, so there should be no 
> reason for them to avoid us.

Sadly, it seems increasing numbers of people are finding that, 
compared to Web-based fora, email and mailing lists are too much 
hassle / too complicated / too annoying / etc. Some feel that even 
low-traffic lists (say, a few emails per day) are "too much 
email", and filtering is either too complicated for them to set 
up, or simply not available.

i also guess that Web fora might tend to rank higher in search 
engine results than mailing lists; if so, that might result in 
more people signing up for the former than the latter.[1]

Having said that, there are things like the rust-dev mailing being 
abandoned in favour of a Web forum, on the basis that the mailing 
list was "not scalable". i'm not sure how the existence of, say, 
the LKML fits in with that ....

For me, it's easier to follow multiple communities via the 'push' 
mechanism of email than the 'pull' mechanism of Web fora; a number 
of Web fora have poor or non-existent email notifications, so i 
have to rely on a browser extension to regularly check a given 
Web-based discussion for any new or changed content. The increased 
inconvenience means i follow fewer communities nowadays than i 
used to. But my guess is that Web fora are only going to increase 
in importance, and that people will increasingly expect that 
'official' support will be provided via the Web.


Alexis.

[1] i continue to regularly have bad experiences with the "search 
our archives" functionality of mailing lists. i've recently been 
unable to find an email on a mailing list - i can't remember which 
one - which i /knew/ was there, but wasn't discoverable via Google 
or the mailing list search functionality. In the end i resorted to 
trawling through the archives manually, and thus found the email i 
was after.