[Sugar-devel] Hesitancy in using mailing lists

[James Cameron]

G'day,

For transparency in Sugar Labs, I'm anonymising and showing an example
of an unsolicited private contact that suggests we could improve the
presentation and user interface of our mailing lists, for people who
cannot or won't use them for some reason.

On 1st Feb, a GSOC aspirant subscribed to the mailing list.

On 17th Feb, they wrote to me;
> Subject: A new Contributor wishing for a better way to communicate.
>
> Dear Mr. James
>                               I'm looking forward to contribute and
> work with the amazing community like Sugar-Labs. Though I've
> subscribed to the mailing list, I found this way of communication
> with comminity didn't hit the spot for me. I got confused by
> mailing. I'd love to stay in touch with you guys and get help in
> real time via a chat room or IRC. I'll appreciate the responce.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Have a good day. ^_^

Although we have an IRC channel, it is not manned on a regular basis,
and many questions go unanswered, so I didn't feel I could promote
it.  We lost critical mass.

On 18th Feb, my answer was;
> Sorry, but no.
> 
> You should learn to use e-mail more effectively.
> 
> You subscribed on 1st February but haven't said anything
> yet, so I don't think you have honestly tried to hit the spot.
> 
> Learn more about using mail.  Please read
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
>
> I don't know your native language, or the languages you can read,
> but there's a $(LANGUAGE) translation if that helps;
> [...]
> 
> I protect my communication channels from overload, and practice
> radical transparency.  I'm suspicious of private contacts, as our
> code of conduct supports transparency, and usually the reasons
> behind private contacts are to gain some sort of personal advantage.

On 19th Feb, the aspirant unsubscribed and sent me this message with
empty subject;

> Dear Mr. James
>                  Firstly I would like to aplogize that I was unable
> to get started. I just subscribed to the mailing list on 1st Feb to
> just get stated with the open source. Reading through some wikies I
> got to know that it's also good to have the hang of something before
> starting it. or in other words "I was just there in the party
> analyzing people instead of approaching them directly" (THE GSOC
> GUIDE) i was just expecting an easier way to communicate but I can
> understand the overload of people. though thanks for the warm
> welcome.
> 
> Regards

While I speculate that this is an issue learning how to use mail,
there's also a possibility that there are other factors;

- institutions that capture mail conversations and review them,

- threats to personal safety because of the public archive we host,

- a language barrier; instant messaging helps to overcome by lowering
  latency, or instant messaging apps have built-in translation
  software,

- the long time it can take to get a reply stops forward progress for
  people who can't work on something else,

- a disability or disadvantage.

Mailman 3.x had addressed some of these problems.  Have we any system
administrators who would like to upgrade to Mailman 3.3.0?

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.netrek.org/