[DISCUSS] Concerns about the Arrow Slack channel

[Wes McKinney <we...@gmail.com>]

hi all,

I wanted to bring up some concerns I have about the Slack room hosted
at http://apachearrow.slack.com.

Corporate communications have changed a lot in recent years with the
new wave of IRC-like chat systems such as HipChat and Slack. In many
companies, Slack has become a preferred form of communication over
e-mail or other asynchronous messaging tools. This trend is negatively
impacting Apache Arrow in some ways that I will explain.

Initially we created the Arrow Slack channel as a means of secondary
communication, to facilitate real-time discussions and help build the
community. So people, particularly newcomers, are coming to the
project and seeing 4 ways to communicate:

* dev@ Mailing list
* JIRA
* GitHub
* Slack

As a result of broader trends in the world, they are electing to use
Slack as their first, primary channel to interact with the project.
This is bad for many reasons:

* Slack is essentially private. While anyone can join Slack, chats are
not archived in any public place, nor are they searchable through
internet search portals. I do not think it meets the public
communication requirements of Apache projects in general
* We've exceeded the message limit for free Slack channels; upgrading
to a paid Slack plan for Apache Arrow, with 650+ members, would be
very expensive
* Only 3 out of the top 20 Arrow contributors (by # of commits) are
regularly on the Slack channel. I don't use Slack, for example, and I
would rather not be expected to
* We are geo-distributed in many time zones; even if we all used
Slack, synchronous/real-time chat to discuss the project is frequently
impractical

Because of the "real-time" nature of IRC-like systems, people's
discussions and questions get intermingled, so keeping track of
longer-running discussions may be difficult. It's hard to know when
someone's question has been answered or whether people have
sufficiently discussed a particular topic.

Many discussions or questions are by their nature asynchronous, and it
may take 24-72 hours or more for Arrow contributors to make a
thoughtful reply.

As a result of all of this, we are missing opportunities to have
deeper discussions, develop the Arrow roadmap, create new JIRAs to
capture bug reports or feature requests, and other activities of
healthy open source communities. Additionally, the private nature of
Slack is causing organizational knowledge (particularly Q&A / FAQs) to
essentially be lost. Users with questions won't stumble on answers by
searching on Google (as they would with a mailing list or
StackOverflow).

I don't think Slack is necessarily bad for users in a corporate
environment; in many companies it is expected that all people will
have the Slack client open at all times. This isn't the case here,
though.

My strong preference in light of the activity I have been observing on
Slack (which I encourage you to explore yourselves) would be to close
the channel and direct discussions or questions take place on the
mailing list, JIRA, or GitHub (all of which are archived on one or
more ASF mailing lists). Since migrating to Gitbox, we have enabled
GitHub issues on the repository, which has helped lower the barrier
for newcomers, but a large percentage of the time GitHub issues would
be better as JIRA issues or e-mails (which is what the GitHub issue
template says, alas).

Interested to hear the thoughts of others on this.

Thanks,
Wes

Re: [DISCUSS] Concerns about the Arrow Slack channel

[Li Jin <ic...@gmail.com>]

Wes thanks for bringing this up.

+1 from me. I rarely use Slack and mostly use the mailing list for
communication (for the similar reason that Wes mentioned).

Li

On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 4:25 AM, Wes McKinney <we...@gmail.com> wrote:

> hi all,
>
> I wanted to bring up some concerns I have about the Slack room hosted
> at http://apachearrow.slack.com.
>
> Corporate communications have changed a lot in recent years with the
> new wave of IRC-like chat systems such as HipChat and Slack. In many
> companies, Slack has become a preferred form of communication over
> e-mail or other asynchronous messaging tools. This trend is negatively
> impacting Apache Arrow in some ways that I will explain.
>
> Initially we created the Arrow Slack channel as a means of secondary
> communication, to facilitate real-time discussions and help build the
> community. So people, particularly newcomers, are coming to the
> project and seeing 4 ways to communicate:
>
> * dev@ Mailing list
> * JIRA
> * GitHub
> * Slack
>
> As a result of broader trends in the world, they are electing to use
> Slack as their first, primary channel to interact with the project.
> This is bad for many reasons:
>
> * Slack is essentially private. While anyone can join Slack, chats are
> not archived in any public place, nor are they searchable through
> internet search portals. I do not think it meets the public
> communication requirements of Apache projects in general
> * We've exceeded the message limit for free Slack channels; upgrading
> to a paid Slack plan for Apache Arrow, with 650+ members, would be
> very expensive
> * Only 3 out of the top 20 Arrow contributors (by # of commits) are
> regularly on the Slack channel. I don't use Slack, for example, and I
> would rather not be expected to
> * We are geo-distributed in many time zones; even if we all used
> Slack, synchronous/real-time chat to discuss the project is frequently
> impractical
>
> Because of the "real-time" nature of IRC-like systems, people's
> discussions and questions get intermingled, so keeping track of
> longer-running discussions may be difficult. It's hard to know when
> someone's question has been answered or whether people have
> sufficiently discussed a particular topic.
>
> Many discussions or questions are by their nature asynchronous, and it
> may take 24-72 hours or more for Arrow contributors to make a
> thoughtful reply.
>
> As a result of all of this, we are missing opportunities to have
> deeper discussions, develop the Arrow roadmap, create new JIRAs to
> capture bug reports or feature requests, and other activities of
> healthy open source communities. Additionally, the private nature of
> Slack is causing organizational knowledge (particularly Q&A / FAQs) to
> essentially be lost. Users with questions won't stumble on answers by
> searching on Google (as they would with a mailing list or
> StackOverflow).
>
> I don't think Slack is necessarily bad for users in a corporate
> environment; in many companies it is expected that all people will
> have the Slack client open at all times. This isn't the case here,
> though.
>
> My strong preference in light of the activity I have been observing on
> Slack (which I encourage you to explore yourselves) would be to close
> the channel and direct discussions or questions take place on the
> mailing list, JIRA, or GitHub (all of which are archived on one or
> more ASF mailing lists). Since migrating to Gitbox, we have enabled
> GitHub issues on the repository, which has helped lower the barrier
> for newcomers, but a large percentage of the time GitHub issues would
> be better as JIRA issues or e-mails (which is what the GitHub issue
> template says, alas).
>
> Interested to hear the thoughts of others on this.
>
> Thanks,
> Wes
>

Re: [DISCUSS] Concerns about the Arrow Slack channel

[Ivan Ogasawara <iv...@quansight.com>]

+1 for dropping slack

On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 11:54 AM, Anthony Scopatz <sc...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I am +1 for dropping slack as well, for all of the reasons mentioned.
>
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 11:53 AM Dhruv Madeka <ma...@nyu.edu> wrote:
>
> > Here's my best guess, emails force everyone on the list to read it, so
> they
> > have to meet a higher bar of importance?
> >
> > Pure guess there, im just channeling my experiences- I dont mind mailing
> > dev lists personally
> >
> > Dhruv
> >
> > On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 11:28 AM, Phillip Cloud <cp...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > > Dhruv,
> > >
> > > I'm curious why the dev mailing list is considered intrusive. Can you
> > > expand a bit on that? I've always thought of mailing lists to be *the*
> > > place where people go to ask questions about a project in a way that is
> > > open to all. They are also archived and organized in some way that
> makes
> > it
> > > easy to go back and look at specific topics without having to piece
> > > together a topic's history from a large tapestry of interactions. If
> > > anything, I view chat as *more* intrusive since there's IMO an
> > expectation
> > > of a faster response given that chat is real-time.
> > >
> > > On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 11:13 AM Dhruv Madeka <ma...@nyu.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Not to jump in too randomly, but for jupyter-widgets/bqplot
> > > > <https://github.com/bloomberg/bqplot> - we haven't found an optimal
> > > > solution to this.
> > > >
> > > > - The dev mailing list is often considered to be intrusive
> > > > - GitHub issues arent really used for simple questions or non-bug
> fixes
> > > > - Gitter remains our most popular source of questions, which suffers
> a
> > > lot
> > > > of the problems of Slack outlined in Wes' email
> > > >
> > > > We're considering discuss forums, specially after the large success
> of
> > > the
> > > > PyTorch <https://discuss.pytorch.org> and MXNet <
> > > https://discuss.mxnet.io>
> > > > forums for building community, allowing comfort in asking simple
> > > questions
> > > > and being stored/googleable
> > > >
> > > > Dhruv
> > > >
> > > > On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 4:25 AM, Wes McKinney <we...@gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > hi all,
> > > > >
> > > > > I wanted to bring up some concerns I have about the Slack room
> hosted
> > > > > at http://apachearrow.slack.com.
> > > > >
> > > > > Corporate communications have changed a lot in recent years with
> the
> > > > > new wave of IRC-like chat systems such as HipChat and Slack. In
> many
> > > > > companies, Slack has become a preferred form of communication over
> > > > > e-mail or other asynchronous messaging tools. This trend is
> > negatively
> > > > > impacting Apache Arrow in some ways that I will explain.
> > > > >
> > > > > Initially we created the Arrow Slack channel as a means of
> secondary
> > > > > communication, to facilitate real-time discussions and help build
> the
> > > > > community. So people, particularly newcomers, are coming to the
> > > > > project and seeing 4 ways to communicate:
> > > > >
> > > > > * dev@ Mailing list
> > > > > * JIRA
> > > > > * GitHub
> > > > > * Slack
> > > > >
> > > > > As a result of broader trends in the world, they are electing to
> use
> > > > > Slack as their first, primary channel to interact with the project.
> > > > > This is bad for many reasons:
> > > > >
> > > > > * Slack is essentially private. While anyone can join Slack, chats
> > are
> > > > > not archived in any public place, nor are they searchable through
> > > > > internet search portals. I do not think it meets the public
> > > > > communication requirements of Apache projects in general
> > > > > * We've exceeded the message limit for free Slack channels;
> upgrading
> > > > > to a paid Slack plan for Apache Arrow, with 650+ members, would be
> > > > > very expensive
> > > > > * Only 3 out of the top 20 Arrow contributors (by # of commits) are
> > > > > regularly on the Slack channel. I don't use Slack, for example,
> and I
> > > > > would rather not be expected to
> > > > > * We are geo-distributed in many time zones; even if we all used
> > > > > Slack, synchronous/real-time chat to discuss the project is
> > frequently
> > > > > impractical
> > > > >
> > > > > Because of the "real-time" nature of IRC-like systems, people's
> > > > > discussions and questions get intermingled, so keeping track of
> > > > > longer-running discussions may be difficult. It's hard to know when
> > > > > someone's question has been answered or whether people have
> > > > > sufficiently discussed a particular topic.
> > > > >
> > > > > Many discussions or questions are by their nature asynchronous, and
> > it
> > > > > may take 24-72 hours or more for Arrow contributors to make a
> > > > > thoughtful reply.
> > > > >
> > > > > As a result of all of this, we are missing opportunities to have
> > > > > deeper discussions, develop the Arrow roadmap, create new JIRAs to
> > > > > capture bug reports or feature requests, and other activities of
> > > > > healthy open source communities. Additionally, the private nature
> of
> > > > > Slack is causing organizational knowledge (particularly Q&A / FAQs)
> > to
> > > > > essentially be lost. Users with questions won't stumble on answers
> by
> > > > > searching on Google (as they would with a mailing list or
> > > > > StackOverflow).
> > > > >
> > > > > I don't think Slack is necessarily bad for users in a corporate
> > > > > environment; in many companies it is expected that all people will
> > > > > have the Slack client open at all times. This isn't the case here,
> > > > > though.
> > > > >
> > > > > My strong preference in light of the activity I have been observing
> > on
> > > > > Slack (which I encourage you to explore yourselves) would be to
> close
> > > > > the channel and direct discussions or questions take place on the
> > > > > mailing list, JIRA, or GitHub (all of which are archived on one or
> > > > > more ASF mailing lists). Since migrating to Gitbox, we have enabled
> > > > > GitHub issues on the repository, which has helped lower the barrier
> > > > > for newcomers, but a large percentage of the time GitHub issues
> would
> > > > > be better as JIRA issues or e-mails (which is what the GitHub issue
> > > > > template says, alas).
> > > > >
> > > > > Interested to hear the thoughts of others on this.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thanks,
> > > > > Wes
> > > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> --
>
> Asst. Prof. Anthony Scopatz
> Nuclear Engineering Program
> Mechanical Engineering Dept.
> University of South Carolina
> scopatz@cec.sc.edu
> Cell: (512) 827-8239
> Book a meeting with me at https://scopatz.youcanbook.me/
> Open up an issue: https://github.com/scopatz/me/issues
> Check my calendar
> <https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=scopatz%40gmail.com>
>

Re: [DISCUSS] Concerns about the Arrow Slack channel

[Anthony Scopatz <sc...@gmail.com>]

I am +1 for dropping slack as well, for all of the reasons mentioned.

On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 11:53 AM Dhruv Madeka <ma...@nyu.edu> wrote:

> Here's my best guess, emails force everyone on the list to read it, so they
> have to meet a higher bar of importance?
>
> Pure guess there, im just channeling my experiences- I dont mind mailing
> dev lists personally
>
> Dhruv
>
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 11:28 AM, Phillip Cloud <cp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Dhruv,
> >
> > I'm curious why the dev mailing list is considered intrusive. Can you
> > expand a bit on that? I've always thought of mailing lists to be *the*
> > place where people go to ask questions about a project in a way that is
> > open to all. They are also archived and organized in some way that makes
> it
> > easy to go back and look at specific topics without having to piece
> > together a topic's history from a large tapestry of interactions. If
> > anything, I view chat as *more* intrusive since there's IMO an
> expectation
> > of a faster response given that chat is real-time.
> >
> > On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 11:13 AM Dhruv Madeka <ma...@nyu.edu> wrote:
> >
> > > Not to jump in too randomly, but for jupyter-widgets/bqplot
> > > <https://github.com/bloomberg/bqplot> - we haven't found an optimal
> > > solution to this.
> > >
> > > - The dev mailing list is often considered to be intrusive
> > > - GitHub issues arent really used for simple questions or non-bug fixes
> > > - Gitter remains our most popular source of questions, which suffers a
> > lot
> > > of the problems of Slack outlined in Wes' email
> > >
> > > We're considering discuss forums, specially after the large success of
> > the
> > > PyTorch <https://discuss.pytorch.org> and MXNet <
> > https://discuss.mxnet.io>
> > > forums for building community, allowing comfort in asking simple
> > questions
> > > and being stored/googleable
> > >
> > > Dhruv
> > >
> > > On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 4:25 AM, Wes McKinney <we...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > > hi all,
> > > >
> > > > I wanted to bring up some concerns I have about the Slack room hosted
> > > > at http://apachearrow.slack.com.
> > > >
> > > > Corporate communications have changed a lot in recent years with the
> > > > new wave of IRC-like chat systems such as HipChat and Slack. In many
> > > > companies, Slack has become a preferred form of communication over
> > > > e-mail or other asynchronous messaging tools. This trend is
> negatively
> > > > impacting Apache Arrow in some ways that I will explain.
> > > >
> > > > Initially we created the Arrow Slack channel as a means of secondary
> > > > communication, to facilitate real-time discussions and help build the
> > > > community. So people, particularly newcomers, are coming to the
> > > > project and seeing 4 ways to communicate:
> > > >
> > > > * dev@ Mailing list
> > > > * JIRA
> > > > * GitHub
> > > > * Slack
> > > >
> > > > As a result of broader trends in the world, they are electing to use
> > > > Slack as their first, primary channel to interact with the project.
> > > > This is bad for many reasons:
> > > >
> > > > * Slack is essentially private. While anyone can join Slack, chats
> are
> > > > not archived in any public place, nor are they searchable through
> > > > internet search portals. I do not think it meets the public
> > > > communication requirements of Apache projects in general
> > > > * We've exceeded the message limit for free Slack channels; upgrading
> > > > to a paid Slack plan for Apache Arrow, with 650+ members, would be
> > > > very expensive
> > > > * Only 3 out of the top 20 Arrow contributors (by # of commits) are
> > > > regularly on the Slack channel. I don't use Slack, for example, and I
> > > > would rather not be expected to
> > > > * We are geo-distributed in many time zones; even if we all used
> > > > Slack, synchronous/real-time chat to discuss the project is
> frequently
> > > > impractical
> > > >
> > > > Because of the "real-time" nature of IRC-like systems, people's
> > > > discussions and questions get intermingled, so keeping track of
> > > > longer-running discussions may be difficult. It's hard to know when
> > > > someone's question has been answered or whether people have
> > > > sufficiently discussed a particular topic.
> > > >
> > > > Many discussions or questions are by their nature asynchronous, and
> it
> > > > may take 24-72 hours or more for Arrow contributors to make a
> > > > thoughtful reply.
> > > >
> > > > As a result of all of this, we are missing opportunities to have
> > > > deeper discussions, develop the Arrow roadmap, create new JIRAs to
> > > > capture bug reports or feature requests, and other activities of
> > > > healthy open source communities. Additionally, the private nature of
> > > > Slack is causing organizational knowledge (particularly Q&A / FAQs)
> to
> > > > essentially be lost. Users with questions won't stumble on answers by
> > > > searching on Google (as they would with a mailing list or
> > > > StackOverflow).
> > > >
> > > > I don't think Slack is necessarily bad for users in a corporate
> > > > environment; in many companies it is expected that all people will
> > > > have the Slack client open at all times. This isn't the case here,
> > > > though.
> > > >
> > > > My strong preference in light of the activity I have been observing
> on
> > > > Slack (which I encourage you to explore yourselves) would be to close
> > > > the channel and direct discussions or questions take place on the
> > > > mailing list, JIRA, or GitHub (all of which are archived on one or
> > > > more ASF mailing lists). Since migrating to Gitbox, we have enabled
> > > > GitHub issues on the repository, which has helped lower the barrier
> > > > for newcomers, but a large percentage of the time GitHub issues would
> > > > be better as JIRA issues or e-mails (which is what the GitHub issue
> > > > template says, alas).
> > > >
> > > > Interested to hear the thoughts of others on this.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > Wes
> > > >
> > >
> >
>
-- 

Asst. Prof. Anthony Scopatz
Nuclear Engineering Program
Mechanical Engineering Dept.
University of South Carolina
scopatz@cec.sc.edu
Cell: (512) 827-8239
Book a meeting with me at https://scopatz.youcanbook.me/
Open up an issue: https://github.com/scopatz/me/issues
Check my calendar
<https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=scopatz%40gmail.com>

Re: [DISCUSS] Concerns about the Arrow Slack channel

[Dhruv Madeka <ma...@nyu.edu>]

Here's my best guess, emails force everyone on the list to read it, so they
have to meet a higher bar of importance?

Pure guess there, im just channeling my experiences- I dont mind mailing
dev lists personally

Dhruv

On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 11:28 AM, Phillip Cloud <cp...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dhruv,
>
> I'm curious why the dev mailing list is considered intrusive. Can you
> expand a bit on that? I've always thought of mailing lists to be *the*
> place where people go to ask questions about a project in a way that is
> open to all. They are also archived and organized in some way that makes it
> easy to go back and look at specific topics without having to piece
> together a topic's history from a large tapestry of interactions. If
> anything, I view chat as *more* intrusive since there's IMO an expectation
> of a faster response given that chat is real-time.
>
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 11:13 AM Dhruv Madeka <ma...@nyu.edu> wrote:
>
> > Not to jump in too randomly, but for jupyter-widgets/bqplot
> > <https://github.com/bloomberg/bqplot> - we haven't found an optimal
> > solution to this.
> >
> > - The dev mailing list is often considered to be intrusive
> > - GitHub issues arent really used for simple questions or non-bug fixes
> > - Gitter remains our most popular source of questions, which suffers a
> lot
> > of the problems of Slack outlined in Wes' email
> >
> > We're considering discuss forums, specially after the large success of
> the
> > PyTorch <https://discuss.pytorch.org> and MXNet <
> https://discuss.mxnet.io>
> > forums for building community, allowing comfort in asking simple
> questions
> > and being stored/googleable
> >
> > Dhruv
> >
> > On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 4:25 AM, Wes McKinney <we...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > > hi all,
> > >
> > > I wanted to bring up some concerns I have about the Slack room hosted
> > > at http://apachearrow.slack.com.
> > >
> > > Corporate communications have changed a lot in recent years with the
> > > new wave of IRC-like chat systems such as HipChat and Slack. In many
> > > companies, Slack has become a preferred form of communication over
> > > e-mail or other asynchronous messaging tools. This trend is negatively
> > > impacting Apache Arrow in some ways that I will explain.
> > >
> > > Initially we created the Arrow Slack channel as a means of secondary
> > > communication, to facilitate real-time discussions and help build the
> > > community. So people, particularly newcomers, are coming to the
> > > project and seeing 4 ways to communicate:
> > >
> > > * dev@ Mailing list
> > > * JIRA
> > > * GitHub
> > > * Slack
> > >
> > > As a result of broader trends in the world, they are electing to use
> > > Slack as their first, primary channel to interact with the project.
> > > This is bad for many reasons:
> > >
> > > * Slack is essentially private. While anyone can join Slack, chats are
> > > not archived in any public place, nor are they searchable through
> > > internet search portals. I do not think it meets the public
> > > communication requirements of Apache projects in general
> > > * We've exceeded the message limit for free Slack channels; upgrading
> > > to a paid Slack plan for Apache Arrow, with 650+ members, would be
> > > very expensive
> > > * Only 3 out of the top 20 Arrow contributors (by # of commits) are
> > > regularly on the Slack channel. I don't use Slack, for example, and I
> > > would rather not be expected to
> > > * We are geo-distributed in many time zones; even if we all used
> > > Slack, synchronous/real-time chat to discuss the project is frequently
> > > impractical
> > >
> > > Because of the "real-time" nature of IRC-like systems, people's
> > > discussions and questions get intermingled, so keeping track of
> > > longer-running discussions may be difficult. It's hard to know when
> > > someone's question has been answered or whether people have
> > > sufficiently discussed a particular topic.
> > >
> > > Many discussions or questions are by their nature asynchronous, and it
> > > may take 24-72 hours or more for Arrow contributors to make a
> > > thoughtful reply.
> > >
> > > As a result of all of this, we are missing opportunities to have
> > > deeper discussions, develop the Arrow roadmap, create new JIRAs to
> > > capture bug reports or feature requests, and other activities of
> > > healthy open source communities. Additionally, the private nature of
> > > Slack is causing organizational knowledge (particularly Q&A / FAQs) to
> > > essentially be lost. Users with questions won't stumble on answers by
> > > searching on Google (as they would with a mailing list or
> > > StackOverflow).
> > >
> > > I don't think Slack is necessarily bad for users in a corporate
> > > environment; in many companies it is expected that all people will
> > > have the Slack client open at all times. This isn't the case here,
> > > though.
> > >
> > > My strong preference in light of the activity I have been observing on
> > > Slack (which I encourage you to explore yourselves) would be to close
> > > the channel and direct discussions or questions take place on the
> > > mailing list, JIRA, or GitHub (all of which are archived on one or
> > > more ASF mailing lists). Since migrating to Gitbox, we have enabled
> > > GitHub issues on the repository, which has helped lower the barrier
> > > for newcomers, but a large percentage of the time GitHub issues would
> > > be better as JIRA issues or e-mails (which is what the GitHub issue
> > > template says, alas).
> > >
> > > Interested to hear the thoughts of others on this.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Wes
> > >
> >
>

Re: [DISCUSS] Concerns about the Arrow Slack channel

[Phillip Cloud <cp...@gmail.com>]

Dhruv,

I'm curious why the dev mailing list is considered intrusive. Can you
expand a bit on that? I've always thought of mailing lists to be *the*
place where people go to ask questions about a project in a way that is
open to all. They are also archived and organized in some way that makes it
easy to go back and look at specific topics without having to piece
together a topic's history from a large tapestry of interactions. If
anything, I view chat as *more* intrusive since there's IMO an expectation
of a faster response given that chat is real-time.

On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 11:13 AM Dhruv Madeka <ma...@nyu.edu> wrote:

> Not to jump in too randomly, but for jupyter-widgets/bqplot
> <https://github.com/bloomberg/bqplot> - we haven't found an optimal
> solution to this.
>
> - The dev mailing list is often considered to be intrusive
> - GitHub issues arent really used for simple questions or non-bug fixes
> - Gitter remains our most popular source of questions, which suffers a lot
> of the problems of Slack outlined in Wes' email
>
> We're considering discuss forums, specially after the large success of the
> PyTorch <https://discuss.pytorch.org> and MXNet <https://discuss.mxnet.io>
> forums for building community, allowing comfort in asking simple questions
> and being stored/googleable
>
> Dhruv
>
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 4:25 AM, Wes McKinney <we...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > hi all,
> >
> > I wanted to bring up some concerns I have about the Slack room hosted
> > at http://apachearrow.slack.com.
> >
> > Corporate communications have changed a lot in recent years with the
> > new wave of IRC-like chat systems such as HipChat and Slack. In many
> > companies, Slack has become a preferred form of communication over
> > e-mail or other asynchronous messaging tools. This trend is negatively
> > impacting Apache Arrow in some ways that I will explain.
> >
> > Initially we created the Arrow Slack channel as a means of secondary
> > communication, to facilitate real-time discussions and help build the
> > community. So people, particularly newcomers, are coming to the
> > project and seeing 4 ways to communicate:
> >
> > * dev@ Mailing list
> > * JIRA
> > * GitHub
> > * Slack
> >
> > As a result of broader trends in the world, they are electing to use
> > Slack as their first, primary channel to interact with the project.
> > This is bad for many reasons:
> >
> > * Slack is essentially private. While anyone can join Slack, chats are
> > not archived in any public place, nor are they searchable through
> > internet search portals. I do not think it meets the public
> > communication requirements of Apache projects in general
> > * We've exceeded the message limit for free Slack channels; upgrading
> > to a paid Slack plan for Apache Arrow, with 650+ members, would be
> > very expensive
> > * Only 3 out of the top 20 Arrow contributors (by # of commits) are
> > regularly on the Slack channel. I don't use Slack, for example, and I
> > would rather not be expected to
> > * We are geo-distributed in many time zones; even if we all used
> > Slack, synchronous/real-time chat to discuss the project is frequently
> > impractical
> >
> > Because of the "real-time" nature of IRC-like systems, people's
> > discussions and questions get intermingled, so keeping track of
> > longer-running discussions may be difficult. It's hard to know when
> > someone's question has been answered or whether people have
> > sufficiently discussed a particular topic.
> >
> > Many discussions or questions are by their nature asynchronous, and it
> > may take 24-72 hours or more for Arrow contributors to make a
> > thoughtful reply.
> >
> > As a result of all of this, we are missing opportunities to have
> > deeper discussions, develop the Arrow roadmap, create new JIRAs to
> > capture bug reports or feature requests, and other activities of
> > healthy open source communities. Additionally, the private nature of
> > Slack is causing organizational knowledge (particularly Q&A / FAQs) to
> > essentially be lost. Users with questions won't stumble on answers by
> > searching on Google (as they would with a mailing list or
> > StackOverflow).
> >
> > I don't think Slack is necessarily bad for users in a corporate
> > environment; in many companies it is expected that all people will
> > have the Slack client open at all times. This isn't the case here,
> > though.
> >
> > My strong preference in light of the activity I have been observing on
> > Slack (which I encourage you to explore yourselves) would be to close
> > the channel and direct discussions or questions take place on the
> > mailing list, JIRA, or GitHub (all of which are archived on one or
> > more ASF mailing lists). Since migrating to Gitbox, we have enabled
> > GitHub issues on the repository, which has helped lower the barrier
> > for newcomers, but a large percentage of the time GitHub issues would
> > be better as JIRA issues or e-mails (which is what the GitHub issue
> > template says, alas).
> >
> > Interested to hear the thoughts of others on this.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Wes
> >
>

Re: [DISCUSS] Concerns about the Arrow Slack channel

[Dhruv Madeka <ma...@nyu.edu>]

Not to jump in too randomly, but for jupyter-widgets/bqplot
<https://github.com/bloomberg/bqplot> - we haven't found an optimal
solution to this.

- The dev mailing list is often considered to be intrusive
- GitHub issues arent really used for simple questions or non-bug fixes
- Gitter remains our most popular source of questions, which suffers a lot
of the problems of Slack outlined in Wes' email

We're considering discuss forums, specially after the large success of the
PyTorch <https://discuss.pytorch.org> and MXNet <https://discuss.mxnet.io>
forums for building community, allowing comfort in asking simple questions
and being stored/googleable

Dhruv

On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 4:25 AM, Wes McKinney <we...@gmail.com> wrote:

> hi all,
>
> I wanted to bring up some concerns I have about the Slack room hosted
> at http://apachearrow.slack.com.
>
> Corporate communications have changed a lot in recent years with the
> new wave of IRC-like chat systems such as HipChat and Slack. In many
> companies, Slack has become a preferred form of communication over
> e-mail or other asynchronous messaging tools. This trend is negatively
> impacting Apache Arrow in some ways that I will explain.
>
> Initially we created the Arrow Slack channel as a means of secondary
> communication, to facilitate real-time discussions and help build the
> community. So people, particularly newcomers, are coming to the
> project and seeing 4 ways to communicate:
>
> * dev@ Mailing list
> * JIRA
> * GitHub
> * Slack
>
> As a result of broader trends in the world, they are electing to use
> Slack as their first, primary channel to interact with the project.
> This is bad for many reasons:
>
> * Slack is essentially private. While anyone can join Slack, chats are
> not archived in any public place, nor are they searchable through
> internet search portals. I do not think it meets the public
> communication requirements of Apache projects in general
> * We've exceeded the message limit for free Slack channels; upgrading
> to a paid Slack plan for Apache Arrow, with 650+ members, would be
> very expensive
> * Only 3 out of the top 20 Arrow contributors (by # of commits) are
> regularly on the Slack channel. I don't use Slack, for example, and I
> would rather not be expected to
> * We are geo-distributed in many time zones; even if we all used
> Slack, synchronous/real-time chat to discuss the project is frequently
> impractical
>
> Because of the "real-time" nature of IRC-like systems, people's
> discussions and questions get intermingled, so keeping track of
> longer-running discussions may be difficult. It's hard to know when
> someone's question has been answered or whether people have
> sufficiently discussed a particular topic.
>
> Many discussions or questions are by their nature asynchronous, and it
> may take 24-72 hours or more for Arrow contributors to make a
> thoughtful reply.
>
> As a result of all of this, we are missing opportunities to have
> deeper discussions, develop the Arrow roadmap, create new JIRAs to
> capture bug reports or feature requests, and other activities of
> healthy open source communities. Additionally, the private nature of
> Slack is causing organizational knowledge (particularly Q&A / FAQs) to
> essentially be lost. Users with questions won't stumble on answers by
> searching on Google (as they would with a mailing list or
> StackOverflow).
>
> I don't think Slack is necessarily bad for users in a corporate
> environment; in many companies it is expected that all people will
> have the Slack client open at all times. This isn't the case here,
> though.
>
> My strong preference in light of the activity I have been observing on
> Slack (which I encourage you to explore yourselves) would be to close
> the channel and direct discussions or questions take place on the
> mailing list, JIRA, or GitHub (all of which are archived on one or
> more ASF mailing lists). Since migrating to Gitbox, we have enabled
> GitHub issues on the repository, which has helped lower the barrier
> for newcomers, but a large percentage of the time GitHub issues would
> be better as JIRA issues or e-mails (which is what the GitHub issue
> template says, alas).
>
> Interested to hear the thoughts of others on this.
>
> Thanks,
> Wes
>

Re: [DISCUSS] Concerns about the Arrow Slack channel

[Dhruv Madeka <ma...@nyu.edu>]

The issue with discourse is that you either have to host it or pay for them
to host it

but still +1 for discourse, its a really nice format (I actually +1'ed the
PyTorch forum on this thread too)

Dhruv

On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 2:09 PM, Travis Oliphant <tr...@quansight.com>
wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I'll be chiming in from time to time as Anthony Scopatz and I help
> several people from Quansight become more integrated to community
> Arrow development.  I'm a fan of Arrow's goals and have similar goals
> for a cousin project called http://xnd.io.  I'm eager to find ways to
> collaborate on the compute infrastructure between the two projects, in
> particular, for example.
>
> Here is my $0.02 on this issue,
>
> Chat rooms can be a useful mechanism for engaging with new developers.
> However, Slack itself does not really allow for the kind of
> large-scale community participation that Gitter allows for.  If you
> have a chat room I recommend Gitter.
>
> All that said, I would personally favor a discourse
> (https://www.discourse.org/) solution over chat rooms.  I've noticed
> several younger folks not really liking the mailing lists and seeking
> out chat rooms first --- the success of pytorch, mxnet communities
> indicate that perhaps they could be encouraged to use something like
> discourse.
>
> On a related note, could someone help me understand the relationship
> between Github Issues and JIRA issues? Is one preferred?  I understand
> that contributions to the code are recommended as PRs on Github.  Does
> that mean a branch at Github is considered to be the primary
> repository, or is there another place that code has to go to be
> official?  I suspect this is all documented somewhere. I would welcome
> a simple link to the right place to read.
>
> Thank you,
>
> -Travis
>
>
> ---
> Travis Oliphant
> Quansight
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 3:25 AM, Wes McKinney <we...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > hi all,
> >
> > I wanted to bring up some concerns I have about the Slack room hosted
> > at http://apachearrow.slack.com.
> >
> > Corporate communications have changed a lot in recent years with the
> > new wave of IRC-like chat systems such as HipChat and Slack. In many
> > companies, Slack has become a preferred form of communication over
> > e-mail or other asynchronous messaging tools. This trend is negatively
> > impacting Apache Arrow in some ways that I will explain.
> >
> > Initially we created the Arrow Slack channel as a means of secondary
> > communication, to facilitate real-time discussions and help build the
> > community. So people, particularly newcomers, are coming to the
> > project and seeing 4 ways to communicate:
> >
> > * dev@ Mailing list
> > * JIRA
> > * GitHub
> > * Slack
> >
> > As a result of broader trends in the world, they are electing to use
> > Slack as their first, primary channel to interact with the project.
> > This is bad for many reasons:
> >
> > * Slack is essentially private. While anyone can join Slack, chats are
> > not archived in any public place, nor are they searchable through
> > internet search portals. I do not think it meets the public
> > communication requirements of Apache projects in general
> > * We've exceeded the message limit for free Slack channels; upgrading
> > to a paid Slack plan for Apache Arrow, with 650+ members, would be
> > very expensive
> > * Only 3 out of the top 20 Arrow contributors (by # of commits) are
> > regularly on the Slack channel. I don't use Slack, for example, and I
> > would rather not be expected to
> > * We are geo-distributed in many time zones; even if we all used
> > Slack, synchronous/real-time chat to discuss the project is frequently
> > impractical
> >
> > Because of the "real-time" nature of IRC-like systems, people's
> > discussions and questions get intermingled, so keeping track of
> > longer-running discussions may be difficult. It's hard to know when
> > someone's question has been answered or whether people have
> > sufficiently discussed a particular topic.
> >
> > Many discussions or questions are by their nature asynchronous, and it
> > may take 24-72 hours or more for Arrow contributors to make a
> > thoughtful reply.
> >
> > As a result of all of this, we are missing opportunities to have
> > deeper discussions, develop the Arrow roadmap, create new JIRAs to
> > capture bug reports or feature requests, and other activities of
> > healthy open source communities. Additionally, the private nature of
> > Slack is causing organizational knowledge (particularly Q&A / FAQs) to
> > essentially be lost. Users with questions won't stumble on answers by
> > searching on Google (as they would with a mailing list or
> > StackOverflow).
> >
> > I don't think Slack is necessarily bad for users in a corporate
> > environment; in many companies it is expected that all people will
> > have the Slack client open at all times. This isn't the case here,
> > though.
> >
> > My strong preference in light of the activity I have been observing on
> > Slack (which I encourage you to explore yourselves) would be to close
> > the channel and direct discussions or questions take place on the
> > mailing list, JIRA, or GitHub (all of which are archived on one or
> > more ASF mailing lists). Since migrating to Gitbox, we have enabled
> > GitHub issues on the repository, which has helped lower the barrier
> > for newcomers, but a large percentage of the time GitHub issues would
> > be better as JIRA issues or e-mails (which is what the GitHub issue
> > template says, alas).
> >
> > Interested to hear the thoughts of others on this.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Wes
>

Re: [DISCUSS] Concerns about the Arrow Slack channel

[Travis Oliphant <tr...@quansight.com>]

Hi everyone,

I'll be chiming in from time to time as Anthony Scopatz and I help
several people from Quansight become more integrated to community
Arrow development.  I'm a fan of Arrow's goals and have similar goals
for a cousin project called http://xnd.io.  I'm eager to find ways to
collaborate on the compute infrastructure between the two projects, in
particular, for example.

Here is my $0.02 on this issue,

Chat rooms can be a useful mechanism for engaging with new developers.
However, Slack itself does not really allow for the kind of
large-scale community participation that Gitter allows for.  If you
have a chat room I recommend Gitter.

All that said, I would personally favor a discourse
(https://www.discourse.org/) solution over chat rooms.  I've noticed
several younger folks not really liking the mailing lists and seeking
out chat rooms first --- the success of pytorch, mxnet communities
indicate that perhaps they could be encouraged to use something like
discourse.

On a related note, could someone help me understand the relationship
between Github Issues and JIRA issues? Is one preferred?  I understand
that contributions to the code are recommended as PRs on Github.  Does
that mean a branch at Github is considered to be the primary
repository, or is there another place that code has to go to be
official?  I suspect this is all documented somewhere. I would welcome
a simple link to the right place to read.

Thank you,

-Travis


---
Travis Oliphant
Quansight


On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 3:25 AM, Wes McKinney <we...@gmail.com> wrote:
> hi all,
>
> I wanted to bring up some concerns I have about the Slack room hosted
> at http://apachearrow.slack.com.
>
> Corporate communications have changed a lot in recent years with the
> new wave of IRC-like chat systems such as HipChat and Slack. In many
> companies, Slack has become a preferred form of communication over
> e-mail or other asynchronous messaging tools. This trend is negatively
> impacting Apache Arrow in some ways that I will explain.
>
> Initially we created the Arrow Slack channel as a means of secondary
> communication, to facilitate real-time discussions and help build the
> community. So people, particularly newcomers, are coming to the
> project and seeing 4 ways to communicate:
>
> * dev@ Mailing list
> * JIRA
> * GitHub
> * Slack
>
> As a result of broader trends in the world, they are electing to use
> Slack as their first, primary channel to interact with the project.
> This is bad for many reasons:
>
> * Slack is essentially private. While anyone can join Slack, chats are
> not archived in any public place, nor are they searchable through
> internet search portals. I do not think it meets the public
> communication requirements of Apache projects in general
> * We've exceeded the message limit for free Slack channels; upgrading
> to a paid Slack plan for Apache Arrow, with 650+ members, would be
> very expensive
> * Only 3 out of the top 20 Arrow contributors (by # of commits) are
> regularly on the Slack channel. I don't use Slack, for example, and I
> would rather not be expected to
> * We are geo-distributed in many time zones; even if we all used
> Slack, synchronous/real-time chat to discuss the project is frequently
> impractical
>
> Because of the "real-time" nature of IRC-like systems, people's
> discussions and questions get intermingled, so keeping track of
> longer-running discussions may be difficult. It's hard to know when
> someone's question has been answered or whether people have
> sufficiently discussed a particular topic.
>
> Many discussions or questions are by their nature asynchronous, and it
> may take 24-72 hours or more for Arrow contributors to make a
> thoughtful reply.
>
> As a result of all of this, we are missing opportunities to have
> deeper discussions, develop the Arrow roadmap, create new JIRAs to
> capture bug reports or feature requests, and other activities of
> healthy open source communities. Additionally, the private nature of
> Slack is causing organizational knowledge (particularly Q&A / FAQs) to
> essentially be lost. Users with questions won't stumble on answers by
> searching on Google (as they would with a mailing list or
> StackOverflow).
>
> I don't think Slack is necessarily bad for users in a corporate
> environment; in many companies it is expected that all people will
> have the Slack client open at all times. This isn't the case here,
> though.
>
> My strong preference in light of the activity I have been observing on
> Slack (which I encourage you to explore yourselves) would be to close
> the channel and direct discussions or questions take place on the
> mailing list, JIRA, or GitHub (all of which are archived on one or
> more ASF mailing lists). Since migrating to Gitbox, we have enabled
> GitHub issues on the repository, which has helped lower the barrier
> for newcomers, but a large percentage of the time GitHub issues would
> be better as JIRA issues or e-mails (which is what the GitHub issue
> template says, alas).
>
> Interested to hear the thoughts of others on this.
>
> Thanks,
> Wes

Re: [DISCUSS] Concerns about the Arrow Slack channel

[Antoine Pitrou <an...@python.org>]

Hi,

I didn't know we had a Slack channel.  I agree we shouldn't use
something that has poor or inexistent archival as a communication
channel.  The Discourse-based option(s) look better at least in that
regard, and probably also for categorization and navigation.

Regards

Antoine.


Le 21/06/2018 à 10:25, Wes McKinney a écrit :
> hi all,
> 
> I wanted to bring up some concerns I have about the Slack room hosted
> at http://apachearrow.slack.com.
> 
> Corporate communications have changed a lot in recent years with the
> new wave of IRC-like chat systems such as HipChat and Slack. In many
> companies, Slack has become a preferred form of communication over
> e-mail or other asynchronous messaging tools. This trend is negatively
> impacting Apache Arrow in some ways that I will explain.
> 
> Initially we created the Arrow Slack channel as a means of secondary
> communication, to facilitate real-time discussions and help build the
> community. So people, particularly newcomers, are coming to the
> project and seeing 4 ways to communicate:
> 
> * dev@ Mailing list
> * JIRA
> * GitHub
> * Slack
> 
> As a result of broader trends in the world, they are electing to use
> Slack as their first, primary channel to interact with the project.
> This is bad for many reasons:
> 
> * Slack is essentially private. While anyone can join Slack, chats are
> not archived in any public place, nor are they searchable through
> internet search portals. I do not think it meets the public
> communication requirements of Apache projects in general
> * We've exceeded the message limit for free Slack channels; upgrading
> to a paid Slack plan for Apache Arrow, with 650+ members, would be
> very expensive
> * Only 3 out of the top 20 Arrow contributors (by # of commits) are
> regularly on the Slack channel. I don't use Slack, for example, and I
> would rather not be expected to
> * We are geo-distributed in many time zones; even if we all used
> Slack, synchronous/real-time chat to discuss the project is frequently
> impractical
> 
> Because of the "real-time" nature of IRC-like systems, people's
> discussions and questions get intermingled, so keeping track of
> longer-running discussions may be difficult. It's hard to know when
> someone's question has been answered or whether people have
> sufficiently discussed a particular topic.
> 
> Many discussions or questions are by their nature asynchronous, and it
> may take 24-72 hours or more for Arrow contributors to make a
> thoughtful reply.
> 
> As a result of all of this, we are missing opportunities to have
> deeper discussions, develop the Arrow roadmap, create new JIRAs to
> capture bug reports or feature requests, and other activities of
> healthy open source communities. Additionally, the private nature of
> Slack is causing organizational knowledge (particularly Q&A / FAQs) to
> essentially be lost. Users with questions won't stumble on answers by
> searching on Google (as they would with a mailing list or
> StackOverflow).
> 
> I don't think Slack is necessarily bad for users in a corporate
> environment; in many companies it is expected that all people will
> have the Slack client open at all times. This isn't the case here,
> though.
> 
> My strong preference in light of the activity I have been observing on
> Slack (which I encourage you to explore yourselves) would be to close
> the channel and direct discussions or questions take place on the
> mailing list, JIRA, or GitHub (all of which are archived on one or
> more ASF mailing lists). Since migrating to Gitbox, we have enabled
> GitHub issues on the repository, which has helped lower the barrier
> for newcomers, but a large percentage of the time GitHub issues would
> be better as JIRA issues or e-mails (which is what the GitHub issue
> template says, alas).
> 
> Interested to hear the thoughts of others on this.
> 
> Thanks,
> Wes
>