Communications 2.0

[Tim]

On 03/05/16 00:09, Jasper Backer wrote:
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> On 02-05-16 12:56, Tim wrote:
>> Many people over recent times have complained about our communications channels. It seems the established staple diet of IRC and Mailing lists,
>> that just about every established FOSS teams use doesnt work so well, particularly for the newcomers in our community. I am hoping to create a
>> UOS[1] session to discuss some of these things, but lets get the discussion started before that.
> How come other teams can use the traditional methods just fine and we don't?
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?
>>
>> Apparently every time we raise this stuff on the list, it gets taken way off topic by trolls and their politics. So let me start with a little
>> warning, if anyone tries to derail this thread with proprietry vs FOSS politics, I won’t hesitate to ban you from the email list. This is about
>> finding solutions that work for improving communications for our users and core teams.
>>
>> The current situation is basically:
>>
>> IRC – Real time messaging, it is great in that everyone is there (most ubuntu/GNOME/debian developers etc), but it can be hard for people that
>> aren’t used to it, timezones are a challenge, particularily when you cant stay connect 24/7. Also so far no one outside of our development/qa
>> areas has really embraced IRC
> 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!

Ideally it would be nice to have a bridge between the main IRC channel and whatever alternate that might be used.
>>
>> 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.
> 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?
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> 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.
>> 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.

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.

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.

Tim