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Posted to dev@openwhisk.apache.org by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org> on 2018/06/06 13:32:09 UTC
Asynchronous communications (was: Please review our project's draft...)
Someone wrote:
> ...Would it be worth adding the growth of the
> Slack community? We're ~800 members and it is really active....
With my incubation mentor hat on: enthusiasm for the the project is
fantastic news, but Apache projects should do their business on
asynchronous channels, and I don't consider Slack to be one (*)
OpenWhisk is not the only ASF project to be working in this mode and
finding a way to reconcile this with the ASF's asynchronous
communications principles might be a good example for other projects.
Barring "move everything to the dev list" which wouldn't be popular,
do people have suggestions on how to improve this? Weekly news that
point to important places (PRs etc.) where things are happening so
people can catch up? Guidelines on how to use the various channels?
Something else?
I understand this is not a big problem now if many OpenWhisk
committers are working full-time on the project, but as it evolves I
suppose the number of full-time contributors will go down. And the
Apache model requires providing full support to part-time folks as
well, so this needs to be improved.
-Bertrand
(*) because it's impossible to catch up there if you come back from a
week-long absence, for example
Re: Asynchronous communications (was: Please review our project's draft...)
Posted by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>.
On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 6:50 PM, David P Grove <gr...@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> ...I don't think Slack is as good at going really deep into the details (turns
> into "walls of text" that are intimidating to catch up with when you come
> to them later).,,
I agree with that, that was my point earlier here as well.
> ...GitHub issues or email is still better here I think....
For mailing lists that only works (very well IMO) if people have a lot
of discipline in terms of quoting, sensible subject lines etc. I wrote
a "survival guide" meant to help with that a while ago [1] but this
way of using lists is unfortunately going away. Also because some mail
clients get in the way of Precise Quoting. It would be great to fix
that but I'm not sure if people are willing.
GitHub tickets work very well for such deep discussions IMO, also
because they naturally lead people to quote precisely, but currently
they're not as discoverable as threads on this list.
Making those cross-cutting discussion tickets easier to discover would
help a lot. Maybe using labels on the tickets, or maybe creating a
specific "discussions" repository.
https://github.com/apache/cordova-discuss is an example of that.
Once that's clarified, we might write down some project communications
guidelines which help people find out what happens where, as well as
how to efficiently stay informed of what's going on.
-Bertrand
[1] https://grep.codeconsult.ch/2017/11/10/large-mailing-lists-survival-guide/
Re: Asynchronous communications (was: Please review our project's draft...)
Posted by David P Grove <gr...@us.ibm.com>.
Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org> wrote on 06/06/2018 11:06:01
AM:
>
> On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 4:42 PM, David P Grove <gr...@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> > ...As Rodric said, properly organized channels and the use of threads
help
> > quite a bit...
>
> Do you have a few Slack URLs of good examples of that?
>
> I'll look at them quickly, before they disappear ;-)
>
> -Bertrand
>
I think Slack is measurably better than a mailing list for some kinds of
interactions:
1. User support. Quick interaction, back & forth QA, ability to
directly embed pictures, URLS, etc. For example,
https://openwhisk-team.slack.com/archives/C7DJNS37W/p1524979247000070
2. Brainstorming discussions (distributed water cooler). For
example,
https://openwhisk-team.slack.com/archives/C4J3R7JFL/p1526486614000581
3. Group debugging & problem fixing (the link in Rodric's email)
https://openwhisk-team.slack.com/archives/C3TPCAQG1/p1527870544000195
I don't think Slack is as good at going really deep into the details (turns
into "walls of text" that are intimidating to catch up with when you come
to them later). GitHub issues or email is still better here I think.
--dave
Re: Asynchronous communications (was: Please review our project's draft...)
Posted by Carlos Santana <cs...@gmail.com>.
Thanks Bertrand !
Oh it looks like they use a simple script that some how they run daily and connects to Slack REST API to extract the last messages and then sends and email.
This is a perfect use case for OpenWhisk because I really don’t want to setup a server to run a cron job :-)
- Carlos Santana
@csantanapr
> On Dec 19, 2018, at 3:32 AM, Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Carlos,
>
>> On Tue, Dec 18, 2018 at 8:31 PM Carlos Santana <cs...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> ...Can you find out how they set it up ?...
>
> I have asked - https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/a4d0071104ad69a68870c8c40f8dca0b889ebbd565d3c68b88492b4b@%3Cdev.pulsar.apache.org%3E
>
> -Bertrand
Re: Asynchronous communications (was: Please review our project's draft...)
Posted by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>.
Hi Carlos,
On Tue, Dec 18, 2018 at 8:31 PM Carlos Santana <cs...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ...Can you find out how they set it up ?...
I have asked - https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/a4d0071104ad69a68870c8c40f8dca0b889ebbd565d3c68b88492b4b@%3Cdev.pulsar.apache.org%3E
-Bertrand
Re: Asynchronous communications (was: Please review our project's draft...)
Posted by Carlos Santana <cs...@gmail.com>.
Good find Bertrand +1
Sounds good to me, people can always filter out if they are not interested in the daily email and already engaged in Slack. But those that wanted can benefit also the search and archive would be good to have.
Can you find out how they set it up ?
Do they use slackdigest [1] ?
[1] http://slackdigest.com/digest.html
- Carlos Santana
@csantanapr
> On Dec 18, 2018, at 1:26 PM, Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>> On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 6:12 PM Rodric Rabbah <ro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> ...Chetan suggested looking into Slack workspace export...
>
> Coming back to this after a long time, looking at this month's Board
> reports (the joys of being there ;-) I stumbled on daily Slack digests
> that Apache Pulsar sends to their dev list:
>
> https://lists.apache.org/list.html?dev@pulsar.apache.org
>
> Would such digests be a good thing for OpenWhisk?
>
> It would at least surface the Slack discussions in a public searchable
> place that requires no account and no login, which is a big
> improvement IMO.
>
> -Bertrand
Re: Asynchronous communications (was: Please review our project's draft...)
Posted by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>.
Hi,
On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 6:12 PM Rodric Rabbah <ro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ...Chetan suggested looking into Slack workspace export...
Coming back to this after a long time, looking at this month's Board
reports (the joys of being there ;-) I stumbled on daily Slack digests
that Apache Pulsar sends to their dev list:
https://lists.apache.org/list.html?dev@pulsar.apache.org
Would such digests be a good thing for OpenWhisk?
It would at least surface the Slack discussions in a public searchable
place that requires no account and no login, which is a big
improvement IMO.
-Bertrand
Re: Asynchronous communications (was: Please review our project's draft...)
Posted by Rodric Rabbah <ro...@gmail.com>.
Chetan suggested looking into Slack workspace export - It looks like we can
export all the messages this way (since 1/20/2017 for public channels). A
simple UI to polish the JSON and make it easier to read and search would be
helpful.
Here's an example of a recent thread of discussion:
https://openwhisk-team.slack.com/archives/C3TPCAQG1/p1527870544000195 for
fixing an issue with docker compose deployment.
-r
On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 11:06 AM, Bertrand Delacretaz <bdelacretaz@apache.org
> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 4:42 PM, David P Grove <gr...@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> > ...As Rodric said, properly organized channels and the use of threads
> help
> > quite a bit...
>
> Do you have a few Slack URLs of good examples of that?
>
> I'll look at them quickly, before they disappear ;-)
>
> -Bertrand
>
Re: Asynchronous communications (was: Please review our project's draft...)
Posted by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>.
On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 4:42 PM, David P Grove <gr...@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> ...As Rodric said, properly organized channels and the use of threads help
> quite a bit...
Do you have a few Slack URLs of good examples of that?
I'll look at them quickly, before they disappear ;-)
-Bertrand
Re: Asynchronous communications (was: Please review our project's draft...)
Posted by David P Grove <gr...@us.ibm.com>.
Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org> wrote on 06/06/2018 10:23:35
AM:
> From: Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>
> To: dev@openwhisk.apache.org
> Date: 06/06/2018 10:31 AM
> Subject: Re: Asynchronous communications (was: Please review our
> project's draft...)
>
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 4:05 PM, David P Grove <gr...@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> > ...Professionally, I'm on several Slack teams that are paid (unlimited
> > history) and I personally find it _much_ easier to catch up with and
> > understand multiple weeks of technical conversation in a properly
focused
> > Slack channel than multiple weeks of email chains sent to a single dev
> > list....
>
> I'm genuinely interested in how that can work - if you have examples
> I'm all ears.
>
> > ...I'd suggest that perhaps the ASF should be considering how to adapt
and
> > support this style of communication in a way that meets its broader
> > objectives for project organization...
>
> My goal with "fixing" this with OpenWhisk is indeed to see how the ASF
> can adapt efficiently.
>
Cool! This is what I would like to see happen.
As Rodric said, properly organized channels and the use of threads help
quite a bit.
But the lack of history on free channels is a real blocker. For example,
we have a focused Slack channel #performance on the OpenWhisk slack. But
because of the limited history, you can't see any of the conversations
before April 25.
Similar for #kubernetes. You can look back a month or so, but then the
history gets truncated by the free-level restrictions.
--dave
Re: Asynchronous communications (was: Please review our project's
draft...)
Posted by Rob Allen <ro...@akrabat.com>.
> On 6 Jun 2018, at 15:30, Rodric Rabbah <ro...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Re slack... good discipline on our part does make it easier to catch up
> even after hundreds of messages are posted. We do try to organize
> discussions using slack threads so that it is easier to follow a particular
> topic. This doesn't always happen and as I noted, requires good habits.
>
I'm one of those who is particularly poor at threads as they are a significantly more effort to create and read than just talking in channel when you're a keyboard-centric user. Sorry.
It may be worth having some sort of document noting how to use the OpenWhisk Slack if there are practices that make it better.
Rob
Re: Asynchronous communications (was: Please review our project's draft...)
Posted by Rodric Rabbah <ro...@gmail.com>.
Re slack... good discipline on our part does make it easier to catch up
even after hundreds of messages are posted. We do try to organize
discussions using slack threads so that it is easier to follow a particular
topic. This doesn't always happen and as I noted, requires good habits.
We have also applied the practice in slack where there is a discussion
worth recording for posterity to open an issue, send an email to the dev
list, and make sure it's not only recorded in slack.
We do have a channel just for PRs on slack, and while we have several
channels, we mainly use the general channel for all discussions. I think
this was worked well to keep all topics widely visible but that is only my
opinion of course.
Weekly summaries if they can be automated could be a nice way of catching
up. Perhaps an opportunity to use OpenWhisk itself to generate the digests,
perhaps summarizing the PR activities and commits to start.
-r
Re: Asynchronous communications (was: Please review our project's draft...)
Posted by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>.
Hi,
On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 4:05 PM, David P Grove <gr...@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> ...Professionally, I'm on several Slack teams that are paid (unlimited
> history) and I personally find it _much_ easier to catch up with and
> understand multiple weeks of technical conversation in a properly focused
> Slack channel than multiple weeks of email chains sent to a single dev
> list....
I'm genuinely interested in how that can work - if you have examples
I'm all ears.
> ...I'd suggest that perhaps the ASF should be considering how to adapt and
> support this style of communication in a way that meets its broader
> objectives for project organization...
My goal with "fixing" this with OpenWhisk is indeed to see how the ASF
can adapt efficiently.
> ...Things like
> Slack are not going to go away...
Of course, but if it's the project's main channel it needs to support
efficient asynchronous collaboration. As mentioned, I'm willing to be
educated on how that works.
-Bertrand
Re: Asynchronous communications (was: Please review our project's draft...)
Posted by David P Grove <gr...@us.ibm.com>.
Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org> wrote on 06/06/2018 09:32:09
AM:
> > ...Would it be worth adding the growth of the
> > Slack community? We're ~800 members and it is really active....
>
> With my incubation mentor hat on: enthusiasm for the the project is
> fantastic news, but Apache projects should do their business on
> asynchronous channels, and I don't consider Slack to be one (*)
>
> OpenWhisk is not the only ASF project to be working in this mode and
> finding a way to reconcile this with the ASF's asynchronous
> communications principles might be a good example for other projects.
>
> Barring "move everything to the dev list" which wouldn't be popular,
> do people have suggestions on how to improve this? Weekly news that
> point to important places (PRs etc.) where things are happening so
> people can catch up? Guidelines on how to use the various channels?
> Something else?
>
> I understand this is not a big problem now if many OpenWhisk
> committers are working full-time on the project, but as it evolves I
> suppose the number of full-time contributors will go down. And the
> Apache model requires providing full support to part-time folks as
> well, so this needs to be improved.
>
> -Bertrand
>
> (*) because it's impossible to catch up there if you come back from a
> week-long absence, for example
>
I think the main problem is the limitations of using a "free" slack team,
so there is very limited history.
Professionally, I'm on several Slack teams that are paid (unlimited
history) and I personally find it _much_ easier to catch up with and
understand multiple weeks of technical conversation in a properly focused
Slack channel than multiple weeks of email chains sent to a single dev
list.
I'd suggest that perhaps the ASF should be considering how to adapt and
support this style of communication in a way that meets its broader
objectives for project organization. For example, arrange for paid Slack
teams for its projects that would not have history limitations. Things like
Slack are not going to go away.
regards,
--dave