Hi, Ian Holsman wrote:
It isn't the individuals who make the decision, but the community as a whole.
I don't agree with the above at all. The community is more than just the sum of its members, but that sum is a large part of the community nonetheless. A lot of times (too many in some projects that I've been involved with, not just at the ASF) one or two strong individuals essentially make most of the decisions. This might be fine, depending on the project, but it doesn't lead to a good community generally. The less public the medium (and I think we can agree IRC is less public than archived mailing lists) the more chance there is of this happening.
>> actually email isn't being used that much locally either... SMS or >> Skype/IM is what I use most when >> I want to talk to people.
OK, that's you. In my area (Boston) email is still preferred for anything that should be preserved, documented, archived, searchable later, even though we IM and Skype frequently.
ideas. take this thread for example. If we were talking on the phone or on IRC it would been settled in 20minutes..
No way. It would go on just as long and it'd be worse because some people would have to leave the room for personal and/or work and/or timezone-related reasons, thereby not being able to fully participate, and feeling bad about it. I know I would.
(I'm going to get flamed here) this clinging to email is probably a symptom of a bigger problem. Trust. People don't trust other members to make a decision, and always want to add their 2c's because they are smart people and have their own insights and they know what's best. and want to feel that they are needed or something.
You're not going to get flamed, but maybe asked to provide evidence. When have the people who don't like IRC shown lack of trust in other members?
seriously.. I agree with you .. timezones suck.. but I really like the approach stock market traders do. at the end of a shift they call the other timezone and talk and brief the others on what is going on,
They get ulcers in their early 20s and there have been a host of psychological and other studies showing early damage from their overly stressed behavior. I speak from personal experience, a handful or so of really good friends who are traders and do as you describe above: it sucks for them, it sucks for the people in their lives, and it should serve as an example of what NOT to do at the ASF or any sane organization.
>> as long as governance can be maintained I don't see why we (the ASF) >> should care.
Would you as a mentor of a proposal like Eelco's be willing to govern every IRC session and (publicly) admonish / chastize people for making decisions on IRC or being exclusionary? How are you going to maintain governance over a project that primarily communicates on IRC or IM or Skype?
because we (the collective community) feel that it is the best one. and it is one our differentiating factors.
Maybe we feel that IRC is a bad medium, and that could be a differentiating factor? ;) (Only partially joking).
> I believe that the use of email is one of the > essential charateristics of the Apache Way, it has a long history of > sucesses and a proven track record here and in other OS projects. so have modems.
And CRT monitors, and cell phones that can't receive real-time video, and other older technologies. They's as applicable (or rather not applicable) to this argument as modems.
agreed... without experimentation we won't know if IRC or VOIP is better, and produces a better quality/amount.
There I'm more agreeable to your point of view, but it goes back to the above questions: would you be willling to mentor such a project in a way that maintains governance to the same standards we have today? Yoav --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
