IRC Channels

[Donald Stufft]

So we have #pip, #pypa, #pypa-dev, I have #warehouse and tarek has #distutils.

That’s 5 IRC channels all for roughly the same thing and to be honest half the time it’s unclear what should go where anyways. So what I would like to propose!

We standardize around #pypa as the user channel and #pypa-dev as the developer channel. We use a redirect to automatically send people joining #pip to #pypa and the same for #warehouse.

We don’t have control over #distutils but we could ask Tarek if he’d also be willing to redirect #distutils into #pypa too (might not be appropriate since distutils technically isn’t a PyPA project but half the time the questions in there seem to deal with PyPI or pip or setuptools anyways).

-----------------
Donald Stufft
PGP: 0x6E3CBCE93372DCFA // 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372 DCFA

[Donald Stufft]

A variation on this theme is to only use #pypa since neither channel gets massive amount of traffic and it might make more sense to just use a single channel.

[Jason R. Coombs]

+1 for just #pypa with or without #pypa-dev.

[Matthew Iversen]

I think once #pip was migrated then #pypa would get a good deal larger. I suspect for such a user-support channel you'd get quite a large number of drive-by users who ask for help but don't idle.

I'd like a #pypa-dev simply for when you want to talk developery things that users don't really need to hear, but that's just me.

[Donald Stufft]

On Mar 18, 2014, at 10:55 AM, Matthew Iversen <ma...@notevencode.com> wrote:

> I think once #pip was migrated then #pypa would get a good deal larger. I suspect for such a user-support channel you'd get quite a large number of drive-by users who ask for help but don't idle.
>
> I'd like a #pypa-dev simply for when you want to talk developery things that users don't really need to hear, but that's just me.

I don’t really care either way FWIW, -dev or not I just kind of don’t think we really need it. Primary benefits of a -dev channel are:

* Moving high traffic user questions into a different channel
- Scrollback on a user channel is generally not useful whereas a -dev channel they are
* Allowing people to develop and discuss developing without being distributed by people asking user questions.

It’s my opinion that the user channels here get so little traffic as to not really matter all that much (honestly if I scroll back the bulk of #pip is just Travis and Github not user questions) so I don’t know that we really have the traffic to justify needing to split them into two, but if people want to have two then I don’t really mind.

[Marcus Smith]

I like the idea of a trying a single "#pypa",although we could break off to "#pypa-dev" if it seems like it's not working

[Jannis Leidel]

+1 for pypa *and* pypa-dev simply to make sure we can have development
only discussion without alienating users (read: developers not
interested in developing pypa projects but rather their own)

Jannis

[Donald Stufft]

So tally it up, everyone who has replied seems on board with consolidation.

Either: 1
#pypa (for now at least): 2
#pypa and #pypa-dev: 2

So we’re at a tie!

Personally I’ve seen #pypa sort of be our development channel at the moment, but also some people coming in and asking user oriented questions there too. I don’t think it’s been a problem. It might also be a good thing as we discuss development stuff if users see us talking about something that would affect them they can chime in. I don’t think we’d alienate anyone by talking about the development of pip in front of them (nor do I think there’s much user facing traffic in #pip that would really need the segregation).

Does Paul have an opinion at all? I’m guessing not since he doesn’t really come in IRC :)

[Paul Moore]

On 19 March 2014 15:30, Donald Stufft <don...@stufft.io> wrote:
> Does Paul have an opinion at all? I'm guessing not since he doesn't really come in IRC :)

Yeah, I don't really have an opinion (much of the time I'm behind a
firewall that blocks IRC, and I've never really got into the various
web interfaces).
Paul

[Donald Stufft]

I think you just don’t like hanging out with us! ;)

[Paul Moore]

On 19 March 2014 15:39, Donald Stufft <don...@stufft.io> wrote:
>
> On Mar 19, 2014, at 11:37 AM, Paul Moore <p.f....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 19 March 2014 15:30, Donald Stufft <don...@stufft.io> wrote:
>>> Does Paul have an opinion at all? I'm guessing not since he doesn't really come in IRC :)
>>
>> Yeah, I don't really have an opinion (much of the time I'm behind a
>> firewall that blocks IRC, and I've never really got into the various
>> web interfaces).
>> Paul
>
> I think you just don't like hanging out with us! ;)

Billy no-mates, that's me :-)
Paul

[Donald Stufft]

To be clear, part of what i’m hoping to do is remove confusion and reduce the
number of places discussions of things happen. I have other proposals after
we sort out the IRC channel merger too :)

[Paul Moore]

On 19 March 2014 16:02, Donald Stufft <don...@stufft.io> wrote:
> To be clear, part of what i'm hoping to do is remove confusion and reduce the
> number of places discussions of things happen. I have other proposals after
> we sort out the IRC channel merger too :)

On the "other suggestions" front, has anyone looked at
https://gitter.im/ (which is a chatroom type of app)? It might be more
friendly for non-developer users (although our users are developers,
so probably not). I heard of it via IPython who use hipchat, which I
gather is similar, for their user support.

Paul.

[Jannis Leidel]

On 19.03.14 16:30, Donald Stufft wrote:
> So tally it up, everyone who has replied seems on board with consolidation.
>
> Either: 1
> #pypa (for now at least): 2
> #pypa and #pypa-dev: 2
>
> So we’re at a tie!
>
> Personally I’ve seen #pypa sort of be our development channel at the moment, but also some people coming in and asking user oriented questions there too. I don’t think it’s been a problem. It might also be a good thing as we discuss development stuff if users see us talking about something that would affect them they can chime in. I don’t think we’d alienate anyone by talking about the development of pip in front of them (nor do I think there’s much user facing traffic in #pip that would really need the segregation).

You may be right about #pip not getting a lot of traffic but I would
consider this a result of us not trying to centralize the discussion of
the various tools PyPA is maintaining now. There is lots of overlap when
using those tools so I really think it will benefit the community to
have one place to ask questions instead of 5 or more.

Donald, I wonder if #warehouse shouldn't forward to #pypa-dev, as it's
not really related to day-to-day use of the released tools. What do you
think?

Oh and I just set up a channel forward for #pip to #pypa and updated the
pip and virtualenv docs to point to the new channels. Travis will post
to #pypa-dev as well to not annoy our users in #pypa.

Cheers,
Jannis

[Piotr Dobrogost]

On Tuesday, March 18, 2014 11:01:34 AM UTC+1, Donald Stufft wrote:

So we have #pip, #pypa, #pypa-dev, I have #warehouse and tarek has #distutils.

That’s 5 IRC channels all for roughly the same thing and to be honest half the time it’s unclear what should go where anyways. So what I would like to propose!

Just wanted to say thank you as the current state is such a mess…

Regards,
Piotr

[Matthew Iversen]

I'm of the unempirical opinion that PyPA is big enough to have two
channels per communication medium:
one for user-facing discussion and support of its projects, and one for
internal development related discussion.
The obvious candidates for naming those two would be "pypa" and
"pypa-dev" respectively.
Although one argument against this is YAGNI on pypa-dev, an argument for
is that it allows PyPA to put an
effort into broadcasting a more conservative and unified voice of the
right thing to do for users on the support channel,
but in the mean time swear at and disagree with each other (so to speak)
on the best way to moves things forward
in the dev channel without confusing anyone just looking to use stuff as
it currently is.

That looks pretty cool, although at the same time I think IRC is making
a resurgence (if only mostly on Freenode & OFTC)
as a hub for software-related discussion of all kinds.

If you're looking to come chat more often, a VPN or SSH port forward
tunnel to an irc bouncer could be a good option,
I know Donald is using ZNC at the moment.

--
Matt Iversen // ma...@notevencode.com
PGP: 0xc046e8a874522973 // 2F04 3DCC D6E6 D5AC D262 2E0B C046 E8A8 7452
2973