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

[liv]

Thank you, I am really touched by the offer of mentoring, especially since I haven't been very active in dev lately. I will come and talk to you in IRC and see what we can sort out.

I feel like this doesn't entirely address the issue of communication, though: I am a squeaky wheel and I might get assigned a senior dev mentor. However what I'd like to see is some kind of documentation, such as the newsletter that swaldman suggested, so that everybody who's working in dev can easily find out what's the status of major projects like the update page, Foundation etc. Or have a page on the wiki that lists stuff like this. Something other than senior developers having to put in lots of one-to-one time just to tell junior developers what's going on. Something other than volunteers having to make a big fuss and make lots of complaints about not getting any communication, and then getting our specific issues addressed on an ad-hoc basis.

[kareila]

That's a very good point and I agree we should do something. I'm not quite sure what the solution will look like, but having a page on the wiki might work if people know to look for it. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[swaldman]

Checking in on this thread belatedly... I'm wary about a wiki page, because judging by the rest of our wiki, there's a good chance of it rapidly being out of date - most of the active people would prefer to be working than updating a wiki about their work ;-) That's one of the reasons for my suggestion of a regular newsletter - it forces an update every so often, even if that update is "still doing this". Also, "this is what some people are working on" is not quite the same as "Here's our vision for where we'd like to be in a year's time" or similar.

[kaberett]

I am willing to update a wiki page but this would depend on people giving me information.

[fu]

We should sit down and talk! I'm happy to give information, but find that what comes out when I just sit down and stare at a blank screen is frankly incomprehensible. It gets much better when I'm talking with someone.