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 <mad...@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 <wesmck...@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 > > >
