Thanks for writing this, Jonas. I was planning a similar response. On Thu, 2016-02-11 at 16:46 +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: > >>> Most of the discussions are mentoring newbies and those are > already > >>> documented. > >> > >> So discussions like "how to best setup an APT proxy?" and "how to > >> build in clean environment?" are fine to discuss in a vacuum? > Please > >> elaborate! > > > > > > They do have to join the mailing lists and they are directed to > debian > > wiki and documentation. > > > > 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. We don't care for you, if you don't use our tools is not > a > > good thing to say to newbies. > > > > We are always a difficult community for newbies to join and our > > efforts are only to make that easier. If we do realize the cons > > outweigh the pros, we'll consider abandoning it. > > Thanks for elaborating. > > Regarding our community being difficult for newbies, I believe it is > the > wrong approach to protect newbies from us: Let's improve by working > together most possible (i.e. not only lists and wiki, but realtime > chat > too!). > > 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. 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. > We are always a difficult community for newbies to join and our > > efforts are only to make that easier. If we do realize the cons > > outweigh the pros, we'll consider abandoning it.> I think, today, Debian has a much lower barrier to participating with it. Debian has improved a lot in ensuring to attribute all kinds of contributors. Apart from Debian, even the times have improved. When I was participating in Linux communities, I started with limited connectivity and scarce resources. Today, it is so much easy and simple, that sometimes I wonder what happened to people after us. Not many really made an effort, rather it started getting framed as lets lower the barrier. My humble request is that this group of people, maybe, can start an effort to bridge the channels. You may take some of the ideas in the thread I mentioned above. And perhaps if this group's effort get successful, it could be generalized to the Debian project as a whole. 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. -- Ritesh Raj Sarraf RESEARCHUT - http://www.researchut.com "Necessity is the mother of invention."
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