Re: The chats must be public

[Mark Thomas]

Repeating (with minor edits for this context) what I have said on a
similar topic on another thread:

The criteria that the ASF looks for in communication
channels used by projects are (in no particular order):

- open to all
- asynchronous
- available off-line
- full history
- searchable
- archived on ASF controlled systems
- low bandwidth / minimal system requirements

E-mail may seem a little 'old school' at times but it is one of the few
technologies that meets all of the above. Which is why most of our
systems are configured to echo stuff back to the relevant mailing list.

These days I'm used to an always on internet connections with speeds in
the 10s of megabits where I don't need to worry about the cost (even
when I am out and about) but it is worth remembering that not everyone
is in that position. It wasn't really that long ago that I could
sometimes be found working on Apache projects via a 9600 bits per second
dial-up connection that I paid for by the second. It was perfectly
possible for me to follow what was going on by connecting for a few
minutes every couple of hours, syncing my email, making a few commits if
I had anything to commit and then disconnecting and continuing to work
off-line. If a large proportion of communication had happened via a
Gitter like interface there is no way I would have been able to follow
the project.

I'll also note that I am deliberately ignoring Gitter. It isn't an
'official' communication channel for the project so I should not need to
follow it to keep track of what is going on and any decisions that are
being made.

I accept that there are times were using a 'real-time' communication
channel is more efficient. However, it excludes every member of the
community that isn't participating in that channel at that point in
time. The default position at the ASF is that it is better for
communication to be a little less efficient for a few in order for the
entire community to participate.

Cheers,

Mark



On 08/09/18 13:58, Kun Song wrote:
> Gitter is very popular among open source projects. The famous projects on 
> github often have a Gitter channel for users as well as a channel for 
> developers. Email list is good for some serious discussions, and Gitter is 
> good for real time discussions.
> 
> Gitter is born for github projects, from it, you can send a message with well 
> formatted code, and it will show you every activity about this projects.
> 
> So I think we can have both email list and Gitter, they will complement one 
> another perfectly.
> 
> 
>> 在 2018年9月7日，上午11:32，Jerrick Zhu  写道：
>>
>> hi, community
>>
>> Now, we have some chat groups, which are used to discuss about dubbo, such
>> as:
>>
>> * Dingtalk group, nearly 30 people, committers and contributors
>> * WeChat group, contains committers, contributors, and many users
>>
>> I think we need to public these chat groups, so that all people can join
>> us.
>>
>> Maybe Gitter? or Slack ?
>>
>> Or maybe we can drop the chat, just use the mailing list and github issue
>> for discuss.
>>
>> Any other suggestions?
>>
>> Sincerely.
>>
>> jerrick
> 

Re: The chats must be public

[Kun Song]

Gitter is very popular among open source projects. The famous projects on 
github often have a Gitter channel for users as well as a channel for 
developers. Email list is good for some serious discussions, and Gitter is good 
for real time discussions.

Gitter is born for github projects, from it, you can send a message with well 
formatted code, and it will show you every activity about this projects.

So I think we can have both email list and Gitter, they will complement one 
another perfectly.


> 在 2018年9月7日，上午11:32，Jerrick Zhu  写道：
> 
> hi, community
> 
> Now, we have some chat groups, which are used to discuss about dubbo, such
> as:
> 
> * Dingtalk group, nearly 30 people, committers and contributors
> * WeChat group, contains committers, contributors, and many users
> 
> I think we need to public these chat groups, so that all people can join
> us.
> 
> Maybe Gitter? or Slack ?
> 
> Or maybe we can drop the chat, just use the mailing list and github issue
> for discuss.
> 
> Any other suggestions?
> 
> Sincerely.
> 
> jerrick

Re: The chats must be public

[Jason Joo]

+1

Maybe we all have so much work to do, and also need time to write whole 
thoughts down.

IM will destroy it and can't go deeper and multi-thread.

best regards,

Jason

> On Sep 7, 2018, at 23:14, Huxing Zhang  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 11:33 AM Jerrick Zhu  > wrote:
>> 
>> hi, community
>> 
>> Now, we have some chat groups, which are used to discuss about dubbo, such
>> as:
>> 
>> * Dingtalk group, nearly 30 people, committers and contributors
>> * WeChat group, contains committers, contributors, and many users
>> 
>> I think we need to public these chat groups, so that all people can join
>> us.
>> 
>> Maybe Gitter? or Slack ?
>> 
>> Or maybe we can drop the chat, just use the mailing list and github issue
>> for discuss.
> 
> I am +1 on using mailing list without any instant messages chat
> groups. My reasons:
> 
> 1. My past experience tells me that once people start to chat in chat
> groups, they never come back to mailing list, even if you ask them to
> do so.
> 2. Chat groups may be efficient, in terms of you can get an answer
> quickly, but actually in most cases it produces too much useless
> information, because it is cheap. Instead, when you are writing email
> you will have more detailed thoughts. Sometimes when I wrote down my
> initial thoughts, it turns out the initial thought is wrong.
> 3. In the long term goal, I think Dubbo community should think
> globally, if there are contributors are from a different time zone,
> then asynchronized communication will be necessary.
> 
> What I suggest:
> 
> * Stop answering question in chat groups, instead, encourage them to
> ask on mailing list or file an Github issue. I believe if the core
> contributors leave, the questions will shift.
> * Think before you ask. Do you really need an answer so urgently? If
> not, ask asynchronously.
> * If you feel difficult to ask in English, please use Chinese followed
> by English.
> 
>> 
>> Any other suggestions?
>> 
>> Sincerely.
>> 
>> jerrick
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Best Regards！
> Huxing

Re: The chats must be public

[Huxing Zhang]

Hi,

On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 11:33 AM Jerrick Zhu  wrote:
>
> hi, community
>
> Now, we have some chat groups, which are used to discuss about dubbo, such
> as:
>
> * Dingtalk group, nearly 30 people, committers and contributors
> * WeChat group, contains committers, contributors, and many users
>
> I think we need to public these chat groups, so that all people can join
> us.
>
> Maybe Gitter? or Slack ?
>
> Or maybe we can drop the chat, just use the mailing list and github issue
> for discuss.

I am +1 on using mailing list without any instant messages chat
groups. My reasons:

1. My past experience tells me that once people start to chat in chat
groups, they never come back to mailing list, even if you ask them to
do so.
2. Chat groups may be efficient, in terms of you can get an answer
quickly, but actually in most cases it produces too much useless
information, because it is cheap. Instead, when you are writing email
you will have more detailed thoughts. Sometimes when I wrote down my
initial thoughts, it turns out the initial thought is wrong.
3. In the long term goal, I think Dubbo community should think
globally, if there are contributors are from a different time zone,
then asynchronized communication will be necessary.

What I suggest:

* Stop answering question in chat groups, instead, encourage them to
ask on mailing list or file an Github issue. I believe if the core
contributors leave, the questions will shift.
* Think before you ask. Do you really need an answer so urgently? If
not, ask asynchronously.
* If you feel difficult to ask in English, please use Chinese followed
by English.

>
> Any other suggestions?
>
> Sincerely.
>
> jerrick



-- 
Best Regards！
Huxing

Re: The chats must be public

[Justin Mclean]

Hi,

> But it is a different story for Dubbo users.

You should be asking the users to use the mailing list as well. Users become 
contributors become committers.

> What I am worrying is where we could group them all together in one single 
> place.

If the user traffic gets too large for this list then you can make a seperate 
users@dubbo mailing list

> People need a place to know each other, to learn from each other, to talk 
> about Dubbo. Dubbo users
> keep asking us what WeChat group we are maintaining for Dubbo.

If they are just chatting about the project that fine but think of this 
scenario. A user asks a question and it gets a good answer, the answer could 
help out users who haven't asked it but are following the conversation, if it 
archived in the mailing list [1] it can help future users who can search for 
that answer. On some chat application that may not be open to everyone or not 
archives the answer is lost. Or worse the content placed on it may not be 
licensed in a way that is open for all to use.

Also being a mailing list people tend to think a little more about their 
replies and you get higher quality bandwidth, there’s a little less incidental 
chatter about pets and the weather.

> This is a dilemma we are facing today. I believe the fact of IM getting
> popular happens too in Western

Just because it popular doesn’t mean we use it at the ASF. It also has to fit 
in with our values of openness and transparency for instance.

> With regarding to Dubbo contributors, they have need of casual tech talk
> too. If there's no place allowed, then the tech talk will not happen at
> all. 

I think that sort of conversation should be happening on the mailing list. It 
not that it’s not allowed it just that if conversations are happening elsewhere 
the community isn’t going to grow and attract new committers as fast as it 
could.

> Last but not least, today's traffic in this mailing list is pretty low
> since Dubbo contributors contribute the vast majority.

Which I have listed as a (minor) concern in the current report to the board.

> I really interested to learn any success story to attract users into a 
> mailing list, especially
> for the peoples who are not native English speakers.

And the language barrier is a difficult issue. I think it find to not post in 
English with a google (or other) translation so everyone has some idea of what 
is being said. That being said a large number of Apache project have people who 
are not native English speakers and it generally works. We get commits from all 
over the world all the time. (There’s a web site showing commits by location I 
see if I can find it.)

Thanks,
Justin

Re: The chats must be public

[Ian Luo]

Justin,

I am not worrying about using mailing list to communicate among Dubbo
contributors. After all it is a relative small group, everyone within it
understand the Apache way well.

But it is a different story for Dubbo users. What I am worrying is where we
could group them all together in one single place. People need a place to
know each other, to learn from each other, to talk about Dubbo. Dubbo users
keep asking us what WeChat group we are maintaining for Dubbo. We could ask
them nicely, but cannot request them to send email to mailing list, plus,
better in English.

This is a dilemma we are facing today. I believe the fact of IM getting
popular happens too in Western, otherwise we won't see IRC, Gitter, Slack
keep coming out. People need casual talk for common interest, even it is a
tech topic. We hope the talk can happen in one single place.

With regarding to Dubbo contributors, they have need of casual tech talk
too. If there's no place allowed, then the tech talk will not happen at
all. Of course, if the topic gets official and needs to make decision, we
will move it to mailing list.

Last but not least, today's traffic in this mailing list is pretty low
since Dubbo contributors contribute the vast majority. I really interested
to learn any success story to attract users into a mailing list, especially
for the peoples who are not native English speakers.

Any thought, suggestion? Pls. shine your light on it.

Thanks,
-Ian.





On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 12:33 PM Justin Mclean 
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I suggest you don't use slack or any other instant message as doing will
> exclude some people due to the platform used or time zone they are in or
> language used. Also these conversations can be hard to search and may not
> be archived.
>
> All decisions need be made in publc on the mailing list and it should be
> the primary firm of communication.
>
> Thanks,
> Justin
>
> On Fri., 7 Sep. 2018, 2:17 pm Ian Luo,  wrote:
>
> > I lean to use Slack for main means of chatting. Dingtalk is popular in
> > China, but it is indeed inappropriate for public communication. I agree
> we
> > should change.
> >
> > I tried the-asf workspace. It looks like it accepts subscriptions from
> > apache committers only.
> >
> > What about one dedicated workspace for Dubbo? In this way, we could
> gather
> > both dubbo user and dubbo developer in one single place, and more
> > important, all discussions are public.
> >
> > What do you think?
> >
> > -Ian.
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 11:33 AM Jerrick Zhu  wrote:
> >
> > > hi, community
> > >
> > > Now, we have some chat groups, which are used to discuss about dubbo,
> > such
> > > as:
> > >
> > > * Dingtalk group, nearly 30 people, committers and contributors
> > > * WeChat group, contains committers, contributors, and many users
> > >
> > > I think we need to public these chat groups, so that all people can
> join
> > > us.
> > >
> > > Maybe Gitter? or Slack ?
> > >
> > > Or maybe we can drop the chat, just use the mailing list and github
> issue
> > > for discuss.
> > >
> > > Any other suggestions?
> > >
> > > Sincerely.
> > >
> > > jerrick
> > >
> >
>

Re: The chats must be public

[Jerrick Zhu]

On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 12:33 PM Justin Mclean 
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I suggest you don't use slack or any other instant message as doing will
>

Can't agree more.


> exclude some people due to the platform used or time zone they are in or
> language used. Also these conversations can be hard to search and may not
> be archived.
>
> All decisions need be made in publc on the mailing list and it should be
> the primary firm of communication.
>
> Thanks,
> Justin
>
> On Fri., 7 Sep. 2018, 2:17 pm Ian Luo,  wrote:
>
> > I lean to use Slack for main means of chatting. Dingtalk is popular in
> > China, but it is indeed inappropriate for public communication. I agree
> we
> > should change.
> >
> > I tried the-asf workspace. It looks like it accepts subscriptions from
> > apache committers only.
> >
> > What about one dedicated workspace for Dubbo? In this way, we could
> gather
> > both dubbo user and dubbo developer in one single place, and more
> > important, all discussions are public.
> >
> > What do you think?
> >
> > -Ian.
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 11:33 AM Jerrick Zhu  wrote:
> >
> > > hi, community
> > >
> > > Now, we have some chat groups, which are used to discuss about dubbo,
> > such
> > > as:
> > >
> > > * Dingtalk group, nearly 30 people, committers and contributors
> > > * WeChat group, contains committers, contributors, and many users
> > >
> > > I think we need to public these chat groups, so that all people can
> join
> > > us.
> > >
> > > Maybe Gitter? or Slack ?
> > >
> > > Or maybe we can drop the chat, just use the mailing list and github
> issue
> > > for discuss.
> > >
> > > Any other suggestions?
> > >
> > > Sincerely.
> > >
> > > jerrick
> > >
> >
>

Re: The chats must be public

[Justin Mclean]

Hi,

I suggest you don't use slack or any other instant message as doing will
exclude some people due to the platform used or time zone they are in or
language used. Also these conversations can be hard to search and may not
be archived.

All decisions need be made in publc on the mailing list and it should be
the primary firm of communication.

Thanks,
Justin

On Fri., 7 Sep. 2018, 2:17 pm Ian Luo,  wrote:

> I lean to use Slack for main means of chatting. Dingtalk is popular in
> China, but it is indeed inappropriate for public communication. I agree we
> should change.
>
> I tried the-asf workspace. It looks like it accepts subscriptions from
> apache committers only.
>
> What about one dedicated workspace for Dubbo? In this way, we could gather
> both dubbo user and dubbo developer in one single place, and more
> important, all discussions are public.
>
> What do you think?
>
> -Ian.
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 11:33 AM Jerrick Zhu  wrote:
>
> > hi, community
> >
> > Now, we have some chat groups, which are used to discuss about dubbo,
> such
> > as:
> >
> > * Dingtalk group, nearly 30 people, committers and contributors
> > * WeChat group, contains committers, contributors, and many users
> >
> > I think we need to public these chat groups, so that all people can join
> > us.
> >
> > Maybe Gitter? or Slack ?
> >
> > Or maybe we can drop the chat, just use the mailing list and github issue
> > for discuss.
> >
> > Any other suggestions?
> >
> > Sincerely.
> >
> > jerrick
> >
>

Re: The chats must be public

[Ian Luo]

I lean to use Slack for main means of chatting. Dingtalk is popular in
China, but it is indeed inappropriate for public communication. I agree we
should change.

I tried the-asf workspace. It looks like it accepts subscriptions from
apache committers only.

What about one dedicated workspace for Dubbo? In this way, we could gather
both dubbo user and dubbo developer in one single place, and more
important, all discussions are public.

What do you think?

-Ian.


On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 11:33 AM Jerrick Zhu  wrote:

> hi, community
>
> Now, we have some chat groups, which are used to discuss about dubbo, such
> as:
>
> * Dingtalk group, nearly 30 people, committers and contributors
> * WeChat group, contains committers, contributors, and many users
>
> I think we need to public these chat groups, so that all people can join
> us.
>
> Maybe Gitter? or Slack ?
>
> Or maybe we can drop the chat, just use the mailing list and github issue
> for discuss.
>
> Any other suggestions?
>
> Sincerely.
>
> jerrick
>

Re: The chats must be public

[zhenya Sun]

Agree!


from my iphone！
On 09/07/2018 11:32, Jerrick Zhu wrote:
hi, community

Now, we have some chat groups, which are used to discuss about dubbo, such
as:

* Dingtalk group, nearly 30 people, committers and contributors
* WeChat group, contains committers, contributors, and many users

I think we need to public these chat groups, so that all people can join
us.

Maybe Gitter? or Slack ?

Or maybe we can drop the chat, just use the mailing list and github issue
for discuss.

Any other suggestions?

Sincerely.

jerrick

The chats must be public

[Jerrick Zhu]

hi, community

Now, we have some chat groups, which are used to discuss about dubbo, such
as:

* Dingtalk group, nearly 30 people, committers and contributors
* WeChat group, contains committers, contributors, and many users

I think we need to public these chat groups, so that all people can join
us.

Maybe Gitter? or Slack ?

Or maybe we can drop the chat, just use the mailing list and github issue
for discuss.

Any other suggestions?

Sincerely.

jerrick