| 1 |
On Wednesday 11 of March 2009 19:06:33 Thilo Bangert wrote: |
| 2 |
> my complaint isn't about people using IRC. i object to the way that much |
| 3 |
> of our knowledge, discussion and decision making process appear to have |
| 4 |
> been moved into the temporal black hole that is IRC. |
| 5 |
|
| 6 |
> realtime communication is an valuable tool, but IRC has drawbacks as well. |
| 7 |
> this is alienating a lot of people who dont happen to be on IRC at the |
| 8 |
> right moment/timezone or who dont have the time to be always on. |
| 9 |
|
| 10 |
> it looks like many projects within Gentoo have resorted to a communication |
| 11 |
> process which uses IRC exclusivly. this is unfortunate... |
| 12 |
|
| 13 |
Hard to disagree with this. |
| 14 |
I observed it myself - when I started maintaining ebuilds in overlay, |
| 15 |
consequently I started to use IRC to be in touch with the rest of KDE Gentoo |
| 16 |
team. Unfortunately it has some drawbacks like less my availability on forums |
| 17 |
(and I used it much more often) - to the point that I forgot to update whole |
| 18 |
4.2 release announcement in Desktop Environment (in that sticky "Read before |
| 19 |
posting" thread). |
| 20 |
IRC is black hole definitely and from developers point of view everything looks |
| 21 |
just, as they actively communicating with each other - unfortunately being |
| 22 |
somewhat isolated from the rest of the world. |
| 23 |
This may increase that feeling from typical user point of view - that |
| 24 |
developers are somewhere there cooking something, and there's no way to get to |
| 25 |
them (unless they find about IRC). |
| 26 |
This is the problem as most users used to sweep forums first as it's "medium" |
| 27 |
available for them out of the box - just google for some problem and there you |
| 28 |
are. |
| 29 |
|
| 30 |
Now, important. |
| 31 |
While I don't propose for developers to visit forums - it may be another |
| 32 |
*solution*. |
| 33 |
Developers - they (we/you) already chosen IRC as best/fastest/favourite medium |
| 34 |
for communication apart from mailing list that is - it could stay that way. |
| 35 |
|
| 36 |
Why not integrate more users by creating *Support* *staff* role? |
| 37 |
They could be recruited as typical staff (like moderators) - using staff quiz. |
| 38 |
Their "job" would be to: |
| 39 |
- wander on forums answering user questions |
| 40 |
- poke developers on IRC with some issues (maybe proposed patches) |
| 41 |
- filling bugzilla bugs (they'd need some *basic* bugzilla knowledge - just to |
| 42 |
be able to find whether are such issues already and to properly, descriptively |
| 43 |
create new bug) - not full bugwrangling with assigning and such |
| 44 |
- provide living evidence that "Gentoo is not dying" whatever and has support |
| 45 |
|
| 46 |
They could be given @gentoo.org aliases to make them motivated. |
| 47 |
It would be easier for those alike to become developers later. |
| 48 |
|
| 49 |
There's thread related to user contribution on forums - as reference: |
| 50 |
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-702248.html |
| 51 |
|
| 52 |
(this should rather be discussed on gentoo-project I guess, but nm) |
| 53 |
|
| 54 |
-- |
| 55 |
regards |
| 56 |
MM |
Archives