On communications

[swaldman]

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:

1. 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.
2. 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)".

There we go; I hope that it's helpful, and that it can be seen that way.

Comments

[ninetydegrees]

That all being said, if you or other developers prefer to communicate via the -dev community, that is absolutely fine! That's what it is here for.

I've heard this many times but it does feel like you're missing out if you're not on IRC at the right time. I know it's easiest for you guys but I do feel some regular communication thing is missing from volunteer comms. Like touching base if that's the correct idiom. Apart from Pau nobody does that. And seeing no activity and dialog going on in these comms doesn't really encourage you to post there. I kept all the questions I had to myself for a veeeerry long time or just PMed Fu. Still do sometimes.

[misskat]

I definitely see where you're coming from on keeping comms active-ish. I'll think on it and see if I can come up with something.

[swaldman]

Seconded. I don't mind using IRC, and I think it's a good tool, and I've benefited a lot from real-time hand-holding there - but I'm not prepared to be on it 24/7 and to scroll through logs every time I return to my PC to avoid missing something.
It should never be assumed that all, or even most, devs will know something because it was discussed on IRC. If significant decisions are made there, they need to be communicated elsewhere.

[deborah]

I wonder if we could ask people who are communicating in -dev IRC -- which is a pretty quiet community, all told -- that if either a question is asked/answered there, or a decision is made there, that one of the participants in the conversation agree to c/p the relevant lines and stick them as a post in this community behind a cut which summarizes the issue.

What often works for me in workplace environments is that the person who had a question answered pays it forward by documenting, and in this case the documenting would be posting to the community. That doesn't work so well for "decision made", but dw are pretty good about doing what needs to be done.

I'm trying to fight down the urge to say "we could write a bot to make that easier!" Because we COULD, but is that really a good use of our time?

[ninetydegrees]

*nods* The lack of documentation is really what bothers me the most about IRC. I mean oral history is fine but books? So much better. As a support volunteer it's also an issue: sometimes there's a discussion about a bug or whatever and it's confirmed and somebody's working on a fix except there's no announcement anywhere and unless you caught the conversation or someone mentions it in a support answer you don't know about it.

[misskat]

To be honest, there's not a ton of activity in -dev right now unless it's right around a code push, and that is primarily push-related triage. I'll keep an eye on things, and if there's a subject which should be documented, I will try to get that person to post the question and answer in the dw-dev-training comm.

[ninetydegrees]

What's going on right now with styles and the nav strip is a good example of what I meant in my previous comment and this is definitely not the first it has happened. There are several requests sitting in the styles queue and I have no idea what to tell people because I don't know where we're at and where we're going exactly with this. Even a let's wait and see before we sort things out post addressed to S volunteers would have been welcomed.

I don't mean this should be on you. I meant that sometimes direct communication between staff, devs and (support) volunteers would be nice and useful.

[misskat]

Ok, so now that I've had some more time to think it over...

What about a dev check-in? It would ask what you're working on, what you're interested, what your next step is? Forex, for momijizukamori, she's patching styles and SOMEDAY will finish the new styles search (after she teaches herself javascript, which is an endevour which I do not envy). She's also looking forward to the API being done so she can learn to work with that. That would be a sample reply-thing, maybe. (I actually just typed exactly what she said, so I'm not making this up as a hypothetical.)

This requires some amount of buy-in, and I suspect that's the biggest barrier. If no one uses it, then why do it?

ETA: Upon review, I should have posted this under my personal account. It's not the Voice of Dreamwidth (tm) talking; it's just Kat, a user of the site.

[ninetydegrees]

I think I'd like that but yeah it'd only work if most people contributed. Otherwise we're just back to what Simon said and having no idea what the big picture is and what some people are working on.
I never volunteered on LJ but I followed everything there and I think Carrie had something like that going on for Support and it was always nice reading it. I don't know if I'm imagining this, though.

[misskat]

For better or for worse, the Dreamwidth Support culture (and Dev culture too) have diverged so drastically from their LiveJournal roots that many of the things which used to work aren't applicable anymore. There are few who are grumpier about that than me, believe me.

90d, just to be clear, what you would like is a thread similar to the DW Volunteers thread, which occurs maybe once a month or quarterly. It would ask about progress on big/ongoing projects from senior devs, and whatever has been worked on from everyone else. If this is what you are proposing, I will propose it to the bossen. No promises that it will happen, though, for reasons which I will expound on below

One problem I can see is that this could create undue stress on devs who, for whatever reason, weren't able to get any DW work done in the timeframe. I know *my* reaction would be a panic attack, and then major avoidance of doing any more things... And I work here. Even if it isn't a required check-in, that expectation to report is still placed on the Dev, and I can see that backfiring quite spectacularly. I will still bring it to the bossen though; maybe there is a way around that.

[ninetydegrees]

I have no idea what's a good idea. I *think* it could be nice because at least someone would talk to us. Of course, it won't work for everybody, just as the current whatever works for some, don't work for others and cause them undue stress already.

Also I haven't done anything lately and it doesn't seem like it's gonna change so I *really* have no idea what's best or what most people want.

[jewelfox]

Seconded belatedly.