community input...

[Felipe Ferreira da Silva <ferreiradaselvadev gmail com>]

Hi, about the discussion regarding community input...

I share the same opinion of what was already told, but I think the lack of a more accessible medium of communication is required. And I mean something else other than mailing list and IRC.

**Lists**

There is a large number of lists, and some of them not used for a long time. Just parsing through some, I found some that doesn't have a single message for years. This makes harder to find the proper list to post, too. This message, I can't even reply on the original thread, because I just subscribed the list (at least one an obvious one). And all the lists are for a specific project. This means projects that are already part of GNOME has a place, but projects that could potentially be part, no (at least, again, not an obvious one).

**IRC**

About IRC. I've been there countless times. Mostly, not for seeking help, but because I would like to make some of my projects to be part of GNOME (the way I see, they would be a good addition). However, I can't stay for a long time active on IRC, and I don't want to really rely on those servers to keep me connected 24h. It takes a long time for someone to reply (happens to me and others that I see asking help). And, even when it happens, the discussion doesn't grow, because many people are away from the keyboard. After that, I just give up. I don't mean this is a problem caused by the devs (everyone has their problems and their lives), but caused by the tool used for communication. If there was a tool with persistent chat, the wait wouldn't be a problem, and would make discussions more accessible to everyone. If you just logged in on IRC, you won't see the past discussion, but you will if it's on a persistent chat, like a forum forum platform.

I know many people are fond of those two tools, but keep in mind that they are not very accessible and keep people away. Like Nacho said, I could be an active collaborator by now, too, yet, here I am with no contributions.

Best regards,

Felipe Ferreira da Silva