Hi,
On Mon, Jul 4, 2022 at 2:27 PM Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers@gmail.com> wrote:
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> On Mon, Jul 4, 2022 at 3:01 PM Matthew Brett <matthew.brett@gmail.com> wrote:
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>> Hi,
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>> On Mon, Jul 4, 2022 at 1:40 PM Melissa Mendonça <melissawm@gmail.com> wrote:
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>> > Hello, folks!
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>> > After our recent discussion, I have created a SciPy slack space for developers, maintainers and potential contributors. This is not a space for user questions, rather for discussions about how to contribute, internal team announcements and a space to share ideas about the project. You are welcome to join using the following invite link:
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>> > https://join.slack.com/t/scipy-community/shared_invite/zt-1a76bomjr-fuS1ZTnmP7b32kIhLb6QMg
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> Thanks Melissa!
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>> > If you have ideas for improvements, feel free to share! As a side note, this is not meant to replace the mailing list - all important announcements and conversations should still happen here.
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>> Could I humbly suggest Discourse instead of Slack? I have a
>> personal aversion to Slack, partly because I find I can't afford yet
>> another source of real-time distraction, but I also think these
>> arguments are good ones:
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> Hi Matthew, I think you are missing a bit of context. Discourse would be able to replace a mailing list, but it's a very different tool than Slack (or Discord/Gitter/etc.). This is a semi-private Slack (i.e., logs are *not* published publicly), which is meant for (potential) contributors only. It's the same setup as the NumPy Slack, which has worked quite well in helping contributors who are new as well as quick coordination between folks working on the same thing.
RIght - although I think the greater fluidity of Discourse does go
some way - without requiring the maximum-distraction mode of real-time
chat.
I'm warming up to Discourse, but I think the jury is still out on whether it can or should replace mailing lists. Either way, that's a separate discussion.
Re maximum-distraction mode: notifications are configurable and you can turn them off, so that's not really an issue.
And it's searchable, and so we don't lose any of the advice and experience generated there.
To be clear: the non-publicness is a feature, not a bug. It really helps for both beginner questions from folks who are hesitant to ask in public (and evidence suggests that this is especially valuable for folks from groups underrepresented in open source), and it also helps for loose interactions between maintainers/contributors who know each other. For the latter, it just has a completely different dynamic than anything one writes in a published channel. Compare this to a conference: imagine if you meet a collaborator in person, but all your conversations with them are recorded and posted on the internet. The hallway track would not be much fun ....
Cheers,
Ralf