Community building

[adrinux]

@laktek's comment on the yeoman issue [1] about a hangout to discuss the issue prompted me to post this, though I've been thinking about it for a while.

Github, although it's improving, isn't yet particularly good for community interaction and collaboration. I feel it would be nice to have some added place or places to interact.

Possibilities:

• Google group
• G+ community
• The obligatory OSS project IRC channel on freenode

Anyone else have any thoughts?

[1] #103 (comment)

[balupton]

For DocPad, we use GitHub Issues for discussions, IRC for chat, StackOverflow for support, and Google+ Hangouts on Air for calls. Ideally, we would like to use Swiggle, but they are still closed (if they were open-source, with public rooms, that would be amazing).

There have been talks of doing a mailing list, but they haven't taken off due to GitHub Issues serving that purpose already.

We're on the different social networks, but they have zero traction. Besides twitter, which we just use for posting updates, and reaching out to users having problems.

Happy to discuss in more detail what's worked for us and what hasn't, perhaps it can help.

[laktek]

Hey @adrinux thanks for initiating this thread. Also, @balupton for the inputs.

I've seen many large/successful open source projects still actively use IRC for project meetings/decision making. I guess it's a better approach as discussions are logged and archived for future reference.

I also don't really see a need for a Google Group or Mailing List yet. I guess it's ok to use GitHub Issues for feature suggestions and any newbie help. Maybe if things go out of proportions we can move over to a dedicated forum like Discourse.

In conclusion, let's setup a IRC channel and schedule a meeting :)

[adrinux]

I hope I was too presumptuous:

#punch on freenode is now a thing!

I used the 'official' namespace of # rather than unofficial ## since we're discussing it here.

Next steps:
Figure out how to to give other people op access, and who should get it.
Decide whether we want a bot – I'm thinking that's overkill at present, but they can be useful for answering repetitive questions, leaving messages for other users and logging or course.

@laktek "discussions are logged and archived for future reference" by your own client, if it has that feature, but not publicly or centrally by default, no? Obviously it can be set up.

[laktek]

Wooh! Thanks @adrinux.

We can make it an open room where anyone can join, ask questions and have a good time (as long as it's not spammed).

However, we should hold pre-scheduled meetings for discussions of features and project roadmaps (first one would be for #103). I'm thinking of this procedure for such meetings:

1. We create a GitHub issue first with the scheduled date and time.
2. Members who want to discuss, raise a concern must briefly express that in the issue.
3. Then on the scheduled date, they will get the priority to speak.
4. Others can join and watch how the meeting proceeds, but cannot interrupt.
5. After scheduled members has spoken, and if there's still time others can chime in.

Let's give it a try and see. I'm sure we might have to make tweaks along the way.

BTW, we should setup a bot for logging. @adrinux Can you check how can we set one up?

[constantx]

@laktek interested in using ZenHub.io for laktek/punch? Give a common lightweight-kanban board for easy Issues organizing, and voting.

[adrinux]

@laktek I'll look into adding a bot today.

[laktek]

@adrinux thanks.
@constantx ZenHub looks interesting, but still in private beta?

[constantx]

@laktek you can use it right away here: https://zenhub.io/betalist :)

[adrinux]

@laktek Sorry, gave up trying to get a bot logging the #punch channel after having a frustrating time with the eggdrop bot. It was logging but I couldn't communicate with it properly.

I'd suggest everyone enables logging in their irc client, so we have personal logs of the conversation. Failing that someone else can take a shot at it =D

[balupton]

We use botbot.me to log the #docpad channel https://botbot.me/freenode/docpad/

[adrinux]

@balupton Seems to be no way of signing up to botbot.me...