On Mon, Feb 21, 2022 at 10:19 AM Zhiyuan Ju <juzhiy...@apache.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I involved in the Apache APISIX Community since 2019, and I would prefer to
> keep using the mailing list than other ways. There have been
> some challenges like not a friendly way to discuss codes, not every
> volunteer or contributor watching the mailing list, and so on, but there
> also have advantages:
>
> 1. It's public, archived, and searchable. When the APISIX project is was
> not donated to the ASF, maintainers search historical mails from other ASF
> projects and follow the guidelines, without much help to ask "How to do
> this?" again and again.
> 2. We could use Slack to discuss things of course, but if the community is
> very active and there will have lots of unread messages, it's indeed a
> challenge for me personally.
> 3. I agree that many projects tend to use other tools to discuss than a
> mailing list, like Slack and Discord, they're ok because our goal is to
> keep things transparent and clear (personally think), also the project
> community is active and healthy.
> 4. As for "If it did not happen on the ML, then it did not happen.", it's
> our foundation's community culture, it doesn't conflict with other tools.
> No matter which tool we use, don't forget what's our goal :)
>
Thanks for all the feedback so far. If I were to summarize what's been
expressed
on this thread so far, it seems that we're all agreeing that:
1. Even if mailing lists appear to be clunky in 2022 they are still
appreciated
as THE channel for any kind of "official" ASF business to be conducted
(e.g. major decision points, voting, etc.). In that sense -- whatever
other
channels may have been used to build consensus -- the final (or official
if you will) closure is expected to happen on a mailing list.
2. There are TONS of alternative communication channels for developers
and users to explore and it is unlikely that we will have any semblance
of convergence there -- these are too fragmented by geographical,
cultural,
language and other preferences.
Now, if I were to make an observation, I'd split our constituency in 3 of
the
usual concentric circles: PMC, Developers/Committers, Users.
It sounds like making sure that all official PMC business to be conducted
on the
mailing list is not only desirable from the ASF's perspective but also
[mostly]
appreciated by the PMCs themselves. That leaves Developers/Committers and
Users.
My biggest problem is actually with users -- it seems that having all these
extra
communication channels makes it more difficult for newcomers to find good
entry points re: engaging with the projects -- or maybe not. That's still
not clear
to me and I would love to hear more feedback.
What do ppl think?
Thanks,
Roman.
