The list occasionally has problems, as all human communications do. That doesn't mean it is bad or ineffective. It serves a necessary function as a clearing house for issues within the development portion of the community, as the -user list serves functions to announce new plugins, themes, and render assistance.
That doesn't mean communications within the community can't be more effective. As the community grows larger and more complex, the two mailing lists will become increasingly unwieldy to use. That is a major reason I'm in favor of some kind of forum for some purposes, especially for two use cases. First is working groups. Working groups are a terrific idea that was greeted with a great deal of excitement and then very quickly went to sleep. A major reason for this, I believe, was the difficulty or unwieldiness of communicating within everything else that happens on the mailing list. I'm hoping that having dedicated areas on the forum will reawaken working groups. Second is answering user questions. As time goes on and the user base grows, many questions they have will have already have been answered. It should be a lot easier to find those answers or know where to direct the person on the forum than it is in the list, which can be frustrating to search. Re some of the points on the wiki page Owen created: Trac Wiki - Activating this sounds like a good idea. Some of the tickets on trac so overarching it would be useful to have a way to track the work that has been done on them. Write shorter posts and submit ideas as one actionable idea per post - Not that this reply is a clear example of this, but with a clear view of what is being discussed, keeping discussion focused should be easier. Have a monthly "clean house" event - I'm not sure how well this would work out. As Mike mentions, there are organizational factors involved. Much of our organization depends on someone taking an interest in an aspect of the project and devoting themselves to it. Documentation, to which such a house cleaning is related, is notably unpopular. Necessary, but not as interesting as coding, designing or interacting with other members of the community. Rick On Nov 3, 3:34 pm, "Scott Merrill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 11:49 AM, Owen Winkler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > There were some concerns expressed today that our inter-community > > communication is not as effective as it should be. > ... > > If you have any comments, whether you read the page or not, please reply > > here. Feel free to update the wiki page with your own concerns or > > suggested solutions, and/or provide comment on any of the proposed > > solutions. > > I have been tuning out of a lot of discussions on the -dev list > because they are uninteresting to me. When we set out on this crazy > project, we all agreed that folks should be able to scratch their own > itches. I don't currently have many itches, so haven't been > scratching. > > I wonder if folks who participate arduously in so many threads really > find them all very interesting, or if they're merely trying to assert > themselves within the project? Please note that the latter is not > necessarily a pejorative. > > Perhaps if folks took a step back to seriously consider the value of > their contribution before contributing it, this list would feel less > combative? Ask yourself, "What benefit am I providing to the project > by arguing for or against such-and-such?" > > This is not a call to squelch anyone's input. It's a suggestion that > people self-evaluate their input, so that it's better focused. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/habari-dev -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
