Discussion: A new place to discuss business related things

[balupton]

Seems we are starting to compile a rather large listing of issues here about business related things in relation to DocPad, Bevry, and whatever else.

Currently they are getting lumped between:

• The DocPad Website Repo
• This Repo
• Stack Overflow, and then getting closed because they are not programming related
• Private Channels: Email, Skype, IRC

All in all, there is great confusion about where to post such things. We need to think about this.

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[greduan]

Perhaps a mailing list? That or just the DocPad source code repo since it would make sense to have it there.

[balupton]

Yeah, I do like having discussions here, but I think the mixture of it with code and programming tasks scares off a lot of business people from posting, so they revert to email.

We originally did have a Google Group, but I found the problem is that they weren't in my workflow as it became another thing I had to check specifically, plus they caused me a lot of email spam (at least for me that is!) - however, I would be happily proven wrong on this, as it is indeed a viable option despite my experience.

On the other hand of that, something that could work well is have a bevry/business repository, in the way we have docpad/gui bevry/meetup bevry/trainings - however I fear this could scare of non-techincal people in the way this repository does - albiet it will scare them far less - the pros of this is that it is in all of our worklows already, bringing the community together and the response rates higher.

Perhaps we could have an email to github issue sync thing. Like if you email bevry-website@github.com it will go to the bevry website repo issue tracker, find the appropriate thread if it exists and add a comment, or posts a new issue. /cc @patcon /related isaacs/github#94

[chase]

@greduan, I was just about to recommend a mailing list. We can get one for DocPad at LibreList for free.

LibreList also provides great protection against spam and access to the archives via rsync, meaning we could probably make an interface for it on the DocPad website in a similar manner to how we deal with the documentation.

[balupton]

I'm new to LibreList, how could that stack up against Google Groups in relation to the context stated earlier? curious

[balupton]

If we could make a mailing list adapter for github issues, I'd be a very very happy man.

[chase]

Please correct me if I'm wrong but Google Groups isn't really a mailing list because it:

• Requires a Google account.
• Does not offer the ability to provide your own interface
• Does not offer the ability to pull, archive, or sync
• Email is the secondary interface

With LibreList, we could totally make a bot that subscribes to the list, matches the subject or a link to the issue in the message body, and posts a comment in an issue.

We could also make an interface to the mailing list the DocPad website where registered users could post questions, make comments, etc. They wouldn't even need to use email unless they wanted to do so.

[greduan]

Google Groups is considered a mailing list. I am not sure if it counts as one though...

[patcon]

I was asked to provide input here, in regards to isaacs/github#94.

Not sure that I feel a GH-issue/email adapter is worth creating here. It was more a suggestion to deal with the fact that GitHub is a immovable force that has refused to use their own GH issues for years, insisting on email for support requests.

I might suggest this approach for us:

• Start a GH issue queue for business things.
• Start encouraging business folks to use it.
• When people do email/skype you, copy the body into a new GH issue, and reply to the person, telling them you'd like to continue the conversation in an open forum
• If, after working to move the conversation to GH issues, conversations are visibly and publicly dying because "business people" aren't participating in the issues, then build the email-to-GH-issues adapter.

Anyhow, just my two cents :)

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Note: When someone emails you, you can quickly check whether they have a github account to cc in the issue:
https://github.com/search?q=patrick%40myplanetdigital.com+in%3Aemail&type=Users&ref=searchresults

Unfortunately, it only works for primary emails.

[dwynne]

I think if you want to have the discussion on GitHub, then leaving it in this repo has it's advantages in terms of the number of people who will likely see it and join the conversation.

If you want to keep DocPad issues more code related - then a mailing list seems like the right tool for the job, be it Google Groups or whatever. I think that's a reasonably accepted split adopted on many OSS projects.

[greduan]

Seems nobody has mentioned it, how about using Discourse for all non-code related conversations?

[balupton]

For what it's worth, we now have logging on our IRC Channel thanks to BotBot.me: https://botbot.me/freenode/docpad/

For Discourse, that seems to fulfill the same need as github issues, but with the problem that we aren't already on it.

For Mailing Lists, they seem like they would do pretty well, however the issue is to avoid using it as a support channel.

Ideally we just need some potential client/business feedback here for what they would be most comfortable with.

Essentially, we have two needs:

• A place for general discussions for DocPad
• A place for businesses to express interest and get partners reaching out - do businesses even want this, or do they just want to go through Bevry?

[patcon]

Nice. That IRC bot is cool!

Now that we have easy logging and friendly search of the IRC logs, why not just direct business people to web IRC? :)
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23docpad

[balupton]

Hrmm, I thought about that, but it could leave them with a negative experience if they are expecting an answer right there and then - when they would probably want an email from the sales teams from our partners, rather than every dev on the IRC Channel at that moment. It would also mean that requests for tenders, are being lost in everyday conversations.

[balupton]

Just looked into Google Groups as a mailing list. New users can email into the group, however you have to explicitly check "cc Original Author" in order for them to be emailed, as well as if they reply to your reply via email (instead of reply all), their reply will not be posted to the group. Which could be a bit annoying.

[greduan]

You can have Google Groups give you a "daily update" where it sends you a status report of the mailing list, who answered etc. Or it can be instantaneous.

[balupton]

Yeah, but that only applies if they've joined the group, versus just emailing it.

[greduan]

Ah... Hmm...

[balupton]

/cc @chase also has an idea for job post / tender posting app that we could host on our website, can you explain this a bit more in writing here please @chase :)

[balupton]

I've updated the bevry listing on the support partners page to help facilitate this in the immediate meantime a little bit more: http://docpad.org/support#bevry

[balupton]

For things that aren't specifically related soley to docpad, I've created https://github.com/bevry/business in the meantime.

We could probably just rename it "discuss" or "brainstorm" and it can be a generic location to discuss whatever, then we can use a tag for business things. Probably a better idea.

[balupton]

@chase brought up some real good reasons for a mailing list over github issues today over IRC.

One question, should the mailing list be "The Bevry Mailing List" or "The DocPad Mailing List".

With Bevry representing the community, and DocPad representing a project here.

[chase]

👍 for The DocPad Mailing List.
As I said on IRC:

Bevry isn't something people would immediately recognize as being connected to DocPad.
Kind of like how Ubuntu has a mailing list, but Canonical is the company who runs it.

[balupton]

https://github.com/bevry/meta