How to help people on weekends?
Hi folks, I've noticed an interesting trend lately. I don't have great answers but I want to raise the topic for us to think about. We used to just all work all the time, and we were burning ourselves out, so many of us have switched to focusing on more traditional "daytime on weekdays" hours. That approach has the big advantage of increased density among core developers: people are more likely to be around then. But while this approach works well for people whose day job is Tor, the casualty is people whose day job *isn't* Tor. These people show up exactly on the weekends and evenings that now have fewer Tor people around to provide quick responses, community momentum, interaction with core developers, and all of the great things that a free software community needs for health and growth. I don't have any quick fixes, but I wanted to raise this issue as a key topic for us to consider as we try to find the right balance between "people can have lives" and "we are responsive to new contributors". We are not being the best that we can be when we have 60-hour gaps on irc, mailing list threads, blog comment follow-ups, etc and those gaps line up exactly with when excited helpful volunteers show up. :) --Roger
On Wed, 9 Aug 2017 23:56:35 -0400 Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu> wrote:
But while this approach works well for people whose day job is Tor, the casualty is people whose day job *isn't* Tor. These people show up exactly on the weekends and evenings that now have fewer Tor people around to provide quick responses, community momentum, interaction with core developers, and all of the great things that a free software community needs for health and growth.
Direct them to asynchronous methods of communication like e-mail.
I don't have any quick fixes, but I wanted to raise this issue as a key topic for us to consider as we try to find the right balance between "people can have lives" and "we are responsive to new contributors". We are not being the best that we can be when we have 60-hour gaps on irc, mailing list threads, blog comment follow-ups, etc and those gaps line up exactly with when excited helpful volunteers show up. :)
Are the mailing lists still festering cesspools, or are they worth resubscribing to? Regards, -- Yawning Angel
On 10 Aug 2017, at 14:00, Yawning Angel <yawning@schwanenlied.me> wrote:
I don't have any quick fixes, but I wanted to raise this issue as a key topic for us to consider as we try to find the right balance between "people can have lives" and "we are responsive to new contributors". We are not being the best that we can be when we have 60-hour gaps on irc, mailing list threads, blog comment follow-ups, etc and those gaps line up exactly with when excited helpful volunteers show up. :)
Are the mailing lists still festering cesspools, or are they worth resubscribing to?
tor-dev and tor-relays seem fine. The last flame I remember on tor-relays was months ago. I don't know about tor-talk, it's too high-volume for me. T -- Tim Wilson-Brown (teor) teor2345 at gmail dot com PGP C855 6CED 5D90 A0C5 29F6 4D43 450C BA7F 968F 094B ricochet:ekmygaiu4rzgsk6n xmpp: teor at torproject dot org ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey! One thing I have found helpful is adhering to on-call rotations. I'm not sure if there is currently an IRC rotation with the expectation to be available on evenings and weekends, but it might help with what you describe. Also, reviewing in Monday meetings who is on call for what might be useful too. Teams I have worked on in the past have used irc bots to query this information, to make it an easy "x-bot who is on call". task. Cheers, Chelsea On 08/09/2017 11:56 PM, Roger Dingledine wrote:
Hi folks,
I've noticed an interesting trend lately. I don't have great answers but I want to raise the topic for us to think about. We used to just all work all the time, and we were burning ourselves out, so many of us have switched to focusing on more traditional "daytime on weekdays" hours. That approach has the big advantage of increased density among core developers: people are more likely to be around then.
But while this approach works well for people whose day job is Tor, the casualty is people whose day job *isn't* Tor. These people show up exactly on the weekends and evenings that now have fewer Tor people around to provide quick responses, community momentum, interaction with core developers, and all of the great things that a free software community needs for health and growth.
I don't have any quick fixes, but I wanted to raise this issue as a key topic for us to consider as we try to find the right balance between "people can have lives" and "we are responsive to new contributors". We are not being the best that we can be when we have 60-hour gaps on irc, mailing list threads, blog comment follow-ups, etc and those gaps line up exactly with when excited helpful volunteers show up. :)
--Roger
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FWIW, #tor seems to slow down way on the weekends, even when left -R. That doesn't mean we should ignore the people that _do_ show up on the weekends, however. If we want a bot to do something, I'd be willing to write and/or run it. pastly_bot is going to need some more features anyway if we're going to keep #tor -R more than we already do. Also, don't let me unnecessarily turn into an IRC thread ;) Roger mentioned the mailing lists and blog comments too. Matt (pastly) PS: -R means anyone can join the channel; +R means only registered nicks can join. It's easy to register a nick, but (i) IMO it's too much work for quick simple questions (ii) the "but my anonymity!" arguments some people make are at least somewhat valid. On 8/10/17 09:24, chelsea komlo wrote:
Hey!
One thing I have found helpful is adhering to on-call rotations. I'm not sure if there is currently an IRC rotation with the expectation to be available on evenings and weekends, but it might help with what you describe.
Also, reviewing in Monday meetings who is on call for what might be useful too. Teams I have worked on in the past have used irc bots to query this information, to make it an easy "x-bot who is on call". task.
Cheers,
Chelsea
On 08/09/2017 11:56 PM, Roger Dingledine wrote:
Hi folks,
I've noticed an interesting trend lately. I don't have great answers but I want to raise the topic for us to think about. We used to just all work all the time, and we were burning ourselves out, so many of us have switched to focusing on more traditional "daytime on weekdays" hours. That approach has the big advantage of increased density among core developers: people are more likely to be around then.
But while this approach works well for people whose day job is Tor, the casualty is people whose day job *isn't* Tor. These people show up exactly on the weekends and evenings that now have fewer Tor people around to provide quick responses, community momentum, interaction with core developers, and all of the great things that a free software community needs for health and growth.
I don't have any quick fixes, but I wanted to raise this issue as a key topic for us to consider as we try to find the right balance between "people can have lives" and "we are responsive to new contributors". We are not being the best that we can be when we have 60-hour gaps on irc, mailing list threads, blog comment follow-ups, etc and those gaps line up exactly with when excited helpful volunteers show up. :)
--Roger
Hi,
FWIW, #tor seems to slow down way on the weekends, even when left -R. That doesn't mean we should ignore the people that _do_ show up on the weekends, however.
If we want a bot to do something, I'd be willing to write and/or run it. pastly_bot is going to need some more features anyway if we're going to keep #tor -R more than we already do.
Also, don't let me unnecessarily turn into an IRC thread ;) Roger mentioned the mailing lists and blog comments too.
as one of the volunteers who is also hanging around on irc during this mentioned times, I made the following experiences: - at weekends, in generally, there is nearly zero traffic. Both tor people and others. - but during the week, the most tor people are present during American daytime, but within the other times not. => That's not nice. I already have had several times the situation that somebody appeared on irc, looking for tor people, no developer was around, so I "jumped in" and said "hello". :) Although I couldn't help much they seemed to be very happy that they received a reaction by an human and not only a bot. => So, I understand if nobody wants/or can do this every weekend and maybe a bot would be an easier solution, but people are really thankfully if they get some attention from a human and not only a machine. We should cultivate our tor friends by giving them the attention which they earn. ;) Bye, Carolin ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Carolin Zöbelein / Nick: Samdney PGP: D4A7 35E8 D47F 801F 2CF6 2BA7 927A FD3C DE47 E13B ------------------------------------------------------- ----------------
Hi, is this whole thing still a topic? If I can help in some way, I will help ;). Bye, Carolin Am Sonntag, den 13.08.2017, 21:18 +0200 schrieb Carolin Zöbelein:
Hi,
FWIW, #tor seems to slow down way on the weekends, even when left -R. That doesn't mean we should ignore the people that _do_ show up on the weekends, however.
If we want a bot to do something, I'd be willing to write and/or run it. pastly_bot is going to need some more features anyway if we're going to keep #tor -R more than we already do.
Also, don't let me unnecessarily turn into an IRC thread ;) Roger mentioned the mailing lists and blog comments too.
as one of the volunteers who is also hanging around on irc during this mentioned times, I made the following experiences:
- at weekends, in generally, there is nearly zero traffic. Both tor people and others. - but during the week, the most tor people are present during American daytime, but within the other times not. => That's not nice.
I already have had several times the situation that somebody appeared on irc, looking for tor people, no developer was around, so I "jumped in" and said "hello". :)
Although I couldn't help much they seemed to be very happy that they received a reaction by an human and not only a bot. => So, I understand if nobody wants/or can do this every weekend and maybe a bot would be an easier solution, but people are really thankfully if they get some attention from a human and not only a machine. We should cultivate our tor friends by giving them the attention which they earn. ;)
Bye, Carolin
----------------------------------------------------------------------- Carolin Zöbelein / Nick: Samdney PGP: D4A7 35E8 D47F 801F 2CF6 2BA7 927A FD3C DE47 E13B -----------------------------------------------------------------------
participants (6)
-
Carolin Zöbelein -
chelsea komlo -
Matt Traudt -
Roger Dingledine -
teor -
Yawning Angel