Donnie Berkholz wrote:
On 19:06 Wed 11 Mar , Thilo Bangert wrote:
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be available
via IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a project
could realize more of its potential by better integrating people
who dont do IRC.
I think IRC helps to build a more tightly knit community and, because of
this, is very important to Gentoo. The less close we are as a community,
the more free we feel to be hostile because we don't see the folks on
the other end of the big tube as real people. It's much like a technique
that militaries use during wars to de-personalize the enemy, except with
the Internet, we start that way and have to apply effort to grow closer.
While it may be tight nit, there's the danger that it's so tight no one
else can get in, so to speak.
I don't think anyone's saying anything like "no more IRC". What I at
least am advocating is that what goes on on IRC gets summarized
somewhere in addition. As I said before, this not only helps keep a
"log" of what goes on for "future generations", but also allows others
(users and devs who don't have time to follow everything) to look in and
follow what the devs are doing more easily.
I think that this would ultimately help make Gentoo development more
visible and more accessible, ultimately leading to an increased
conversion of users to contributors, if not users to devs.
AllenJB
