Open Stack

On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 6:58 AM Sylvain Bauza <sylvain.bauza at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Le lun. 17 sept. 2018 à 15:32, Jeremy Stanley <fungi at yuggoth.org> a écrit :
>>
>> On 2018-09-16 14:14:41 +0200 (+0200), Jean-philippe Evrard wrote:
>> [...]
>> > - What is the problem joining Wechat will solve (keeping in mind the
>> > language barrier)?
>>
>> As I understand it, the suggestion is that mere presence of project
>> leadership in venues where this emerging subset of our community
>> gathers would provide a strong signal that we support them and care
>> about their experience with the software.
>>
>> > - Isn't this problem already solved for other languages with
>> > existing initiatives like local ambassadors and i18n team? Why
>> > aren't these relevant?
>> [...]
>>
>> It seems like there are at least couple of factors at play here:
>> first the significant number of users and contributors within
>> mainland China compared to other regions (analysis suggests there
>> were nearly as many contributors to the Rocky release from China as
>> the USA), but second there may be facets of Chinese culture which
>> make this sort of demonstrative presence a much stronger signal than
>> it would be in other cultures.
>>
>> > - Pardon my ignorance here, what is the problem with email? (I
>> > understand some chat systems might be blocked, I thought emails
>> > would be fine, and the lowest common denominator).
>>
>> Someone in the TC room (forgive me, I don't recall who now, maybe
>> Rico?) asserted that Chinese contributors generally only read the
>> first message in any given thread (perhaps just looking for possible
>> announcements?) and that if they _do_ attempt to read through some
>> of the longer threads they don't participate in them because the
>> discussion is presumed to be over and decisions final by the time
>> they "reach the end" (I guess not realizing that it's perfectly fine
>> to reply to a month-old discussion and try to help alter course on
>> things if you have an actual concern?).
>>
>
> While I understand the technical issues that could be due using IRC in China, I still don't get why opening the gates and saying WeChat being yet another official channel would prevent our community from fragmenting.
>
> Truly the usage of IRC is certainly questionable, but if we have multiple ways to discuss, I just doubt we could prevent us to silo ourselves between our personal usages.
> Either we consider the new channels as being only for southbound communication, or we envisage the possibility, as a community, to migrate from IRC to elsewhere (I'm particulary not fan of the latter so I would challenge this but I can understand the reasons)
>
> -Sylvain
>

Objectively, I don't see a way to endorse something other than IRC
without some form of collective presence on more than just Wechat to
keep the message intact. IRC is the official messaging platform, for
whatever that's worth these days. However, at present, it makes less
and less sense to explicitly eschew other outlets in favor. From a
Chef OpenStack perspective, the common medium is, perhaps not
unsurprising, code review. Everything else evolved over time to be
southbound paths to the code, including most of the conversation
taking place there as opposed to IRC.

The continuation of this thread only confirms that there is already
fragmentation in the community, and that people on each side of the
void genuinely want to close that gap. At this point, the thing to do
is prevent further fragmentation of the intent. It is, however, far
easier to bikeshed over which platform of choice.

At present, it seems a collective presence is forming ad hoc,
regardless of any such resolution. With some additional coordination
and planning, I think that there could be something that could scale
beyond one or two outlets.

Best,
Samuel