Re: [Openstack-operators] [openstack-dev] [Openstack-sigs] [tc]Global Reachout Proposal

[Zhipeng Huang]

Thanks Anita, will definitely do as you kindly suggested :)

On Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 12:04 PM Anita Kuno  wrote:

> On 2018-09-18 08:40 AM, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> > On 2018-09-18 11:26:57 +0900 (+0900), Ghanshyam Mann wrote:
> > [...]
> >> I can understand that IRC cannot be used in China which is very
> >> painful and mostly it is used weChat.
> > [...]
> >
> > I have yet to hear anyone provide first-hand confirmation that
> > access to Freenode's IRC servers is explicitly blocked by the
> > mainland Chinese government. There has been a lot of speculation
> > that the usual draconian corporate firewall policies (surprise, the
> > rest of the World gets to struggle with those too, it's not just a
> > problem in China) are blocking a variety of messaging protocols from
> > workplace networks and the people who encounter this can't tell the
> > difference because they're already accustomed to much of their other
> > communications being blocked at the border. I too have heard from
> > someone who's heard from someone that "IRC can't be used in China"
> > but the concrete reasons why continue to be missing from these
> > discussions.
> >
>
> I'll reply to this email arbitrarily in order to comply with Zhipeng
> Huang's wishes that the conversation concerned with understanding the
> actual obstacles to communication takes place on the mailing list. I do
> hope I am posting to the correct thread.
>
> In response to part of your comment on the patch at
> https://review.openstack.org/#/c/602697/ which you posted about 5 hours
> ago you said "@Anita you are absolutely right it is only me stuck my
> head out speaks itself the problem I stated in the patch. Many of the
> community tools that we are comfortable with are not that accessible to
> a broader ecosystem. And please assured that I meant I refer the patch
> to the Chinese community, as Leong also did on the ML, to try to bring
> them over to join the convo." and I would like to reply.
>
> I would like to say that I am honoured by your generosity. Thank you.
> Now, when the Chinese community consumes the patch, as well as the
> conversation in the comments, please encourage folks to ask for
> clarification if any descriptions or phrases don't make sense to them.
> One of the best ways of ensuring clear communication is to start off
> slowly and take the time to ask what the other side means. It can seem
> tedious and a waste of time, but I have found it to be very educational
> and helpful in understanding how the other person perceives the
> situation. It also helps me to understand how I am creating obstacles in
> ways that I talk.
>
> Taking time to clarify helps me to adjust how I am speaking so that my
> meaning is more likely to be understood by the group to which I am
> trying to offer my perspective. I do appreciate that many people are
> trying to avoid embarrassment, but I have never found any way to
> understand people in a culture that is not the one I group up in, other
> than embarrassing myself and working through it. Usually I find the
> group I am wanting to understand is more than willing to rescue me from
> my embarrassment and support me in my learning. In a strange way, the
> embarrassment is kind of helpful in order to create understanding
> between myself and those people I am trying to understand.
>
> Thank you, Anita
>
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Re: [Openstack-operators] [openstack-dev] [Openstack-sigs] [tc]Global Reachout Proposal

[Anita Kuno]

On 2018-09-18 08:40 AM, Jeremy Stanley wrote:

On 2018-09-18 11:26:57 +0900 (+0900), Ghanshyam Mann wrote:
[...]

I can understand that IRC cannot be used in China which is very
painful and mostly it is used weChat.

[...]

I have yet to hear anyone provide first-hand confirmation that
access to Freenode's IRC servers is explicitly blocked by the
mainland Chinese government. There has been a lot of speculation
that the usual draconian corporate firewall policies (surprise, the
rest of the World gets to struggle with those too, it's not just a
problem in China) are blocking a variety of messaging protocols from
workplace networks and the people who encounter this can't tell the
difference because they're already accustomed to much of their other
communications being blocked at the border. I too have heard from
someone who's heard from someone that "IRC can't be used in China"
but the concrete reasons why continue to be missing from these
discussions.



I'll reply to this email arbitrarily in order to comply with Zhipeng 
Huang's wishes that the conversation concerned with understanding the 
actual obstacles to communication takes place on the mailing list. I do 
hope I am posting to the correct thread.


In response to part of your comment on the patch at 
https://review.openstack.org/#/c/602697/ which you posted about 5 hours 
ago you said "@Anita you are absolutely right it is only me stuck my 
head out speaks itself the problem I stated in the patch. Many of the 
community tools that we are comfortable with are not that accessible to 
a broader ecosystem. And please assured that I meant I refer the patch 
to the Chinese community, as Leong also did on the ML, to try to bring 
them over to join the convo." and I would like to reply.


I would like to say that I am honoured by your generosity. Thank you. 
Now, when the Chinese community consumes the patch, as well as the 
conversation in the comments, please encourage folks to ask for 
clarification if any descriptions or phrases don't make sense to them. 
One of the best ways of ensuring clear communication is to start off 
slowly and take the time to ask what the other side means. It can seem 
tedious and a waste of time, but I have found it to be very educational 
and helpful in understanding how the other person perceives the 
situation. It also helps me to understand how I am creating obstacles in 
ways that I talk.


Taking time to clarify helps me to adjust how I am speaking so that my 
meaning is more likely to be understood by the group to which I am 
trying to offer my perspective. I do appreciate that many people are 
trying to avoid embarrassment, but I have never found any way to 
understand people in a culture that is not the one I group up in, other 
than embarrassing myself and working through it. Usually I find the 
group I am wanting to understand is more than willing to rescue me from 
my embarrassment and support me in my learning. In a strange way, the 
embarrassment is kind of helpful in order to create understanding 
between myself and those people I am trying to understand.


Thank you, Anita

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Re: [Openstack-operators] [openstack-dev] [Openstack-sigs] [tc]Global Reachout Proposal

[Thierry Carrez]

Sylvain Bauza wrote:



Le mar. 18 sept. 2018 à 14:41, Jeremy Stanley > a écrit :


On 2018-09-18 11:26:57 +0900 (+0900), Ghanshyam Mann wrote:
[...]
 > I can understand that IRC cannot be used in China which is very
 > painful and mostly it is used weChat.
[...]

I have yet to hear anyone provide first-hand confirmation that
access to Freenode's IRC servers is explicitly blocked by the
mainland Chinese government. There has been a lot of speculation
that the usual draconian corporate firewall policies (surprise, the
rest of the World gets to struggle with those too, it's not just a
problem in China) are blocking a variety of messaging protocols from
workplace networks and the people who encounter this can't tell the
difference because they're already accustomed to much of their other
communications being blocked at the border. I too have heard from
someone who's heard from someone that "IRC can't be used in China"
but the concrete reasons why continue to be missing from these
discussions.

Thanks fungi, that's the crux of the problem I'd like to see discussed 
in the governance change.
In this change, it states the non-use of existing and official 
communication tools as to be "cumbersome". See my comment on PS1, I 
thought the original concern was technical.


Why are we discussing about WeChat now ? Is that because a large set of 
our contributors *can't* access IRC or because they *prefer* any other ?
In the past, we made clear for a couple of times why IRC is our 
communication channel. I don't see those reasons to be invalid now, but 
I'm still open to understand the problems about why our community 
becomes de facto fragmented.


Agreed, I'm still trying to grasp the issue we are trying to solve here.

We really need to differentiate between technical blockers (firewall), 
cultural blockers (language) and network effect preferences (preferred 
platform).


We should definitely try to address technical blockers, as we don't want 
to exclude anyone. We can also allow for a bit of flexibility in the 
tools used in our community, to accommodate cultural blockers as much as 
we possibly can (keeping in mind that in the end, the code has to be 
written, proposed and discussed in a single language). We can even 
encourage community members to reach out on local social networks... But 
I'm reluctant to pass an official resolution to recommend that TC 
members engage on specific platforms because "everyone is there".


--
Thierry Carrez (ttx)

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Re: [Openstack-operators] [openstack-dev] [Openstack-sigs] [tc]Global Reachout Proposal

[Jeremy Stanley]

On 2018-09-18 14:52:28 +0200 (+0200), Sylvain Bauza wrote:
[...]
> Why are we discussing about WeChat now? Is that because a large
> set of our contributors *can't* access IRC or because they
> *prefer* any other?

Until we get confirmation either way, I'm going to work under the
assumption that there are actual network barriers to using IRC for
these contributors and that it's not just a matter of preference. I
mainly want to know the source of these barriers because that will
determine how to go about addressing them.

If it's restrictions imposed by employers, it may be hard for
employees to raise the issue in predominantly confrontation-averse
cultures. The First Contact SIG is working on a document which
outlines the communications and workflows used by our community with
a focus on explaining to managers and other staff at contributing
organizations what allowances they can make to ease and improve the
experience of those they've tasked with working upstream.

If the barriers are instead imposed by national government, then
urging contributors within those borders to flaunt the law and
interact with the rest of our community over IRC is not something
which should be taken lightly. That's not to say it can't be solved,
but the topic then is a much more political one and our community
may not be an appropriate venue for those discussions.

> In the past, we made clear for a couple of times why IRC is our
> communication channel. I don't see those reasons to be invalid
> now, but I'm still open to understand the problems about why our
> community becomes de facto fragmented.

I think the extended community is already fragmented across a
variety of discussion fora. Some watch for relevant hashtags on
Twitter and engage in discussions there. I gather there's an
unofficial OpenStack Slack channel where lots of newcomers show up
to ask questions because they assume the OpenStack community relies
on Slack the same way the Kubernetes community does, and so a few
volunteers from our community hang out there and try to redirect
questions to more appropriate places. I've also heard tell of an
OpenStack subReddit which some stackers help moderate and try to
provide damage control/correct misstatements there. I don't think
these are necessarily a problem, and the members of our community
who work to spread accurate information to these places are in many
cases helping reduce the actual degree of fragmentation.

I'm still trying to make up my mind on 602697 which is why I haven't
weighed in on the proposal yet. So far I feel like it probably
doesn't bring anything new, since we already declare how and where
official discussion takes place and the measure doesn't make any
attempt to change that. We also don't regulate where unofficial
discussions are allowed to take place, and so it doesn't open up any
new possibilities which were previously disallowed.
-- 
Jeremy Stanley


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