That said, we have always held that the mailing lists are our proper channel of communication. This is important. Hell, it's critical. Saying "hey guess what!" on IRC doesn't cut it. The mailing list not only informs everyone (not all devs are on IRC) but also has archival history.
Exactly. IRC is a secondary, convenience channel, just in case developer Y is online. It annoys me when people say "oh but we discussed it on irc" -- I'm timezone "handicapped" compared to some of you or often cannot make it online.
I think we just have to keep bringing up this point until people start to remember it.
We need to communicate. We need to follow processes. If you find a bug or a user report, and you're unclear about it - **say something**. The great word being flung around these days is "unilateral" - we're not a group of 30 independent people doing their own things, we're a group of 30 people working together.
Guys, seriously. We're floundering. Something needs to be done, and it's not up to one or two of us. It's up to all of us.
Agreed.
Seeing as many people will just "ok" this thread and let it lie... these are some ideas i've thought of in the past... Aaron's defined the problem, let's solve it.
- Scheduled Monthly Meetings. Importantly, people need to prepare for the meeting, and be ready to make a decision on the topics listed on the agenda. No more "lets just leave it for the list".
I think this is an excellent idea. Mixed with the point below, this will be killer.
- Groups. Divide ourselves. We don't need everyone in a meeting to discuss a mkinitcpio/kernel change, only those interested/concerned/involved with it. Smaller groups will make decisions much easier. Impromptu meetings are easier to organise, and at the end you can say "Kernel group decided this: agree/disagree".
I think this is just as good as the one above. This is what I was trying to do when we started the Divisions that are listed in the Arch Dev wiki. I think the missing component is the monthly meetings. From now on, for a division to exist it must have a regular meeting date and post the agenda and minutes from their meetings. For those who don't remember the current groups are: Foundation, Pacman, Documentation, Internationalization, and Community. I will be sending an email out shortly about the groups I am in. I'm going to be bringing up these meetings more and more often on the list.
- Goals. We need direction. Direction is needed to make decisions. Goals give a foundation for decisions.
- Checks. Keep an eye on each other, keep each other in check. If someone's ignoring a bug, or not doing something, make it known, send a mail, point it out. If you don't have time to do something, send a mail to the list and ask someone else. This is where groups would help, making something more people's responsibility.
This one is also one we should be doing more of. I think there's an underlying problem here that hasn't been addressed. On that note, Roman is really good at bugging people about bugs.
- Stop waiting for arch-repos. It's still not here. We can do some stuff now.
Oooo, ouch. That one is pretty much my fault. It sucks. What have we done lately that was waiting on arch-repos? Jason