Dropping in some 2 cents again for what it's worth.
Greets,
Jasper
On 03-05-16 03:03, Tim wrote:
I suppose part of that might be that people who have grown up with the modern
web find IRC and mailing lists archaic and a steep learning curve?
Yeah, might actually be. However for mailing lists I suppose it's
something that is really unavoidable (more or less mandatory for any
involvement).
IMO (unfortunately) IRC is still a main communication tool and somewhat
directly related with being in these (OS/dev/test/etc) circles.
IRC is critical for the development team and to a lesser extent QA, and we will
always continue to have a presence there, since that is where
all the developers are, if you want to talk to other Ubuntu/Debian/Upstream
teams, they are all there (albeit on different servers). Its really
outside these teams, that people just seem avoid it, in fact a number of our
core team members refuse to use IRC and it is really this group
that has embraced Slack. Then you also have the 20odd random users per day that
come onto IRC ask a question and then leave after 30s, because
they did not get an instant response!
Just for clarity's sake, with "unfortunately" I meant that I really
think people should be up there among the others of the community / open
source project world. It's the most open platform you can have, although
indeed people hop in, expect instant answers and are gone after a
minute. Takes some time (years) to get some netiquette down maybe.
Mailing Lists – Generally work well if you constantly follow the messages, many
complain about it being hard to catch up with past discussions,
which I guess is particularily true if you use the web interface.
However, again, this is "classic" to any distro - How come we can't utilize
this properly?
The Mailing lists work great for the medium term type conversations, and again
we wouldnt be about to replace them. However it is not exactly
easy to find past messages, the web interface for the archives is anything but
easy, sure you can use google foo to find message, but then you
are back to the web interface trying to follow one by one a long thread.
I myself never use the web interface - I just filter down any e-mail to
this mailing list to a separate folder and check that from time to time.
Then again, I still am very much for using decent desktop e-mail clients
(Thunderbird and the likes).
IMO the wiki is a huge non-organized mess. Same would go for the website which
is unprofessional and unclear. Luckily the distro speaks for
itself, but the website and wiki do no good as it lowers the quality perception
on the product.
The website is being redesigned now, although this has taken way to long, we
have a great design lined up by the marketing guys. The content
however at this stage remains largely unfinished (we have the home page and
download page and that is about all). We certainly need to improve
the wiki also, but at the same time think about what information goes on the
website, what goes into the wiki, do we duplicate some of the info?
In the current situation, I'd link the website straight to the wiki and
be done with it, as even the wiki looks more 'this is going to be
something I'd like to use'. The quality perception difference between
the website/current "project look" and the actual distro is honestly day
and night (where the distro is doing very well, not so much for the rest).
Even I gave up to for example try and translate the release notes as the path
is super unclear. For example for Fedora I wanted to change some
Dutch translations and literally was able to do so in an hour with the
translation being online the next day.
That is a limit of MoinMoin really. Ubuntu are planning eventually to migrate
the wiki to MediaWiki which I believe has a build in localisation
system.
Ack. Something more easily accessible would be great. There is a very
steep 'contribution wall' that looks quite hard to get through, whereas
the teams in my Fedora example look much more relaxed (and I perceive
that doesn't have a large influence on quality as it's somewhat
self-controlling).
Do the other teams use Discourse? If so, why don't we? More accessible to
everyone than slack imho.
Slack and Discourse are really orthoganal, Slack is really an impoved IRC,
Discourse is more like fusion of mailing-lists and forums, more for
those medium/long term conversations. Ubuntu did setup a Discourse instance,
but it was more aimed at being a social site. There are certainly
FOSS teams using Discourse, although I am not aware of any of the Ubuntu
flavours using it, a number of them have a fairly strong presence on
ubuntu forums which would kind of fill that gap. Most also still use
Blueprints, but often its just the team lead writing down some plans for
the cycle, then that is it.
I am not saying we use Discourse, and I havent really tested it. One
interesting feature it has however is a WIKI mode, where the OP can be
collaboratively edited and then user can provide comments seperately just like
a forum.
Hmm, I know for certainty that Discourse can work decently for 'long
stretched discussions' - It's just not for us I think. It's also a bad
development I think that some refuse to use IRC or 'traditional methods'
in favor of something much less easily accessible (Slack). I do quite
like Slack and Discourse, but I doubt if they're for us do their more
closed nature (well, Slack more than Discourse, the latter still could
be feasible for e.g. newcomers, assuming we can get a lively community
there).
Either way I am certainly not suggesting we rip everything out and start from
scratch, more what can we do to improve and fill in the gaps? If
you strip it right back to the basics we have two areas that really could use
improvement:
1. New Contributors find it really hard to get up to speed. They want to know
things like what has been going on, what are the plans, not just
things like how do I test Ubuntu GNOME or sit down and work out the team
structure. Many potential contributors have come along and just given
up, we need to make it easier for them to get involved.
I very much agree with that. I consider myself one of them. I'd like to
contribute where I can, but as said, I perceive the path to that very
steep and 'unwelcoming' in a way, as if every step you take is carefully
monitored not to harm the project (Which in the end makes for no
contributions at all).
2. There is a real lack of co-ordinated, centrally located and easily
discoverable planning amongst the teams, this tends to get scattered
across email lists, blueprints and IRC discussions. Try and find a list of
tasks that are needing to be completed by each team, you probably
wont because there is nowhere central and easy to record these. The closest you
will come is the list of bugs that need fixing, if you can even
find that.
I am not in those circles, but I assume this is true. Other teams seem
to manage this (and not just in Ubuntu, but everywhere) using various
ways. I guess that really could work for us as well, as long as we all
give things a chance.
Tim
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