I remain skeptical about us having the discipline and man power for a
weekly summary to the mailing list, but I'm ok with giving it a try.
Would you consider the proposal to send an automated weekly email with
the contents of the dev channel from that week? I think that would be
really useful to connect the two mediums. Also, it is great for
archiving the chat.
In any case, (2) seems to be the main objective here. Personally, I
think emails are the better medium to conduct design discussions.
-Max
On 20.01.21 23:00, Julian Hyde wrote:
Sounds good, Matt.
#2 is the important one: try to drive discussions onto dev@. You won't
always succeed - discussions have a habit of just springing up - but do
your best.
Julian
On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 3:23 AM Matt Casters <[email protected]>
wrote:
You are actually our champion Max, thanks for helping out :-)
I was just looking to see what the problems could possibly be to then
address those.
I'll remind our mentors that we've followed their advice in 100% of the
cases so far, also on this topic. All in all I think things are going
great.
So yes, I'm not against the idea of writing a resume if things get heated
on the dev channel. That being said, devs have started conversations here
lately and major re-architectures are expected to die down a bit now. The
architecture of Hop is such that most of the action happens in the plugins,
not in the core.
So here is my multi-layered approach proposal:
1) Accept Saurabh's proposal to help out with writing a weekly summary
2) Continue to drive important discussions out of the #dev chat channel
over here to the dev@ mailing list
3) Continue to think of ways to promote participation with swag but not for
this purpose
4) Wrap up the work on the lurking @archivebot in the #dev channel to make
all chats publically and freely available.
Unless anyone has any major concerns we'll continue along these lines.
Cheers,
Matt
On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 12:07 PM Maximilian Michels <[email protected]>
wrote:
Circling back here. I was skeptical about this idea, just because I
haven't seen such ideas working unless people get paid for it. Creating
a weekly summary is work, more work on top of the voluntary work we do
here.
Perhaps an automatically generated weekly email to the mailing list
containing all the messages of the dev chat for that week would work
better. Could that be accomplished easily?
I'm still thinking it would make sense to move all dev communication to
the mailing list. I'm not here to decide that though, I'm just a mentor
:)
-Max
On 11.01.21 19:23, Saurabh Deshmukh wrote:
Hi Matt,
Thumbs up! I will be able to help you in creating weekly status emails.
On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 5:52 PM Matt Casters <[email protected]
.invalid>
wrote:
Alright so here's an idea: why don't we create a weekly status mail
about
those things discussed on the chat server that are even a little bit
important.
It allows us to review what's important while providing the
opportunity
to
ask folks to post their topics to this mailing list.
In the short term it creates an archive and in the longer run we can
bootstrap this mailing list.
We can ask for volunteers but I'd be happy to do it first.
Thoughts?
Matt
On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 4:11 PM Maximilian Michels <[email protected]>
wrote:
I don't think anything is stopping the community from posting to the
mailing list. They just have to start doing it more. That's why we
are
having this discussion.
Part of the incubation process is to align the project with the ASF.
This comes with some limitation of freedom. If maximum freedom is
desired, the ASF is not the ideal place to be, although the ASF does
permit a fair amount of freedom in return for a great community,
infrastructure, and legislative support.
I'd be skeptical about any kind of compensation for posting to the
mailing list. However, I think it is important to keep track of merit
(which could be posts to the mailing list), such that we can add as
many
new committers as possible.
-Max
On 11.01.21 13:43, Matt Casters wrote:
I'm just trying to get to the heart of the issue here Max. I don't
necessarily disagree as stated earlier.
Once we have a list of concerns and things that prevent folks from
joining
and/or posting on dev we can do something about it.
As was mentioned earlier this is not something singularly affecting
Hop
so
I'm sure we can learn from other projects as well.
Before we go there, let's pile on a bit more since it seems to me
that
this
is treated as a major concern and I think the Hop devs see it as
such.
My impression is that the ASF, and as a consequence dev mailing
lists
as
well, are seen as a Very Big Thing and that folks are in general
quite
reluctant, even afraid, to post something.
I think this especially is painful and diametrically opposed to
building
great software where insights come around in an iterative fashion.
So again, I'd be very interested in hearing from our mentors how we
can
alleviate this so that we can have more lively discussions on dev.
I'm thinking along the lines of rewarding participation with swag
and
so
on. We're not Google but we're not completely poor sods either are
we
:-)
Thanks,
Matt
On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 12:36 PM Maximilian Michels <[email protected]
wrote:
The core problem is fragmentation. I would follow Hop development
more
closely if I wouldn't have to monitor yet another chat client.
Having
one source of truth, is what we should strive for. Again, this
doesn't
mean getting rid of the chat but all design discussions should live
on
the dev mailing list. Alternatively, a summary could be posted.
Mailing lists and chats are two mediums. Generally, I find that the
mailing lists are better suited for archival because more thinking
goes
into the writing.
On the other hand I found it surprisingly hard to find anything in
the
Apache mailing list archives.
@Matt I'm not sure which service you used to search the mailing
list
but
from my experience,
https://lists.apache.org/[email protected] works quite
well.
-Max
On 11.01.21 11:08, Matt Casters wrote:
Again, nobody is disagreeing in principle. However, I personally
don't
think this is as black and white is being stated by the mentors.
First off, Julian made it seem like we're using some sort of
locked
down
medium for the chat. Let me state here on the record that the
Mattermost
server is open source and that we don't have any limits on the
discussion
archive. It's as such quite different from free Slack
functionality.
For all practical intents and purposes we are actually archiving
everything. It's easy to get on the system without limitations.
It's
also
very easy to find something by using the search functions.
On the other hand I found it surprisingly hard to find anything in
the
Apache mailing list archives. Perhaps these need a software
update
as
well?
I just think that the gap between both is too wide. Imagine
having
a
"discussion" on look & feel, images and so on on the dev mailing
list? I
can tell you right away it's just not practical no matter who
wants
to
decide what on the topic.
Furthermore, now that you have me going on this tangent... the
concerns
that are being raised by ASF surely cover major decisions and not
day-to-day small trivia? Who on Earth is going to argue about
minor
details
of any project? We trust people to commit to the source code but
we
somehow need to somehow see everything that was said and only via
a
mailing
list?
Anyway, we'll do our best. I've reminded everyone to subscribe to
this
mailing list.
The name of the chat server was changed to Apache Hop.
We're looking into creating an archive for all chat channels.
Matt
On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 10:12 PM Julian Hyde <
[email protected]
wrote:
Yes, chat is excellent for discussions. That’s actually the
problem.
Discussions (and therefore decisions) will naturally happen on
chat.
It’s
great for people who happen to be on chat, but people who are not
on
chat
will be excluded.
So, we need to make a conscious effort to move discussions off of
chat
and
onto dev@ if they look likely to result in a decision.
I’m not saying we should ban chat. Just be careful how chat is
used.
By the way, a lot of Apache communities face this or similar
problems.
For
example, I know of one or two projects that started in China and
have
a
strong temptation to use Chinese, which is efficient for them but
makes
the
rest of us feel excluded. It’s difficult for those projects to
grow
beyond
their original country.
The other suggestions in my email were to create a public,
read-only
archive of chat so that people can see what has been happening,
and
to
more
strongly encourage people to join the dev list, not just chat. I
think
it
is important that we do those.
Julian
On Jan 6, 2021, at 1:54 PM, Matt Casters <
[email protected]
.INVALID>
wrote:
I don't disagree with Julian but for that specific example I
indeed
mentioned this first on dev when I stated how I felt about how
important
these integration tests are ... to me.
I'm not sure it warrants a specific discussion since the devs
seem
to
be
on
the same wavelength on the subject.
Where I do disagree is that chat is excellent for discussions
and
throwing
ideas against the wall to see if they stick.
The way we typically seem to do it is to just ping an idea back
and
forth
and throw it in JIRA in some form.
These cases indeed are always visible and remembered more easily
than
on
chats or mailing lists.
On Wed, Jan 6, 2021 at 10:24 PM Julian Hyde <[email protected]>
wrote:
I am a bit concerned about Hop's use of Chat. To be clear,
Apache
projects use chat rooms (e.g. Slack, IRC) and they are a good
way
to
get questions answered quickly and to build a sense of
community.
First, I am concerned about the lack of a public archive.
People
who
want to read the chat have to first sign up. (Hopefully, I am
mistaken. If so, please post a link to the archive on the
site.)
Second, let's fix the branding on Chat. Currently it is under
the
project-hop.org domain, and the project is called 'hop'. No
'apache'
in sight.
Third, at Apache we have a rule 'if it doesn't happen on dev it
didn't
happen', i.e. don't make decisions off the mailing list. The
conversation on chat is generally pretty benign, but I saw one
exception: this one from Matt Casters:
I would like to set a goal of having a substantial set of
integration
tests
for 1.0. The bare minimum seems to be all the popular most
often
used
transforms and actions. I know that this far exceeds what P5o
and
Kettle had but stability is really important.
That discussion should have been on the dev list.
Last, according to the latest incubator report [1], a lot more
people
are signed up for chat than for the dev list (122 vs 22). I am
concerned that, with such a disparity in membership, Chat will
become
the de facto place that people discuss important matters. I
think
the
solution is to increase the number of people on the dev list,
and
to
continue to drive significant discussions onto off of Chat and
onto
dev@.
Julian
[1]
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/January2021
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