This was originally supposed to go into another thread, but hey - this is a perfect illustration of what I am going to talk about (to unconfuse Seemant right away - this is not related to your posting but rather to the situation that lead to it). I really was considering sending this as a "theoretical musings" email (pointed at spyderous primarily? he seems to enjoy my rare postings like these :)), but well, looks like I'll have to be somewhat serious for a change.
Executive summary: There is a (by now) well established knowledge on group dynamics depending on its size, involving parameters such as "Dubnar's number" for example. Two references I spotted just recently (well, Ok, they are from 2004 actually :)) can be found below: http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2004/03/what_is_the_opt.html (and here is a more scientific writing, a "base article" for which the above two are kind of illustratory/anecdotal evidence types: http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/05/65/bbs00000565-00/bbs.dunbar.html ) The first two are kind of extreme in their coverage - one talks about MMORG guilds and another about terrorist cells, but hey, who said we are that different ;)? Both talk about social structure/critical sizes of the groups at small and medium scale. Social networks brought together towards implementing some common goal, so I say observations similar to those should apply to us too. It looks like we are now at that tipping point. herdstat tells me we are some 233 developers atm, which sounds damn close to that "magical" number of 150 active group participants (in our case that would correspond to reasonably active "regular" devs, i.e. the ones who do general maintaince, participate in discussions (by at least trying to read them) and at least sometimes emerge from that one small project they are in..). The suggestion "maybe this whole screaming is a something inherent to the group size" has been voiced recently a few times. So yes, to me this indeed seems very likely to be the case. Ironically, the later push to "cleanse" inactive devs, coupled with successfull recruitment may have been the thing that pushed us over (remember, "dead souls" don't count).. So, what is the pont I am trying to make? Well, basically I just want to say that the problem is real and won't go away by periodically screaming "be nice to each other", since it seems to be inherent to a group size. We cannot just reduce our numbers - it does not work this way. If anything, we need *more* people, not less :). However at this point we cannot grow either. The main idea of the original (3rd cited) paper is that this is a real limit, imposed by the amount of "housekeeping interactions" that are needed to sustain a group of that size, "it is the way we are" as species. As you push more people in, more start leaving and for a group to grow past that limit it has to restructure, assume a more diffuse interaction/more role division perhaps? (Similarly, just putting "some *one* at the top won't work either without restructuring the group. In fact it seems to work worse for the groups that are over the "small group limit"). So, yes, we have to adress it, and lets try to do it right. However lets not take this lightly, I sense a lot of fights involved :), but I am optimistic of eventual outcome.. (But don't ask me for a grand plan - I don't have one, I hope evolution forces will help us sort things out :)). George PS. A short short summary of critical group sizes. I really need to refresh my memory on that stuff though.. "Small groups" - 5 to 9, optimal - 7,8 People concentrate on one common problem and interact very closely. "Medium groups" - 25 to 150, optimal 80-90 (but when there is a clear bias to add people (shiny idea/something valuable/commonly recognized as necessary) it is stable at a maximum of ~150). Often involves tight "small subgroups", normally specialized, general interaction is "loose" but still on a personal level (even if not very intensive) "Large groups" - I only remember the upper limit of ~2000 for those and I am rusty on what is the "failing factor". Seems like a Debian situation to me (with most everybody else, us included, stuck at a "medium group" level). Commertial entities often overcome these issues of scale by imposing a "chain-of-command" structure, effectively splitting into smaller subgroups and having a hierarchial structure made of those. However this arrangement is explicitly deemed unsuitable by many developers (according to voiced opinions in the past). I suppose we can think about some loose arrangement of small and medium groups, may be even some minor modifications to our project structure can help (make Top level projects = medium group, subproject = small group). This one is apparent of course, but, as usual, the devil is in the details (people doing work in different areas and, most importantly, how to contain the interaction without prohibiting it..). PPS Sorry, this came out longer than I though, but I believe we need to have at least a clear understanding of the problem. If this brings a smile on somebodie's face, I say I am even :). If somebody takes this seriously, - so much the better.. -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
