Quoting Ritesh Raj Sarraf (2016-02-11 17:50:51) > On Thu, 2016-02-11 at 16:46 +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: >> [Praveen wrote:] >>> I don't think the newbies will be stuck on XMPP forever, they will >>> have to interact with the community anyway and they will learn to >>> use whatever tools required once they grow up in the community. >>> >>> But insisting on IRC when a better medium exist is in my opinion >>> elitist. [...] >> Regarding our choice of tools being "elitist", I believe the proper >> solution to that is to bridge, not fork! > > I think this is the most important part about this problem. With time, > the trends have changed. And so have the audiences. NB! Please quote only relevant parts, and preserve references to who wrote which parts. > A couple years ago, we had a similar discussion on -project. > http://osdir.com/ml/debian-project/2011-09/msg00042.html > > The problem with everyone deriving their own means is that it'll lead > to fragmentation. In fact it already has. > > We have traditional Mailing Lists, IRC Channels, Debian Ask; and now > these days, Facebook Groups, Meetup Groups, G+ groups and what not. > > We for sure need to evolve with time, but IMO, we should also make > effort to interlink these communication channels. It is NOT easy, but > I don't think anyone (apart from LaunchPad) has made a serious effort. > > Just like the Universal OS, if we can make a Universal Communication > channel, it'll be for the good of everyone in our community. I agree in general, but beware to inter-link only what is semantically same: Mailinglists are commonly used for deeper reflected statements, whereas irc is (literally) used for one-liners. Some semantic features are engraved technically into protocols but others are "hidden" in social behaviours. One example is the lack of irc logs - that's technically possible but socially chosen to be opt-in, because the medium is intended for casual communication, and having a microphone always turned on in the rooms damages the ability for some to speak relaxed. Another example is irc being mostly one-liners. It is technically possible to write long sentences but that breaks conversations to wait for the other party to compose long responses. Similarly it is technically possible to handle multi-line posts (more elegantly in XMPP protocol by embedding newlines, clumsily in irc by splitting into multiple posts) but that is frowned upon as that damages the abimity to easy skim through a conversation as such: A dialogue between multiple parties, rather than a place for individuals to "puke" their utterings independently of each other. Quite unlike a Facebook/Diaspora "wall". > In my opinion, for a large project like Debian, something that > connects the dots if really needed. To start with, connect the Mailing > List + Bug Tracker + Debian Ask + Web Forums; and provide the > user/developer an intuitive way to participate and collaborate. An issue tracker - even one shaped technically as dtnamically spawned mailinglists - is semantically quite different from a mailinglist. Mailinglists and web fora seem semantically quite similar, but... Many years ago I looked into bridging mailinglist and news and web-board communication - by use of papercut (surprisingly still in Debian!) - but learned that even ignoring technical challenges, the media have grown different cultural expectations: Writing style on mailinglists are different from that of web boards (e.g. whether to quote previous part in a discussion and how to do so), so bridging those platforms will likely upset the users of both. I personally do not use web boards, as they seem (socially, if not technically) optimized for "fly-by" comments: Easy to get involved at first which raise the risk of posting before you get a feel for the posting style at the place, and at the same time (arguably) less easy to stay focused in a conversation. Obviously a quite biased personal judgement, but nevertheless one that might help notice how technically similar communication media may socially have different expectations rendering them less ideal for bridging. Specifically for IRC and XMPP I feel there are less of a difference in the expectations, which is why I suggest looking into bridging there. Sadly I fear it is no easy task to do so technically - else there would probably be a bunch of such bridging tools around already. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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