[Perl-org-patches] [Meta] Aversion from Having an IRC Channel

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi all!

When I suggested that we have an IRC channel (either existing or a new one) 
where we can discuss this, mst said he'd rather not because some people are 
not on IRC often, or at all, and as a result are excluded.

I can see where this fear is coming from. Back in the 8th grade, my friend and 
I and two of our female class-mates were elected to the classroom's 
committee[1], and further into the year my friend and I complained that the 
two girls kept organising class activities without my friend and I even 
knowing about them when they were announced.

<<<<<<<<
[1] - in Israel, the high school age group is sub-divided to what we call 
"Kitoth" or "classrooms", which study some or most lessons together and form a 
social circle. 
>>>>>>>>

This anti-pattern was echoed in an episode of the T.V. show "Friends" where at 
one point Rachel (one of the characters there) complains that her two office 
mates leave the office for smoke breaks, and then make all the decisions 
without her (as she isn't a smoker). As the chapter continues, she tries to 
join them and smoke there, only to discover she cannot stand it, which leads 
to a lot of funny situations, but naturally this is besides the point of 
illustrating this anti-pattern.

In any case, my point is actually the opposite - we may be losing more by not 
having an IRC channel than by trying to regulate the way we communicate and 
restrict it to this mailing list. The reason is that we still discuss stuff on 
IRC - either on different channels or in private messaging. So not only do we 
still discuss stuff, but not everyone who care enough to discuss it are 
involved.

I realise it's not nice to be left out of the decision making process. 
However, my experience when working on such FOSS projects as Subversion ( 
http://subversion.tigris.org/ ) taught me that it's OK for various committers 
to commit what they see fit when they do, rather than requiring the consensus 
of everybody. Naturally, many people who commit to the Subversion repository 
avoid committing many changes there without consulting the mailing list first, 
but you can still have many responsible committers working on different 
aspects that they feel comfortable with.

We can have a guideline that says that if we've reached a general consensus on 
the IRC channel about something that needs approval, we should still ask for 
approval from people on the mailing list. But I still think having an IRC 
channel would be a good idea, and will save a lot of constant frustration.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

-- 
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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
My Aphorisms - http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html

Chuck Norris read the entire English Wikipedia in 24 hours. Twice.