Open Stack

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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