these sound like good suggestions to me. I get overwhelmed when I pop in on slacks that are not my usual hangouts, so maybe this will help. On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 6:11 PM, John ZuHone wrote:

All of this sounds great to me!

...

On May 14, 2018, at 5:54 PM, Nathan Goldbaum wrote:

Hi all,

I just had a discussion with Molly Peeples here at the Enzo workshop. She pointed out to me that the yt slack is currently very noisy and active and that there are a number of ways we could try to make Slack a more useful resource for both the user and developer community. This is informed by her experience in several very busy slack organizations. I've summarized her suggestions below.

1. Make the general channel less noisy

Currently there are lots of discussions that go on in general. This is ok for a smaller slack, but for a slack community of our size this just encourages people to silence all activity from the yt slack and then never participate again. Making #general quieter will encourage people to check the yt slack when there's a major update and then perhaps more infrequently check in on other channels.

Another thing we can do immediately to make #general less noisy is make our github integration publish new pull requests and issues to a new #development or #github channel.

2. Point people asking for help to the #help channel.

Since people join #general automatically when they first join, there will inevitably be questions getting asked in #general. We should point people, both in the #general channel topic, and actively via social interactions on Slack to the #help channel.

3. Use threads more often

This way an ongoing conversation does not generate tons of notifications. This also means that if someone responds to your question in a thread, you should use that thread to reply.

4. Create new channels often

If there seems to be a topic that is generating lots of discussion, we should feel less inhibited to mention that this is happening and try to move discussion about that topic to a new channel. This way people who are interested in that topic get notifications about that topic and everyone else can ignore it.

Ultimately my hope here is that more people will participate in our slack community and eventually in the yt community as a whole.

Please don't take this e-mail as a dictate from me about how we should use slack but instead as the beginning of a discussion about this. I'd especially like to hear from people who currently don't use much slack because it's too noisy and from people who think my above suggestions are annoying or overbearing. Do you think you'd use Slack more if it were less noisy? Are there other ways we can improve the hygiene of our Slack community?

Thanks for your time and attention,

Nathan Goldbaum _______________________________________________ yt-dev mailing list -- yt-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to yt-dev-leave@python.org

---

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-- Michael Zingale Associate Professor Dept. of Physics & Astronomy • Stony Brook University • Stony Brook, NY 11794-3800 *phone*: 631-632-8225 *e-mail*: Michael.Zingale@stonybrook.edu *web*: http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/mzingale github: http://github.com/zingale

Hi folks, I want to bring up that this *is* something we can discuss -- and we probably will need to refine these guidelines a bit. But even just in the last couple days I've noticed that folks are working hard on using threads, channels, etc, and I think it makes for a much less noisy experience. Things that work really well in small teams don't necessarily scale, which I think is where we're at, and in some ways can even bottleneck scaling to larger numbers of people. Even though I'm a bit grumpy about changing (especially since I am used to IRC) it seems like this is likely an improvement. That being said, we should figure out if it works for us -- and if we can refine these guidelines. And then probably write them down and stick 'em in an onboarding bot. -Matt On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 8:51 PM Matthew Turk wrote:

Sounds good On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 5:19 PM Michael Zingale < michael.zingale@stonybrook.edu> wrote:

...

these sound like good suggestions to me. I get overwhelmed when I pop in on slacks that are not my usual hangouts, so maybe this will help.

...

On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 6:11 PM, John ZuHone wrote:

...

...

All of this sounds great to me!

...

...

...

On May 14, 2018, at 5:54 PM, Nathan Goldbaum wrote:

Hi all,

I just had a discussion with Molly Peeples here at the Enzo workshop. She pointed out to me that the yt slack is currently very noisy and active and that there are a number of ways we could try to make Slack a more useful resource for both the user and developer community. This is informed by her experience in several very busy slack organizations. I've summarized her suggestions below.

1. Make the general channel less noisy

Currently there are lots of discussions that go on in general. This is ok for a smaller slack, but for a slack community of our size this just encourages people to silence all activity from the yt slack and then never participate again. Making #general quieter will encourage people to check the yt slack when there's a major update and then perhaps more infrequently check in on other channels.

Another thing we can do immediately to make #general less noisy is make our github integration publish new pull requests and issues to a new #development or #github channel.

2. Point people asking for help to the #help channel.

Since people join #general automatically when they first join, there will inevitably be questions getting asked in #general. We should point people, both in the #general channel topic, and actively via social interactions on Slack to the #help channel.

3. Use threads more often

This way an ongoing conversation does not generate tons of notifications. This also means that if someone responds to your question in a thread, you should use that thread to reply.

4. Create new channels often

If there seems to be a topic that is generating lots of discussion, we should feel less inhibited to mention that this is happening and try to move discussion about that topic to a new channel. This way people who are interested in that topic get notifications about that topic and everyone else can ignore it.

Ultimately my hope here is that more people will participate in our slack community and eventually in the yt community as a whole.

Please don't take this e-mail as a dictate from me about how we should use slack but instead as the beginning of a discussion about this. I'd especially like to hear from people who currently don't use much slack because it's too noisy and from people who think my above suggestions are annoying or overbearing. Do you think you'd use Slack more if it were less noisy? Are there other ways we can improve the hygiene of our Slack community?

Thanks for your time and attention,

Nathan Goldbaum _______________________________________________ yt-dev mailing list -- yt-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to yt-dev-leave@python.org

---

yt-dev mailing list -- yt-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to yt-dev-leave@python.org

...

-- Michael Zingale Associate Professor

...

Dept. of Physics & Astronomy • Stony Brook University • Stony Brook, NY 11794-3800 phone: 631-632-8225 e-mail: Michael.Zingale@stonybrook.edu web: http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/mzingale github: http://github.com/zingale

...

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How about we make a rule that if someone makes a channel, they should let the community know by mentioning the channel in #general? I agree that we should prune channels that aren’t being used anymore, I’ve added that to my to-do list. On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 12:31 PM Cameron Hummels wrote:

One point on the proposed slack behavior:

It can be challenging to keep up with discussions when there are a ton of channels and new channels popping up all of the time. It might be beneficial to remove/archive old channels that are outdated or where the discussion is complete. But in general, I think inventing new channels willy-nilly is a bad one, as not everyone will know about their existence and inevitably people will get left out of relevant conversations.

On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 9:04 AM, Matthew Turk wrote:

...

Hi folks,

I want to bring up that this *is* something we can discuss -- and we probably will need to refine these guidelines a bit. But even just in the last couple days I've noticed that folks are working hard on using threads, channels, etc, and I think it makes for a much less noisy experience. Things that work really well in small teams don't necessarily scale, which I think is where we're at, and in some ways can even bottleneck scaling to larger numbers of people. Even though I'm a bit grumpy about changing (especially since I am used to IRC) it seems like this is likely an improvement.

That being said, we should figure out if it works for us -- and if we can refine these guidelines. And then probably write them down and stick 'em in an onboarding bot.

-Matt

On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 8:51 PM Matthew Turk wrote:

...

Sounds good On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 5:19 PM Michael Zingale < michael.zingale@stonybrook.edu> wrote:

...

these sound like good suggestions to me. I get overwhelmed when I pop in on slacks that are not my usual hangouts, so maybe this will help.

...

On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 6:11 PM, John ZuHone wrote:

...

...

All of this sounds great to me!

...

...

...

On May 14, 2018, at 5:54 PM, Nathan Goldbaum

...

...

...

Hi all,

I just had a discussion with Molly Peeples here at the Enzo

workshop. She pointed out to me that the yt slack is currently very noisy and active and that there are a number of ways we could try to make Slack a more useful resource for both the user and developer community. This is informed by her experience in several very busy slack organizations. I've summarized her suggestions below.

...

1. Make the general channel less noisy

Currently there are lots of discussions that go on in general. This

is ok for a smaller slack, but for a slack community of our size this just encourages people to silence all activity from the yt slack and then never

...

...

...

Another thing we can do immediately to make #general less noisy is

make our github integration publish new pull requests and issues to a new #development or #github channel.

...

2. Point people asking for help to the #help channel.

Since people join #general automatically when they first join, there

will inevitably be questions getting asked in #general. We should point

wrote: participate again. Making #general quieter will encourage people to check the yt slack when there's a major update and then perhaps more infrequently check in on other channels. people, both in the #general channel topic, and actively via social interactions on Slack to the #help channel.

...

...

...

3. Use threads more often

This way an ongoing conversation does not generate tons of

notifications. This also means that if someone responds to your question in a thread, you should use that thread to reply.

...

4. Create new channels often

If there seems to be a topic that is generating lots of discussion,

we should feel less inhibited to mention that this is happening and try to move discussion about that topic to a new channel. This way people who are interested in that topic get notifications about that topic and everyone else can ignore it.

...

Ultimately my hope here is that more people will participate in our

slack community and eventually in the yt community as a whole.

...

Please don't take this e-mail as a dictate from me about how we

should use slack but instead as the beginning of a discussion about this. I'd especially like to hear from people who currently don't use much slack because it's too noisy and from people who think my above suggestions are annoying or overbearing. Do you think you'd use Slack more if it were less noisy? Are there other ways we can improve the hygiene of our Slack community?

...

Thanks for your time and attention,

Nathan Goldbaum _______________________________________________ yt-dev mailing list -- yt-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to yt-dev-leave@python.org

_______________________________________________ yt-dev mailing list -- yt-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to yt-dev-leave@python.org

...

-- Michael Zingale Associate Professor

...

Dept. of Physics & Astronomy • Stony Brook University • Stony Brook, NY 11794-3800 phone: 631-632-8225 e-mail: Michael.Zingale@stonybrook.edu web: http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/mzingale github: http://github.com/zingale

...

_______________________________________________ yt-dev mailing list -- yt-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to yt-dev-leave@python.org

_______________________________________________ yt-dev mailing list -- yt-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to yt-dev-leave@python.org

-- Cameron Hummels NSF Postdoctoral Fellow Department of Astronomy California Institute of Technology http://chummels.org _______________________________________________ yt-dev mailing list -- yt-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to yt-dev-leave@python.org

On 05/18/2018 10:29 AM, Nathan Goldbaum wrote:

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 11:27 AM, Kacper Kowalik mailto:xarthisius.kk@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey,

On 05/14/2018 04:54 PM, Nathan Goldbaum wrote:

> 1. Make the general channel less noisy > 2. Point people asking for help to the #help channel.

I really dislike that idea. I'm member of a slack org that has a similar rule that's very strongly enforced. Up to the point where first and last name of a person who does that most often is used as a verb (I FN LN'ed him == I told him to move the conversation to a proper channel). There's no other place I feel so strongly discouraged to participate in any discussion (and I'm an out-spoken WHAM that usually don't care about social conventions). I'd really hate to see yt slack to turn into such place.

Cheers, Kacper

OK, thank you for the feedback.

Can you suggest an alternative? Is it rude of me to start a thread when someone asks a help question in #general?

You're a long way from doing that in manner I described above, but consider the following scenario: You're a shy person that doesn't participate in our slack very often. You gather up the courage and ask a question on the first channel that pops up after you log in (which by slack's design is #general). I show up and tell you that you should ask that somewhere else. Now, not only I didn't help you to solve your problem, but additionally I made you feel bad for asking a question in a "wrong place"... I don't know any better solution. However, I don't feel bad about current status quo. I personally don't think that #general is *that* noisy. I think these days everybody is subscribed to so many slacks that they mute each of them by default. I have no data to back my claims though :) Cheers, Kacper

_______________________________________________ yt-dev mailing list -- yt-dev@python.org mailto:yt-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to yt-dev-leave@python.org mailto:yt-dev-leave@python.org

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I just added #help to the list of channels new users join by default (along with #general and #random). On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 11:56 AM, Desika Narayanan < desika.narayanan@gmail.com> wrote:

I think these points are really good Kacper. yt has always excelled at its inclusivity, and it's something to be proud of.

It might be that if there's a minimal set of channels that are very descriptive that everyone is automagically added to when they sign up for yt slack (like, #help, #random and #general plus maybe one or two others I'm not thinking of), it would be fairly obvious where queries vs random chit chat might go to newcomers. Trimming extraneous channels beyond that that are no longer in use (#mockuni, #octree, etc.) would also help, though since one has to go and manually add those channels, it's probably not a big deal.

For posting in threads, vs the main channel when in response to a particular comment/query, I think that can just be taught by example. It doesn't take much participation in a community to get a sense for the typical rules of thumb.

Beyond that, if the members of the yt community continue the very positive interactions that are typical (and awesome) in the slack page, I think it will remain inclusive to newcomers.

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 11:48 AM Kacper Kowalik wrote:

...

On 05/18/2018 10:29 AM, Nathan Goldbaum wrote:

...

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 11:27 AM, Kacper Kowalik mailto:xarthisius.kk@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey,

On 05/14/2018 04:54 PM, Nathan Goldbaum wrote:

> 1. Make the general channel less noisy > 2. Point people asking for help to the #help channel.

I really dislike that idea. I'm member of a slack org that has a

similar

...

rule that's very strongly enforced. Up to the point where first and

last

...

name of a person who does that most often is used as a verb (I FN LN'ed him == I told him to move the conversation to a proper channel). There's no other place I feel so strongly discouraged to participate in any discussion (and I'm an out-spoken WHAM that

usually

...

don't care about social conventions). I'd really hate to see yt slack to turn into such place.

Cheers, Kacper

OK, thank you for the feedback.

Can you suggest an alternative? Is it rude of me to start a thread when someone asks a help question in #general?

You're a long way from doing that in manner I described above, but consider the following scenario:

You're a shy person that doesn't participate in our slack very often. You gather up the courage and ask a question on the first channel that pops up after you log in (which by slack's design is #general). I show up and tell you that you should ask that somewhere else. Now, not only I didn't help you to solve your problem, but additionally I made you feel bad for asking a question in a "wrong place"...

I don't know any better solution. However, I don't feel bad about current status quo. I personally don't think that #general is *that* noisy. I think these days everybody is subscribed to so many slacks that they mute each of them by default. I have no data to back my claims though :)

Cheers, Kacper

...

_______________________________________________ yt-dev mailing list -- yt-dev@python.org mailto:yt-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to yt-dev-leave@python.org mailto:yt-dev-leave@python.org

_______________________________________________ yt-dev mailing list -- yt-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to yt-dev-leave@python.org

_______________________________________________ yt-dev mailing list -- yt-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to yt-dev-leave@python.org

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I've been toying with an onboarding bot on glitch that can also send out hellos and whatnot. If we have suggestions to convey, we could put them in there and make it nicely friendly. On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 11:14 AM Michael Zingale < michael.zingale@stonybrook.edu> wrote:

that's a great idea.

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 12:11 PM, Nathan Goldbaum wrote:

...

I just added #help to the list of channels new users join by default (along with #general and #random).

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 11:56 AM, Desika Narayanan < desika.narayanan@gmail.com> wrote:

...

I think these points are really good Kacper. yt has always excelled at its inclusivity, and it's something to be proud of.

It might be that if there's a minimal set of channels that are very descriptive that everyone is automagically added to when they sign up for yt slack (like, #help, #random and #general plus maybe one or two others I'm not thinking of), it would be fairly obvious where queries vs random chit chat might go to newcomers. Trimming extraneous channels beyond that that are no longer in use (#mockuni, #octree, etc.) would also help, though since one has to go and manually add those channels, it's probably not a big deal.

For posting in threads, vs the main channel when in response to a particular comment/query, I think that can just be taught by example. It doesn't take much participation in a community to get a sense for the typical rules of thumb.

Beyond that, if the members of the yt community continue the very positive interactions that are typical (and awesome) in the slack page, I think it will remain inclusive to newcomers.

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 11:48 AM Kacper Kowalik wrote:

...

On 05/18/2018 10:29 AM, Nathan Goldbaum wrote:

...

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 11:27 AM, Kacper Kowalik mailto:xarthisius.kk@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey,

On 05/14/2018 04:54 PM, Nathan Goldbaum wrote:

> 1. Make the general channel less noisy > 2. Point people asking for help to the #help channel.

I really dislike that idea. I'm member of a slack org that has a

similar

...

rule that's very strongly enforced. Up to the point where first

and last

...

name of a person who does that most often is used as a verb (I FN LN'ed him == I told him to move the conversation to a proper channel). There's no other place I feel so strongly discouraged to participate in any discussion (and I'm an out-spoken WHAM that

usually

...

don't care about social conventions). I'd really hate to see yt slack to turn into such place.

Cheers, Kacper

OK, thank you for the feedback.

Can you suggest an alternative? Is it rude of me to start a thread

when

...

someone asks a help question in #general?

You're a long way from doing that in manner I described above, but consider the following scenario:

You're a shy person that doesn't participate in our slack very often. You gather up the courage and ask a question on the first channel that pops up after you log in (which by slack's design is #general). I show up and tell you that you should ask that somewhere else. Now, not only I didn't help you to solve your problem, but additionally I made you feel bad for asking a question in a "wrong place"...

I don't know any better solution. However, I don't feel bad about current status quo. I personally don't think that #general is *that* noisy. I think these days everybody is subscribed to so many slacks that they mute each of them by default. I have no data to back my claims though :)

Cheers, Kacper

...

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yt-dev@python.org>

...

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-- Michael Zingale Associate Professor

Dept. of Physics & Astronomy • Stony Brook University • Stony Brook, NY 11794-3800 *phone*: 631-632-8225 *e-mail*: Michael.Zingale@stonybrook.edu *web*: http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/mzingale github: http://github.com/zingale

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