Hi Eagle PMCs, Board has some suggestion that Apache Eagle community should balance the use of slack conversation and mail listing to broadcast important features and decisions. The original email is as below.
Also Taylor, our mentor also noticed that some of JIRA/PR are not handled gracefully, which may cause community erosion. Could I ask for your input on those topics? I believe it is really important for Apache Eagle to grow and become mature. Thanks Edward Zhang ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Chris Mattmann <[email protected]> Date: Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 9:14 PM Subject: Re: Slack Conversations To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Thanks for taking these and my own comments from the Board to heart, Edward. If you get the chance please take the conversation forward to the dev list, and looking forward to hearing how the outcome went in the next Board report. Cheers, Chris *From: *Edward Zhang <[email protected]> *Reply-To: *"[email protected]" <[email protected]> *Date: *Wednesday, June 21, 2017 at 6:40 PM *To: *"[email protected]" <[email protected]> *Cc: *"[email protected]" <[email protected]> *Subject: *Re: Slack Conversations Hi Taylor, Thanks for the email and suggestions. Apache Eagle slack usage is documented in github README, https://github.com/ apache/eagle but not in Apache Eagle site, apparently we should do that in Apache Eagle site http://eagle.apache.org/. Regarding board report, we may missed some steps besides sending report to board mail listing and we should be able to target it for next month. Rest of suggestions are all good, I need start looking at the issues closely as well and hopefully can have discussion soon with Apache Eagle PMCs. Thanks Edward Zhang On Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 2:27 PM, P. Taylor Goetz <[email protected]> wrote: Dear fellow Eagle PMC members, The email below caught my eye and prompted me to take a closer look at the community from a mentor perspective. What I found was, well, troubling... (Please feel free to correct anything I may get wrong, I didn’t do an exhaustive search.) Regarding Slack: My first check was the Eagle website to see if there is a link to the Slack channel and instructions for joining. I couldn’t find anything. I tried to join using my Apache email without luck. I would recommend documenting Slack usage on the Eagle website and configuring Slack to allow anyone with an apache.org email address to join. I also searched through email to find discussions regarding usage of Slack and couldn’t find any (granted this could have taken place before I became a mentor and subscribed). I also wasn’t able to find any evidence of slack discussions being brought back to the email lists — that’s fine if no decisions are being made on slack, but I wasn’t able to join so I can’t be certain. Some other issues I found: 1. I see a lot of instances where a single person creates a large number of JIRAs in rapid succession. To an outside observer that could be perceived as someone copying a bunch of bug reports from an internal corporate system to Apache, and suggests back-channel communication and decision making. 2. I’m seeing instances where JIRAs are assigned to an individual other than the reporter at creation time, with no corresponding discussion. Again, this suggests decisions are being made in private. 3. I see many pull requests being submitted by one person, then merged by another person within *minutes.* Oftentimes without any discussion, +1, etc. It is customary, at least in review-then-commit projects, to allow an appropriate amount of time to pass before merging patches so that others in the community — especially those in other time zones — have the opportunity to review a patch. All of these points undermine the idea that Apache projects operate in an open and inclusive manner, and as Chris pointed out, can lead to community erosion. I would recommend the PMC start a (preferably public) conversation to develop a plan to resolve these issues. Since Eagle missed the report deadline for this month, it will need to report next month. I would hope that report would include a reference to such a discussion, as well as a summary of the plan the PMC put in place to address these issues. Thanks, -Taylor On Jun 17, 2017, at 9:28 PM, Chris Mattmann <[email protected]> wrote: Dear Edward Zhang, and Eagle PMC, I have an action item from the Board to follow up with something mentioned in your prior report. It seems in that report there is mention of Slack conversations in the project. While these are fine, project decisions are made on the mailing list, in a timely fashion. Documenting decisions *after the fact* can lead to community erosion and reduce overall participation by those that feel marginalized if they are not directly part of the Slack conversation. Please try to balance that, and to ensure that everyone can participate in the project. Thanks, Chris Mattmann (on behalf of the ASF Board)
