(Moving to dev@community)
> On Oct 20, 2017, at 10:56 AM, Harbs <ha...@in-tools.com> wrote:
>
> I’m wondering if it makes sense to take a step back and rethink email and
> communication. This feels like part of a bigger challenge.
>
> Apache has gotten big enough that email overload is becoming (became?) an
> issue. The market at large has been making efforts to solve the email
> overload issue with varying degrees of success. Slack come to mind as an
> example (with mixed success).
>
> To be clear, I’m NOT suggesting that we should replace email with something
> like Slack, but I do think it might be beneficial to examine some of the
> techniques out there to make communication more manageable.
>
> There’s an additional element to the problem as I see it: A certain amount of
> chit-chat is important for maintaining a sense of community. However when the
> chit-chat becomes overwhelming it backfires.
>
> Some concepts which might be worth exploring:
>
> 1. Priority — If there was some way to subscribe to emails about a certain
> priority level, it could be much easier to only get what’s appropriate and/or
> filter out the unimportant items.
> 2. Better threading — If there was a way to not see (by default) chit-chat
> threads that one does not participate in, that could enable side discussions
> while not being overwhelming.
> 3. Topic tags / subtopics — I find the Slack channels to be very helpful. I
> generally subscribe to any channels which I’m slightly interested in, but
> being able to instantly see which channels have discussions allows me to
> decide whether I have the time or interest at the moment to read it.
>
> Now, I have no idea how to go about implementing any of these ideas, but it
> feels like that in this day and age, these should be solvable problems.
>
> Some thoughts on possible directions:
> - better use of email features. Email headers can have priority set. How can
> we take advantage of this?
> - Finer-grained subscriptions. Right now it’s binary. You are either
> subscribed or not subscribed to a list. (Yes. I know there’s digests, but
> those don’t really count.) There’s no way to subscribe to lists based on
> content or headers, etc. (How) can this be improved?
> - Would it make sense to create an “Apache Communication App” tailor made to
> the needs of Apache communication? We have some of the best minds in software
> architecture here, and it feels like if anyone can do this, it should be us…
> ;-) Besides having the potential of solving these issues and more, it could
> be useful for alerting folks about and collaborating on time-critical issues
> (such as the recent media responses about Struts).
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Harbs
>
>> On Oct 19, 2017, at 11:19 PM, jan iversen <jancasacon...@gmail.com
>> <mailto:jancasacon...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> On 19 Oct 2017, at 21:17, Kevin Meyer <ke...@kmz.co.za
>> <mailto:ke...@kmz.co.za>> wrote:
>>
>>> Call me grumpy but my pet peeve are the numerous *personal responses* to a
>>> board member that are cc'd to board@ whenever a board member announces when
>>> they go on vacation, has a personal issue, etc.
>>> Communication is great, but "have fun, get well and condolences" *replies*
>>> don't need to go 200+ PMC chair mailboxes!
>>
>> Count me as grumpy as well :-)
>>
>> and filtering those are quite a challenge.
>>
>> rgds
>> jan i
>>>
>>> Kevin
>>>
>>> On 19 October 2017 18:24:10 CEST, Tom <t...@falkensweb.com
>>> <mailto:t...@falkensweb.com>> wrote:
>>> +1
>>> As my first month on this list, it's a torrent.
>>> It's just encouraging me to divert it all out of my inbox, so guarantees
>>> I'll miss the important things because I'm drowned in robot generated near
>>> identical mails about a couple of hundred projects.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
>
