On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 8:40 PM, Roan Kattouw <roan.kattouw(a)gmail.com> wrote:
* Shut down
#wikimedia-dev (formerly #wikipedia_usability, kind of).
The explicit purpose of the channel is to allow development discussion
with less noise, but "noise" here means community involvement. In
community development, you do get a lot more discussion, but that's
not something you should try avoiding. In general, use existing
discussion fora wherever possible, and if you do fragment them, make
sure you don't have too much of a staff-volunteer split in which fora
people use.
No, "noise" means bots and people trying to support people
with
questions like "how do I disable anon reads on my wiki" as opposed to
developers (paid and unpaid alike) being engaged in a design
discussion. Maybe #wikimedia-dev should be renamed to #mediawiki-dev
to remove the suggestion of WMF-exclusivity, but I definitely see the
value of a channel dedicated to communication between developers with
support questions and bots kept out.
As I've said elsewhere to people, this isn't an excuse for fracturing
the discussion. Using a single channel for development *and* support
has worked for *years* until the Usability Initiative decided it needed
its own channel.
The channel is not actually that busy if you don't count the bots. And
for those of you who *really* don't like them, you can /ignore them.
I don't consider people asking for help "noise" either, it's part of
being engaged with the community.
I don't see the need for a separate development channel at all.
-Chad