primary email, balanced use of IRC

[David Crossley <cr...@apache.org>]

Cliff Schmidt wrote:
> Noel J. Bergman wrote:
> 
> >The use of e-mail as the primary means for communication is part of ASF
> >policy and philosophy, and we can certainly learn lessons from projects 
> >that
> >have gone against it.  IRC tends to breed a more closed, albeit arguably
> >more integrated, community.
> >
> >That said, if IRC can be used as a learning tool to rapidly bring new 
> >people
> >up to speed, and if the information gathered from those sessions is
> >preserved for others to follow up via web-site and e-mail, how do people
> >perceive that?
> 
> I've never done that on a project, but I think it could be a
> reasonable thing for a project to try.  I believe the Synapse folks
> have been doing regular IRC meetings from early on.  I'd be interested
> in their perspective on the pros and cons, particularly as an
> incubating project.
> 
> As a XAP mentor, I know that the committers already understand that no
> decisions will be made over IRC, that logs of each IRC will be
> immediately made available to the entire community, and that they need
> to be sensitive to any concerns from people wishing but unable to
> participate.  But, are there other thoughts from the Synapse folks or
> anyone else who has used regular IRC meetings?

At Apache Forrest we strive to have all communication
via the mailing lists.

We have a deliberate IRC session once per month.
It goes for 24 hours so that everyone can be involved.
It is the second Friday of the month starting at a
specific time. We use a different channel name, chosen
by the operator. That prevents the channel from being
constantly available and turning into either a club
or a support forum.
http://forrest.apache.org/forrest-friday.html

We simultaneously use the dev@ mailing list.
Some issues are better dealt with there.

The committer who is operator does a regular commit of
the logfile to our SVN. This keeps good track and allows
us to refer to the log during the meeting. It could
also enable people not on IRC to still be involved
because they could reply to the svn commit email.

We have said that we will also create a summary text
of the days events. This latter task has not been
carried out very well.

Personally i reckon that the events have been very
beneficial. I am still wary of using IRC more often
than that.

-David

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: general-help@incubator.apache.org

Re: primary email, balanced use of IRC

[Yoav Shapira <yo...@apache.org>]

Hola,
I also wanted to chime in on another aspect of this besides everything
Martin, Phil, et al have said. (and I completely agree with their
cautions / questions).

Having a regularly-scheduled meeting could easily feel like an
obligation, as in if you don't participate in the meetings you're not
part of the community.  Besides feeling corporate, I think this would
be a negative effect on attracting new contributors, because the
consideration of scheduling time for this meeting would cross their
minds.  In other words, even if it's fine for all existing committers
because they spend large chunks of their work time on XAP anyhow, it
would be a barrier to growing the community and diversifying it.

I'm not just being abstract, by the way: this is from my personal
feelings.  I think XAP is a cool idea, it's a is a project I'm
interested in, and would want to contribute occasionally.
But I don't have the bandwidth to commit regular hours to it, and the
corporate feel of regularly scheduled meetings is a turn off for me.

It could be I'm unusual in this annoyance with regularly scheduled
meetings, I don't know.  But I would urge the XAP PPMC to consider the
impact of these meetings on potential new contributors who have a lot
of other projects to which they could devote their limited bandwidth.

Yoav

On 6/24/06, Phil Steitz <ph...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/23/06, David Crossley <cr...@apache.org> wrote:
> <snip/>
> >
> > Being there in real time is also difficult.
> >
>
> This effectively cuts out a lot of people.  For partly selfish
> reasons, I would hate to see apache projects trend toward more
> synchronous communications requirements.
>
> > That is why the summary is so important.
> >
> <snip/>
> >
> Have any communities consistently turned summaries into discussions?
> Have people been able to "jump in" to archived IRC log discussions
> meaningfully?  Take these as naive questions from someone with limited
> experience reading / interacting with IRC logs or participating in IRC
> discussions.
>
> Phil
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: general-help@incubator.apache.org
>
>


-- 
Yoav Shapira
Nimalex LLC
1 Mifflin Place, Suite 310
Cambridge, MA, USA
yoavs@computer.org / www.yoavshapira.com

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: general-help@incubator.apache.org

Re: primary email, balanced use of IRC

[Phil Steitz <ph...@gmail.com>]

On 6/23/06, David Crossley <cr...@apache.org> wrote:
<snip/>
>
> Being there in real time is also difficult.
>

This effectively cuts out a lot of people.  For partly selfish
reasons, I would hate to see apache projects trend toward more
synchronous communications requirements.

> That is why the summary is so important.
>
<snip/>
>
Have any communities consistently turned summaries into discussions?
Have people been able to "jump in" to archived IRC log discussions
meaningfully?  Take these as naive questions from someone with limited
experience reading / interacting with IRC logs or participating in IRC
discussions.

Phil

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: general-help@incubator.apache.org

Re: primary email, balanced use of IRC

[David Crossley <cr...@apache.org>]

Martin Cooper wrote:
> David Crossley wrote:
> >
> >The committer who is operator does a regular commit of
> >the logfile to our SVN. This keeps good track and allows
> >us to refer to the log during the meeting. It could
> >also enable people not on IRC to still be involved
> >because they could reply to the svn commit email.
> 
> Wading through 24 hours of IRC logs is not something many people are going
> to do, though, especially if they weren't part of the original discussion,
> and so don't know what they're looking for.

I agree. Forrest is still a small project, so it is
manageable. Average log size is 1000 lines.

As we all know, reading IRC logs is very difficult.
Being there in real time is also difficult.

That is why the summary is so important.

> >We have said that we will also create a summary text
> >of the days events. This latter task has not been
> >carried out very well.
> 
> This is one of my main concerns. More times than not, I've seen claims that
> a summary will be posted that are not followed up.

I agree. Forrest is on thin ice.

> >Personally i reckon that the events have been very
> >beneficial.
> 
> Have you participated in them? I'm sure people who participate feel they go
> well, but I'd be more concerned about how the people who have
> _not_participated feel about them.

All but one. And i was keen to read the whole log.

Yes, i agree we need to see other points-of-view.

> >I am still wary of using IRC more often than that.

I am very glad that this topic is happening in a wider
forum.

-David

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: general-help@incubator.apache.org

Re: primary email, balanced use of IRC

[Martin Cooper <ma...@apache.org>]

On 6/23/06, David Crossley <cr...@apache.org> wrote:
>
> Cliff Schmidt wrote:
> > Noel J. Bergman wrote:
> >
> > >The use of e-mail as the primary means for communication is part of ASF
> > >policy and philosophy, and we can certainly learn lessons from projects
> > >that
> > >have gone against it.  IRC tends to breed a more closed, albeit
> arguably
> > >more integrated, community.
> > >
> > >That said, if IRC can be used as a learning tool to rapidly bring new
> > >people
> > >up to speed, and if the information gathered from those sessions is
> > >preserved for others to follow up via web-site and e-mail, how do
> people
> > >perceive that?
> >
> > I've never done that on a project, but I think it could be a
> > reasonable thing for a project to try.  I believe the Synapse folks
> > have been doing regular IRC meetings from early on.  I'd be interested
> > in their perspective on the pros and cons, particularly as an
> > incubating project.
> >
> > As a XAP mentor, I know that the committers already understand that no
> > decisions will be made over IRC, that logs of each IRC will be
> > immediately made available to the entire community, and that they need
> > to be sensitive to any concerns from people wishing but unable to
> > participate.  But, are there other thoughts from the Synapse folks or
> > anyone else who has used regular IRC meetings?
>
> At Apache Forrest we strive to have all communication
> via the mailing lists.
>
> We have a deliberate IRC session once per month.
> It goes for 24 hours so that everyone can be involved.
> It is the second Friday of the month starting at a
> specific time. We use a different channel name, chosen
> by the operator. That prevents the channel from being
> constantly available and turning into either a club
> or a support forum.
> http://forrest.apache.org/forrest-friday.html
>
> We simultaneously use the dev@ mailing list.
> Some issues are better dealt with there.
>
> The committer who is operator does a regular commit of
> the logfile to our SVN. This keeps good track and allows
> us to refer to the log during the meeting. It could
> also enable people not on IRC to still be involved
> because they could reply to the svn commit email.


Wading through 24 hours of IRC logs is not something many people are going
to do, though, especially if they weren't part of the original discussion,
and so don't know what they're looking for.

We have said that we will also create a summary text
> of the days events. This latter task has not been
> carried out very well.


This is one of my main concerns. More times than not, I've seen claims that
a summary will be posted that are not followed up.

Personally i reckon that the events have been very
> beneficial.


Have you participated in them? I'm sure people who participate feel they go
well, but I'd be more concerned about how the people who have
_not_participated feel about them.

--
Martin Cooper


I am still wary of using IRC more often
> than that.
>
> -David
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: general-help@incubator.apache.org
>
>

Re: primary email, balanced use of IRC

[John Sisson <jr...@gmail.com>]

sorry for the late reply..

David Crossley wrote:
> Cliff Schmidt wrote:
>   
>> Noel J. Bergman wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> The use of e-mail as the primary means for communication is part of ASF
>>> policy and philosophy, and we can certainly learn lessons from projects 
>>> that
>>> have gone against it.  IRC tends to breed a more closed, albeit arguably
>>> more integrated, community.
>>>
>>> That said, if IRC can be used as a learning tool to rapidly bring new 
>>> people
>>> up to speed, and if the information gathered from those sessions is
>>> preserved for others to follow up via web-site and e-mail, how do people
>>> perceive that?
>>>       
IRC can be great as a learning tool, but the downside I have seen is 
that often that information that is learned is not documented (e.g. in a 
Wiki or mailing list) for the benefit of others and the same questions 
may end up being asked by many people over time.
>> I've never done that on a project, but I think it could be a
>> reasonable thing for a project to try.  I believe the Synapse folks
>> have been doing regular IRC meetings from early on.  I'd be interested
>> in their perspective on the pros and cons, particularly as an
>> incubating project.
>>
>> As a XAP mentor, I know that the committers already understand that no
>> decisions will be made over IRC, that logs of each IRC will be
>> immediately made available to the entire community, and that they need
>> to be sensitive to any concerns from people wishing but unable to
>> participate.  But, are there other thoughts from the Synapse folks or
>> anyone else who has used regular IRC meetings?
>>     
>
> At Apache Forrest we strive to have all communication
> via the mailing lists.
>
> We have a deliberate IRC session once per month.
> It goes for 24 hours so that everyone can be involved.
> It is the second Friday of the month starting at a
> specific time. We use a different channel name, chosen
> by the operator. That prevents the channel from being
> constantly available and turning into either a club
> or a support forum.
> http://forrest.apache.org/forrest-friday.html
>
> We simultaneously use the dev@ mailing list.
> Some issues are better dealt with there.
>
> The committer who is operator does a regular commit of
> the logfile to our SVN. This keeps good track and allows
> us to refer to the log during the meeting. It could
> also enable people not on IRC to still be involved
> because they could reply to the svn commit email.
>   
Currently in Geronimo we don't post IRC logs to the dev list but have 
plans to do so in an automated fashion.

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=114912883000003&r=1&w=2
> We have said that we will also create a summary text
> of the days events. This latter task has not been
> carried out very well.
>
>   
I don't think it is realistic on busy IRC forums for one person to have 
the job of summarizing the IRC log for the day considering there may be 
a large number of different issues discussed by different people and the 
person summarizing may not understand what all the issues were.

Probably better if individuals summarized their discussions.

John
> Personally i reckon that the events have been very
> beneficial. I am still wary of using IRC more often
> than that.
>
> -David
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: general-help@incubator.apache.org
>
>
>   


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: general-help@incubator.apache.org