[Chapter-delegates] [Chaptersadvisorycounciltaskforce] Chapters Advisory Council

[Alejandro Pisanty]

Evan,

as recommended for many good software development and deployment projects,
we should make sure there is a good study of use cases. Only then will we
know. This is what I would expect next from tech staff. The Chapter
Advisory Council would be very helpful indeed.

Requirements such as the need for reply to. and reply all: - reply to is
awful right now, to the point of being useful; compatibility with mobile;
not-Web; etc. must be explored. We are a technical community and that must
show.

Alejandro Pisanty

On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 12:41 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org> wrote:

> On 15 November 2014 00:59, Alejandro Pisanty <apisanty at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Evan,
>>
>> we are complaining about the communications tools that removed standard
>> e-mail and list functionality, not only Netiquette. Some chapter delegates
>> are showing how this is breaking our communications, discussions and
>> participation.
>>
>
>
> ​Fair enough. But this raises a challenge.
>
> A segment of Chapter membership prefers the long-form editing, threading
> and attribution that has long been available using email. For long-time
> users it is not broken and does not need fixing.
>
> Another segment -- one not well represented ​within leadership right now
> -- had grown up on game systems, web apps and small screens, which has led
> to a very different kind of multi-user-conversation preference. Think (in
> order of age) Slashdot, XDA Developers and the current king of the genre --
> Reddit -- for examples of this style that have been implemented. They can
> be very scalable and very effective, and codes of conduct can be strictly
> (and easily) enforced. But their techniques and culture can be VERY
> different, indeed jarring, to a long time email user.
>
> There are many questions at hand:
>
>    - Is the current Connect software a good implementation of the
>    cloud-based-forum method of communications? Now that we've given it some
>    stress-testing, I would say that the preponderance of opinions is negative
>    on this.
>
>    - Might other tools offer easier integration with mailing lists? Would
>    email users be happier with a style more like, say, Slashdot?
>
>    - Is there a need to expand the communications offerings in order to
>    encourage those who are more comfortable with the online-forum style of
>    discussion? And must this be done at the expense of traditional users who
>    will find the style completely alien?
>
>    - Is inertia from email-users good enough reason not to diversify
>    communications methods?
>
> The invocation of "netiquette" and breaking of standards has not brought
> clarity to these issues; indeed it has obfuscated them.
>
> One of the reasons I am moving so hard on the Advisory Council is because
> I think that is not only a Good Idea, but absolutely necessary to assist in
> the kind of collaborative problem-solving that could have made this issue a
> lot less painful. It might indeed be able to help extract us from the
> current situation.
>
> Perhaps one good start now is to survey the membership on their
> preferences of communications tools. I did that using SurveyGizmo for the
> Canada Chapter and the results -- even with a small sample size -- were
> stunningly diverse. Without this kind of research, we never know how many
> people are being shut out of participating because of the insistence on
> email-only for multi-user conversations. (and that's just from _existing_
> members!)
>
> Cheers,
>
> - Evan
>



-- 
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     Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
Facultad de Química UNAM
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