[CentOS-devel] Gauging interest in Discourse

Mon Oct 31 19:43:30 UTC 2022
Neal Gompa <ngompa13 at gmail.com>

On Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 3:40 PM Josh Boyer <jwboyer at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 3:30 PM Neal Gompa <ngompa13 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 3:09 PM Josh Boyer <jwboyer at redhat.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 3:06 PM Neal Gompa <ngompa13 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 2:57 PM Shaun McCance <shaunm at redhat.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Hi all,
> > > > >
> > > > > You might be aware that there is a CentOS category on the Fedora
> > > > > Discourse instance:
> > > > >
> > > > > https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/c/centos/71
> > > > >
> > > > > There have been some discussions about having a dedicated Discourse
> > > > > instance for CentOS. Discourse has a lot of advantages, such as better
> > > > > moderation and integration with our accounts system. But I understand
> > > > > that many people are comfortable with their existing workflows.
> > > > >
> > > > > There's no point in running Discourse if it doesn't get enough buy-in.
> > > > > So I'm asking for input on using Discourse for various things:
> > > > >
> > > > > * Project announcements, like events, meetings, and infra changes
> > > > >
> > > > > * Activity reports, such as for SIGs and events
> > > > >
> > > > > * User support, replacing forums.centos.org
> > > > >
> > > > > * Development of Stream itself, basically centos-devel
> > > > >
> > > > > * Development of stuff inside SIGs
> > > > >
> > > > > * Replacement for the comments section of the blog
> > > > >
> > > > > * Alternatively, just replacing the blog entirely
> > > > >
> > > > > * Something else I'm not thinking of
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > From my point of view, I'd look at a CentOS Discourse as a replacement
> > > > for the older CentOS Forums. I would rather not replace the developer
> > > > discussions with Discourse, but user support and engagement places,
> > > > sure.
> > > >
> > > > Activity reports and such should be going out to the blog because
> > > > that's how the media is going to pick it up. Notably, the CentOS
> > > > Hyperscale SIG is continuously in the news because we did the
> > > > extremely simple thing of always having our reports on the blog. SIGs
> > > > that don't do that don't get talked about. They don't get mindshare,
> > > > and they don't get growth and further interest.
> > >
> > > I do like the blog posts.  Those from Hyperscaler are quite nice.
> > >
> > > > I prefer the mailing list for developer discussions because it allows
> > > > me to tag people into discussions easily enough. However, CentOS
> > > > Stream development is currently not in a very good place because
> > > > almost nobody from RHEL engineering is here. Same goes for the IRC
> > > > channels and any other medium. CentOS Stream development remains
> > > > horrifically opaque, and that is a bug. Unless things change at some
> > > > point, most mailing lists could be closed with not that much impact,
> > > > since there's no communication anyway.
> > >
> > > What kind of communication/interaction are you expecting?
> > >
> >
> > On the mailing list, it'd be nice to see RHEL developer folks
> > notifying folks of big changes landing (like what Alexander Bokovoy
> > and Florian Weimer do from time to time) so that the community can
> > give feedback and test. Also, having RHEL folks on the mailing list
>
> We've been trying to encourage more of that.  I agree it's very
> beneficial, even if the people providing the posts get very little
> response.
>
> > would mean that we can make the happy path for contributors trying to
> > reach RHEL folks about contributions much simpler. On the IRC channel,
> > it'd just be good to see them hanging out so the discussions in there
> > could be more productive and useful.
>
> I try to pull in relevant people when a conversation comes up that I
> think they could contribute to.  The issue as far as I can see is
> there's very little chatter in the IRC channels in general.
>

There's a bit of a catch-22 there I think, I'm not sure how to resolve that...

> > There's also the problem of not being able to figure out who is the
> > maintainer for a package to contact them when sending merge requests.
> > It seems GitLab emails go to /dev/null for a lot of them, which makes
> > things difficult overall.
>
> Why do you need to contact them outside of the MR itself?  The
> maintainers should be watching their projects and getting
> notifications that way.  Notably, there are several packages that have
> multiple maintainers and cascading a bunch of email addresses for
> people to email after an MR is filed isn't really something we're
> going for.
>
> If you need to contact them because they don't respond at all, then
> we're working on that.  If it's "they don't merge my stuff fast enough
> or tell me what to do instead", then I would say we need to be careful
> we're not conflating contribution with priority.
>

It's the former rather than the latter. I would also say that having
dead silence for months is not appropriate no matter what kind of
misconstrued conflations people might think of.




--
真実はいつも一つ!/ Always, there's only one truth!