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On communications
There was an issue I wanted to raise "informally" in the dev chat yesterday, but I had to leave before there was time. I have a certain amount of trepidation putting it in this perhaps-slightly-more-formal venue, so I want to emphasise before I start: This is (slightly) critical, but it is intended to be helpful. It is NOT intended as "wah Dreamwidth sucks you should do it better", and if it comes across at all that way please tell me so that I can revise. For the record, I still think DW is a fantastic project and that the staff are awesome :-)
I'm not active in Dreamwidth development at the moment, but I was for a year or so recently, and I hope to be again in the future, so I try to keep current on posts in this community. When I was active, and also more recently, I became concerned about communication between staff and volunteer devs. I noticed two related problems,
Firstly, that as somebody picking up bugs and working on them, I had very little idea what the "big picture" goals of the project were - what the big things that fu, Dre, and other heavy-hitters were working on were, and so where things might be going. It almost had the feel of a project that was considered "finished apart from tweaks" - and I don't think that that's how the staff think of DW (correct me if I'm wrong). I think the big work was going on, but in quiet. Perhaps that isn't a problem - it certainly didn't stop me from picking up bugs and fixing them - but I think it would help with community and motivation if there was a more coherent sense of "this is where the project is going".
Secondly - and closely related to that, perhaps - an unawareness of things that did affect me. For example, in the IRC chat last night I was unaware of what Foundation was. I had a look back through this comm's archive and found that it had been mentioned, but it had been mentioned almost in passing as something that was happening back in November last year - I couldn't see that anybody had actually explained what it was, so much as just said "we'll be using this now". That's not a specific gripe, merely an example of finding that major decisions were made without understanding the context, or sometimes not even knowing that they had been made at all until realising it through a chance remark some time later.
Now, I'm sure those discussions happened somewhere - but I suspect that they were on IRC, or perhaps in the Lounge, and never percolated out of those transient and/or invite-only spaces.
So, IMHO communication could be improved. That's the "problem" (perhaps too strong a word for it). I have a couple of suggestions that might help to address these:
I'm not active in Dreamwidth development at the moment, but I was for a year or so recently, and I hope to be again in the future, so I try to keep current on posts in this community. When I was active, and also more recently, I became concerned about communication between staff and volunteer devs. I noticed two related problems,
Firstly, that as somebody picking up bugs and working on them, I had very little idea what the "big picture" goals of the project were - what the big things that fu, Dre, and other heavy-hitters were working on were, and so where things might be going. It almost had the feel of a project that was considered "finished apart from tweaks" - and I don't think that that's how the staff think of DW (correct me if I'm wrong). I think the big work was going on, but in quiet. Perhaps that isn't a problem - it certainly didn't stop me from picking up bugs and fixing them - but I think it would help with community and motivation if there was a more coherent sense of "this is where the project is going".
Secondly - and closely related to that, perhaps - an unawareness of things that did affect me. For example, in the IRC chat last night I was unaware of what Foundation was. I had a look back through this comm's archive and found that it had been mentioned, but it had been mentioned almost in passing as something that was happening back in November last year - I couldn't see that anybody had actually explained what it was, so much as just said "we'll be using this now". That's not a specific gripe, merely an example of finding that major decisions were made without understanding the context, or sometimes not even knowing that they had been made at all until realising it through a chance remark some time later.
Now, I'm sure those discussions happened somewhere - but I suspect that they were on IRC, or perhaps in the Lounge, and never percolated out of those transient and/or invite-only spaces.
So, IMHO communication could be improved. That's the "problem" (perhaps too strong a word for it). I have a couple of suggestions that might help to address these:
- A regular newsletter for developers. On a defined schedule, so that it doesn't slip - perhaps quarterly - explaining what the staff see as the big-picture items at the moment; the direction of things, any major projects that people are working on, and so forth. IMHO this would really help in terms of keeping myself and others feeling involved in the community.
- If things are discussed and decisions made in private amongst staff, or in the Lounge, or even in public but on IRC (where folk who don't happen to be online won't know) - make a concious effort to make sure that these are communicated, presumably through this community. Try to reduce the amount of "things we know because we talked about it" and convert it into "things we discussed and then deliberately announced (or otherwise communicated)".
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I can't speak about LJ because I've never volunteered there but once I got into things here it got much easier and people have been really awesome and super helpful. Taking the first step, though? It was really hard because DW seemed to require a level of skill, knowledge, experience and I would say even character, confidence and common history I didn't have so I gave up. Not a pleasant time. It took wanting to do something very specific and finding the right person whom I could ask the right questions to get me started and turn it into a positive experience. I think some of the problem can reside here. Like some people wanna help but they don't how and I don't think we always answer their desire to help in a way that works for them. I think sometimes it would be helpful to say ok here's this bug or this other concrete thing you can work on and here's how you can get started and I'll go through it with you. I mean some people are fine with other approaches but I don't think that works for everyone. Hope that made sense.
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This right here:
Taking the first step, though? It was really hard because DW seemed to require a level of skill, knowledge, experience and I would say even character, confidence and common history I didn't have so I gave up. Not a pleasant time.
That speaks to me because it's exactly where I'm at right now (except I feel like I gave up years ago, before I ever really got started). I don't want to say too much more on that because this thread (really, any thread on this page) is probably going off-topic if it delves too deeply into any of those issues and I'm not trying to shift the focus; it was really just my intention to point out what I see as a related issue (that not only could communication be better for those already working on DW, but communication between current dev and up-and-coming devs could definitely improve simply so we could be of more help to them), get people thinking about it, and get myself out of the way.