On 2026-02-23 at 11:24+01:00, Sergio Pastor Pérez wrote: > What I'm more concerned about is IRC and > the Guix help mailing list, as well as all the unofficial rooms where > newcomers seek assistance (Matrix, XMPP, Telegram, etc.). I would like > to sunset those with a communication platform more familiar for > newcomers used to interact with modern platforms. One that does not > require a bouncer and that is easily accessible from a phone. > > [...] The shortcomings of the > official platform has lead to the current fragmentation of the > communications channels. A fragmentation not necessarily present in > other communities. > > To clarify, I'm not discussing here whether we should do anything about > the devel mailing list, this is purely about the newcomer's barrier of > entry.
How about not deciding what's best for newcomers? The fragmentation of communication channels is not necessarily a bad thing, it means the community is thriving for a diversed set of people to be catered to. To keep the barrier of entry as low as possible, we should support people on the best communication service: the one they're already using. Email is great because everybody is already using it, in a read-only manner at the very least, so I'd be opposing sunsetting help-guix. IRC is also nice because it does not require authentication (or does it now? I have a bouncer) and can be accessed by any machine connected to the Internet. Not everyone has a smartphone BTW, when I was a teenager if I messed up the OS on my computer then that was the same thing I could use to get help. And that was five years ago. Moreever, for whatever reason, my (dynamic) IP could be banned from certain services. I encountered this multiple time while trying to reach out to communities in my moddest lifetime. Therefore, instead of deciding on an exclusive space for onboarding, let's encourage a decentrialized community. Take Zig for example, it's doing exactly that and the project is alive and well: https://ziglang.org/community (there's an official Zulip, along with email, IRC, Matrix, etc.). Guix's contact page should do the same IMHO, though preferably without endorsements for predatory SaaSS. Cheers, Phong
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