The migration for the Fedora Council has gone well so far, and as I understand it has been a rousing success for Magazine. Should we look at moving this list there as well?
On Thu, Jan 07, 2021 11:46:20 -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
The migration for the Fedora Council has gone well so far, and as I understand it has been a rousing success for Magazine. Should we look at moving this list there as well?
I'm not so sure. I think Discourse works well for team discussion, but we don't do a lot of that here. The list here is generally used for announcing information/opportunities for newcomers. Most of our discussion happens on Pagure tickets.
Do we want absolute newcomers to go to Discussion.fp.o? Even with categories, Discourse doesn't have the clear boundaries that mailing lists do. Muting categories to opt-out is the opposite of explicitly subscribing to mailing lists. So, there's so much happening there---do we want newcomers to dive right in?
I think we currently try to prevent this in the Welcome-to-Fedora system. We first get newcomers to learn the high level bits on Fedora and only when they're comfortable enough do we direct them to teams and tasks.
Here's an example ticket: https://pagure.io/fedora-join/Welcome-to-Fedora/issue/76
(On a related note, the magazine, as a public facing official Fedora platform, is obviously very attractive to new contributors. It works as an excellent contribution gateway but do we have some info on whether magazine contributors stick around and get involved in other regular Fedora community development related activities: technical or otherwise?)
On Thu, Jan 07, 2021 at 05:39:28PM +0000, Ankur Sinha wrote:
I'm not so sure. I think Discourse works well for team discussion, but we don't do a lot of that here. The list here is generally used for announcing information/opportunities for newcomers.
To me, the forum-like interface of Discourse seems more friendly to newcomers than a mailing list, and we can do things like make sticky posts, have graphics, etc.
Most of our discussion happens on Pagure tickets.
That's the way Design works too.
Do we want absolute newcomers to go to Discussion.fp.o? Even with categories, Discourse doesn't have the clear boundaries that mailing lists do. Muting categories to opt-out is the opposite of explicitly subscribing to mailing lists. So, there's so much happening there---do we want newcomers to dive right in?
Hmmm, yeah, I see upsides and downsides to this. It can certainly be a little intimidating. On the other hand, I kind of do want to say that it'd be _ideal_ if newcomers feel like they can dive right in.
I think we currently try to prevent this in the Welcome-to-Fedora system. We first get newcomers to learn the high level bits on Fedora and only when they're comfortable enough do we direct them to teams and tasks.
... and this is clearly working, so I don't want to break something that is!
Here's an example ticket: https://pagure.io/fedora-join/Welcome-to-Fedora/issue/76
(On a related note, the magazine, as a public facing official Fedora platform, is obviously very attractive to new contributors. It works as an excellent contribution gateway but do we have some info on whether magazine contributors stick around and get involved in other regular Fedora community development related activities: technical or otherwise?)
I can't (immediately, although there are some ways to look at this I should play with) speak to magazine -> other activities, but I was just talking to Paul about this and his sense was that using Discourse was creating a lot more "stickiness" of new contributors. Previously, there were a lot of one-off "hello" posts and 95% of those didn't stick around. Now, while there's still some of that, it's noticably better.
On Thu, 2021-01-07 at 14:28 -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Thu, Jan 07, 2021 at 05:39:28PM +0000, Ankur Sinha wrote:
we don't do a lot of that here. The list here is generally used for announcing information/opportunities for newcomers.
I agree with FranciscoD. The mailing list is actually used mainly for announcements and not for team coordination. It's more like a newsletter right now from the team's point of view.
I think that discussion.f.o. could be used by newcomers as well. Maybe a dedicated category for questions. What I see is that many seasoned community members don't attend the Welcome workflow, where their participation could be valuable. Maybe newcomer's questions on Discourse could be catched by a high number of community members.
On the other hand, I see the current Join's communication channels and the Welcome workflow like a "safe zone". People is less intimidated to talk in a dedicated ticket or in a dedicated chat, rather than in a public forum.
Ciao, A.
On Fri, Jan 08, 2021 at 08:55:17AM +0100, Alessio wrote:
I agree with FranciscoD. The mailing list is actually used mainly for announcements and not for team coordination. It's more like a newsletter right now from the team's point of view.
I guess I'm thinking primarily about the "introduce yourself" and guidance phase. I'm wondering how many people we're losing at that barrier.
On the other hand, I see the current Join's communication channels and the Welcome workflow like a "safe zone". People is less intimidated to talk in a dedicated ticket or in a dedicated chat, rather than in a public forum.
That's true too.
On Fri, 2021-01-08 at 10:37 -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Fri, Jan 08, 2021 at 08:55:17AM +0100, Alessio wrote:
I agree with FranciscoD. The mailing list is actually used mainly for announcements and not for team coordination. It's more like a newsletter right now from the team's point of view.
I guess I'm thinking primarily about the "introduce yourself" and guidance phase. I'm wondering how many people we're losing at that barrier.
Well, subscribing a mailing list can be a training in their journey. Nowadays many people don't know about mailing lists. However, as far as we can see, new people is able and willing to subscribe the mailing list. My concern is maybe the contrary: the introduction itself could be lost by many community members (who is currently subscribed to this list?). Well, it could be an idea. We could ask people to subscribe the mailing list, but instead of asking them to send the introduction to the mailing list itself, we could point them to https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/introduce-yourself/1875/65
Ciao, A.
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