[Bf-committers] Weekly meetings and communication channels

[Stefan Werner]

Hi,

answers are inlined:

> On 28. Aug 2017, at 14:27, Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org> wrote:
> 
> Proposal: alternate Monday meetings to be 10:00 and 18:00 Amsterdam time. Drop the Sunday meetings.

I like the alternating time idea, that should allow people from more time zones to participate.
Picking a right day is hard though - weekdays are good paid contributors, weekends better for volunteers.

> 1) Forums: (discourse)
> https://internals.rust-lang.org/categories <https://internals.rust-lang.org/categories>

Some kind of developer focussed forum is helpful, I would think. Right now, we’re abusing the bug tracker
as forum: https://developer.blender.org/T46258 <https://developer.blender.org/T46258>
Discussions like this don’t work at all on IRC and not very well in mailing lists.

> 2) Weekly activity log
> https://this-week-in-rust.org/ <https://this-week-in-rust.org/>

Helpful, we should do that.

> 4) No mailing lists!
> https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rust-dev/2015-January/011558.html
> 
> Now I don't think we need to drop mailing lists, but the forums and activity log sound great.
> Discourse also might help making our onboarding process better.

If we use a web based forum, please let’s pick one that works well on mobile devices
(including the ones that are not the latest and greatest) and sends server-side generated
static HTML. Responding to email on a smartphone is quick and easy and works even when
you have a terrible connection. “Modern” HTML pages sometimes require several MB
just to display essentially a couple of paragraphs of text.

For example, one of the forums I visit sometimes runs on nodeBB. Just the forum start page
comes in at 1.17MB. That’s ridiculous and I pretty much never read it on my phone. BA, even
with the features images, is only half as big, simple phpBB sites come in at 300kB. Plain text
contents of these pages is just a few kB, the rest is mostly decoration and oh-so-useful features
nobody uses.

I know, we need to have fast connections to begin with (wouldn’t want to git clone over GPRS)
but I like to make my time on the road useful too. From here to BConf is roughly 7 hours on a train
that promises WIFI but doesn’t always deliver. Don’t want to let that time go to waste.

-Stefan