On Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 9:55 PM, bawolff <bawolff+wn(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 8:06 PM, Legoktm
<legoktm.wikipedia(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 03/09/2017 08:17 AM, Daniel Kinzler wrote:
> * NOTE: we plan to experiment with having a public HANGOUT meeting,
instead
of
using
IRC.
Can I ask why? At least for me, Google Hangouts simply isn't an option
to participate when I'm in a crowded library/classroom.
+1 to this being inconvenient. I don't always attend arch com
meetings, but usually do if I happen to be online during the time. If
its a hangout, it is extremely unlikely I would attend unless I was
specifically proposing an RFC.
Yeah, this makes "opportunistic" participation a lot harder:
- when I am borderline interested in the topic, I can multitask between IRC
and other tasks, and read scrollback every couple minutes. This is not
really possible with video - either I spend an hour to participate (that's
about 2.5% of my total time if I spend a paid hour so not a trivial cost)
or I don't participate at all.
- when something is not interesting / relevant enough to participate, I can
skim the logs afterwards in way less than an hour, or search them for
keywords. Neither is possible with video.
- when I don't think the topic will be relevant to me but it turns our
otherwise, I get a ping when someone on IRC says my name or a keyword I've
set highlighting for. There is no such thing on Hangouts (I guess people
can still be pinged on IRC but joining into an already ongoing video chat
is awkward as there is no way to read back what has been said in the last
few minutes).
Even more problematically, it breaks public archiving of ArchCom
discussions as hangouts invariably tend to become a mix of talk and typed
comments, and while it is possible to publish the video stream on YouTube,
as far as I know it is not possible to preserve the comments (or even read
them back if you join late) so things like links and side-channel
clarifications will get lost. Also, IRC logs are indexed by Google (this
has helped me multiple times in the past) while automated voice
transcribing technologies are not quite there yet. Also also, the meetbot
generated an automated summary which was not great but somewhat useful.
With video meetings, will anyone take up the burden of writing a similar
summary by hand? (The private ArchCom meetings have decent notes, but those
seem to be done by a dedicated TPG staffer - would there be similar support
for the public meetings as well?)
This also seems less inclusive - if you are a less experienced MediaWiki
contributor who wants is interested in RfCs but are not sure whether you
have anything to contribute, you can lurk on IRC and decide whether to
pitch in or not. A hangout where you have to worry about displacing someone
potentially more knowledgeable due to the participation limit, or taking
air time away from such a person by talking, seems like a much less
welcoming environment.
(Also, this might just be a personality thing, but I find it much easier to
express myself clearly and accurately in writing, as there is less time
pressure - if you are not 100% sure in what you are about to say, you can
spend a few seconds looking it up or thinking it over. In a video chat that
seems more awkward. I imagine this would be extra problematic for someone
who is not experienced or not well known and thus more worried about saying
something stupid.)