hi-
i'm hopeful this is the appropriate venue for this topic - i recently
had occasion to visit #mediawiki on freenode, looking for help. i found
myself a bit frustrated by the amount of bot activity there and wondered
if there might be value in some consideration for this. it seems to
frequently drown out/dilute those asking for help, which can be a bit
discouraging/frustrating. additionally, from the perspective of those
who might help [based on my experience in this role in other channels],
constant activity can sometimes engender disinterest [e.g. the irc
client shows activity in the channel, but i'm less inclined to look as
it's probably just a bot].
to offer one possibility - i know there are a number of mediawiki and/or
wikimedia related channels - might there be one in which bot activity
might be better suited, in the context of less contention between the
two audiences [those seeking help vs. those interested in development,
etc]? one nomenclature convention that seems to be at least somewhat of
a defacto standard is #project for general help, and #project-dev[el]
for development topics. a few examples of this i've seen are android,
libreoffice, python, and asterisk. adding yet another channel to this
list might not be terribly welcome, but maybe the distinction would be
worth the addition?
as i'm writing this, i see another thread has begun wrt freenode, and i
also see a bug filed that relates at least to some degree
[
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35427], so i may just be
repeating an existing sentiment, but i wanted to at least offer a brief
perspective.
regards
-ben