Carlo Zancanaro <[email protected]> writes: > On Wed, Feb 18 2026, Sergio Pastor Pérez wrote: >> I'm not sure we share the same goal here. The idea was not to impose >> anything on anyone, but to allow unexperienced people to >> participate. > > The nature of the GCD process is that we're not imposing - we're making > a decision together. By design a GCD can be vetoed by anyone, so the > only way for a GCD to go through is for everyone to at least accept it.
Yes, I understand this. >> Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what you say, I understand that you >> don't take part on the different unofficial communication channels. > > I'm in a Guix XMPP room, and I have been active on the r/guix subreddit > in the past. > >> And in my experience, the conversations that take place in different >> unofficial platforms cannot take place in the official mediums we >> promote, because they don't provide the technical features that those >> conversations require, being it images, audio, video calls, polls, >> etc. > > I just looked at the last week of XMPP messages in the Guix room that > I'm in, and of the non-text messages there were two images (screenshots > of code) and one attached file (an archive with some .scm files). > Looking at the first page of r/guix at the moment I see three images in > total, two of which don't contribute substantially to the post (IMO). My > experience has been that text is a sufficient medium for almost all the > communication that I want to do around Guix. > > I'm curious to know what you're seeing that needs audio and video calls, > or polls. I legitimately don't feel the need for them, but I'm aware > that I've probably internalised the limitations of the platforms I use. Well, I don't have a particular example in mind, but images are not supported in IRC, neither universal timestamps, and sometimes certain explanations are easier to express over a voice message than a long wall of text. But most importantly, for a newcomer, sharing the code that does not work is not efficient over IRC. They will be asked to use a pastebin, and many of us just lurk the IRC from time to time, we will not bother clicking the pastebin, although on platforms where code snippets can be shared, we would see it and provide some help. Also, I've found myself not asking a question or engaging with IRC because I may "just" have 30 mins or 1 hour of free time, and since I don't have a bouncer, if no one where to answer in a short time frame, I will likely waste the time of someone that will answer since his message will never be read. > I will also note that audio and video calls exacerbate one of the issues > we talked about earlier, with the sync/async communication. Even if the > async communication is there, if calls are commonplace then people in > further away time zones (like me) can find it even harder to engage. I don't think calls would be common place, but I think it would be useful for organizing hackatons, presentations, and Guix meetings. >> No, you are reading me wrong. What I meant is that, if at the present >> time, trying to do the drastic change of switching completely to Zulip >> is unrealistic, what I wanted to do is to try to make a space for Guile >> projects to collaborate together, and try to bring members from the >> different unofficial communities to the Zulip instance, to at least see >> if it helps us with gathering all this help information that newcomers >> get scattered across different media. > > I'm not sure how to interpret this, so let me state my understanding of > the options and you can tell me where I'm misunderstanding things. > > 1. We can create a new unofficial medium for people to talk about Guix > and Guile projects. This does not require consensus from anyone, but > needs to attract people to it "organically" in order to become useful. > > 2. We can create a new official medium for people to talk about Guix and > Guile projects. This requires a GCD, but would immediately become useful > to the whole project. > > My understanding is that you want to go with (1). If that's right, then > how does this plan differ from the other unofficial Guix communities? > Your long-term vision may be to turn it into an official Guix community, > but in the short term I don't see much difference. That's right, this is why I wanted to ask the Guile community to make an effort to try the platform on an unofficial channel. It's just that the timing was not right, and I'm very busy this weeks to engage with such a community effort. If (2) was an option that had any chance to be considered by the community, we could discuss that, I just don't believe it's realistic to think that everyone will agree, so I feel like that kind of effort would only waste time for everyone involved. >> If this is successful and we manage to centralize most of the unofficial >> conversations through that Zulip instance, then we can start writing a >> GCD. > > Doing things in this order is tricky, because building consensus may > require compromise, and changing the plan. If there's already an > established community, then you have a lot less opportunity to change > things to build that consensus. It might be that people agree "we want > to use Zulip, but we want Guix to make its own organisation and do > things differently". Then what do you do? Probably a GCD :) > Of particular note here is that official Guix communication channels are > moderated by Guix maintainers, who enforce the code of conduct. > Completely changing moderators of a community seems like a big change, > but it would have to happen if Guix were to officially "adopt" an > existing community space. Yes, that would be some effort. Although, I would expect that unofficial community to follow the Guix code of conduct anyway. >> I think any GCD before other members understand the platform does not >> make sense. > > I agree it would be wise to set something up that lets people understand > the platform before asking them to make a decision, but establishing a > functioning community capable of supporting newcomers isn't a > prerequisite for that. As mentioned above, I think it's actually > counterproductive. > > To provide a model of what I mean: while the Codeberg migration GCD was > being discussed, Ludovic set up a personal Guix repository on Codeberg. > This let people raise PRs and see how it worked. After the GCD was > accepted, a new Codeberg repository was created for Guix to use. Well, the problem is see with this comparison is that in order for the platform to prove it's usefulness to the community, we first need to gather many user questions and responses so newcomers can see the effect. If it's just an empty chatroom with a few tests messages, it won't do much, I think. > Note also that most of this email hasn't mentioned Zulip. I don't think > the particular choice of technology is all that relevant to the core > issue here. I think the core issue is really about how to enact change > in the Guix community. Yes, I agree. Best regards, Sergio
