Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Robert Ancell <robert ancell gmail com>]

On 3 June 2011 19:55, Dave Neary <dneary gnome org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 06/02/11 02:02, Robert Ancell wrote:
>>
>> A huge +1 on this.  IRC is much more productive, but it's crucial that
>> it's logged for people who can't attend.  (I'm always hitting this
>> problem in GNOME trying to work out what happened while I was sleeping
>> in Australia).
>> This works really well in Ubuntu where everything is automatically
>> logged: http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/
>
> Out of interest, how long after an IRC conversation that concerns you do you
> typically find out about it? Do you read the entire IRC log of the relevant
> channels every morning?
>
> How often do you actually go looking in the logs?

It's either something that happened in the last day or two, or
something much later that I want to check for accuracy.

I don't read entire logs, though I do review meetings that occur in
the logs from time to time.  I'd say I look up something in the Ubuntu
logs a few times per month.

> I really don't think IRC logs are a good way of communicating anything. It's
> better than unlogged, but really only marginally.

Sure, and they shouldn't be used as a replacement for communicating
any formal information.

What I miss in GNOME is not being able to read what happened in a
meeting, or reading up the context of a decision.  People copy
snippets from IRC conversations into bug reports, and I want to read
more about the decisions that were made.  Also being out of sync with
a lot of people means I can't just ask someone a question the next
day, and it would be nice to just be able to check it in the logs.
You potentially miss out a lot if your not in a common timezone, or a
part time contributor (e.g. the design process).