From: Austin Appel <scorche15_at_gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:04:34 -0700

Dominik Riebeling wrote:
>While I'm in favor of cutting down the noise in #rockbox let me
>propose a slightly different approach: why not just keep #rockbox for
>development and extended support and direct all new users to
>#rockbox-community and provice "basic" support there? I.e. just make
>cgi::irc to join to #rockbox-community (and possibly allow joining
>#rockbox) so all of those basic support goes there, and if a user has
>more serious problems just deal with it in #rockbox as we did before?

I think it would be easier to switch development talk to -dev, because I
would think it is much easier for devs to switch channels than users. In
addition, on freenode it is customary to think of a project and just add a
hash to the front of it to find a project channel. To have a different
channel than plain #rockbox would be confusing. As well, doing it this way
would ruin the "community" we have going in -community (which gets quite fun
at times) and would just end up with someone trying to make another channel
to emulate -community. If anything, making #rockbox-support would be
better.


Steve Bavin wrote:
>I have not found the "user helping" aspect annoying, and it's sometimes
>useful to stimulate development ideas.

This just started as a short talk in -community and I thought I would send
out a feeler to gauge other's reactions to the thought.

>if they continue to annoy, why not have a few more channel ops around and
>kick them for not following the protocols - i.e. a more strict police
>force.

I would think we have a decent amount of ops to cover all times already. If
you wish for me (and other ops) to be stricter, just say so. I already feel
that I am sometimes quite too soft on people (such as DWGR who is now
banned), but I prefer that to being a "jerk". Like I said though...if you
feel a step up is needed, just say so. The problem I find with many of
these annoyances is that they can be quite annoying without technically
breaking any of the rules.

>I think we should minimise, not increase, any divide between users and
>developers. The Rockbox team doesn't divide into two neat groups like that
>anyway.

I agree and users are more than willing to join -dev. This just would
provide a space for devs to talk without having to talk through support
conversations.

>As an aside, look at how infrequently #rockbox-community is used - this is
>IMHO purely because it is one feed too far, one window too many to keep an
>eye on.

It has been used quite a bit (especially in the last 2 weeks or so) and its
use is growing. Plus, it is generally considered to be a fun place to be
in. I consider its lower user count due to it being just a social channel
instead of a more Rockbox-related channel. As for number of windows, I am
joined to around 20 IRC channels and don't find it difficult to keep in line
with them. You can always ignore a channel for a while as well. To pay
attention to every single line said all the time can be quite difficult and
is not really recommended for general IRC use.

As I said before, this is more just a feeler for the general dev thoughts on
the subject and is less of a formal proposal.
Received on 2007-09-20