There has been a lot of discussion on Slack regarding a request for a #maintainers channel. The purpose of the channel request is reasonable: to create a center of gravity for near real-time discussion between project maintainers regarding the daily responsibilities pertaining to maintaining the repositories. The concerns regarding this center of gravity being on slack are also reasonable: not all maintainers are active on slack, conversations without all maintainer views create an echo chamber effect, and chat history is not retained past 30 days thus any decisions inadvertently made or influenced would not have original source traceability.
This forum category, does provide a medium by which history is retained thus any conversations, ideas, votes, etc. remains available for search, reference, and audit trailing purposes.
So I’d like to bring this discussion of requesting a maintainers Slack channel here and get everyone’s thoughts/concerns on if it’s a mechanism we feel is needed. Is it something that’s not already solved by existing channels? Would it benefit maintainers as a whole? Would anyone use or not use it (and why)? This is not a formal “call for vote”, just a recorded discussion on the merits or dangers of the channel.
Please feel free to be candid, as amicable disagreement is healthy and avoids the echo chamber effect.
I feel that the potential benefits of a #maintainers channel outweigh the concerns. As discussed in the Slack thread which proposed the idea, there are a few notable benefits of a Slack maintainers channel. Specifically, this quote from @dblock sums up many of the benefits:
“Maintainers is a group of people who have self-selected into additional responsibilities in one or more projects in the org. I’d prefer not to spam #dev for topics that pertain to the additional job of maintaining repos…”
From the Slack discussion, we can see that there is currently a fair amount of interest in the idea of a Slack channel at least relative to the overall participation on the Slack server as a whole.
With regard to the concerns mentioned above, I do not feel they are significant enough to prevent a #maintainers channel from having value. Not all maintainers are active on Slack but neither are they active on the OpenSearch forum. In fact, I would go so far as to offer my own anecdotal evidence that more of the maintainers are active on Slack than the forum. With regard to the concern about an echo chamber effect, I do not believe this can be used one way or the other to support a Slack channel. My understanding of the concern is that when people voice similar opinions, we discourage the participation of those with dissenting views. This will be the case whether discussions are held in Slack, on the forum, via email, or in person. The most effective way to counteract this behavior is likely to encourage all forms of participation and fostering a welcoming community. Having a Slack channel certainly does not act to the detriment of these goals. Finally, while Slack discards the chat history, I would again argue that it is better to have a chat history that may be discarded in 30 days as opposed to no discussion at all. Based on the current Slack thread, it seems at least 9 maintainers would see active value in the Slack channel while only a single maintainer would not. Presumably, even if only those 9 maintainers who expressed interest in the channel participated, there would still be value added by the channel which is a minimal change with arguably 0 associated risk or opportunity cost. If it does not seem effective, it can be removed. If it is valuable, great.
I largely agree with @scrawfor and believe having the #maintainers channel won’t bring any harm but benefits. I see it more as the communication means to discuss the topics or/and issues that may not necessarily require community-wide participation (just an example, what to do with the long list of flaky tests?) but are certainly concerning for a project from the maintenance perspective.
Some of the discussions/threads/topics could be also moved from Slack to forum or the other way around.
My understanding of the concern is that when people voice similar opinions, we discourage the participation of those with dissenting views.
That’s not the main concern. The main concern is a small group of maintainers on slack align with a strong view that results in a unilateral change (intentional or inadvertently) being codified without proper traceability. This forum helps de-risk that concern because, unlike slack, conversation history is retained. Prior to having this category the only mechanism we had was the .github repo which (as you can see) very few maintainers (when compared with the total number of maintainers) proactively engage, “process” docs are often unilaterally changed, and proper voting is rarely held.
Whether active here or not, we’re going to be proactively adding all maintainers to this group as part of on-boarding. Whether a maintainer chooses to be active here or not (their choice) they will at least have access to the history retained discussions which is largely better than not even opening slack plus evaporating history after 90 days. This forum largely de-risks the traceability concerns of a slack maintainer channel.
Based on the current Slack thread, it seems at least 9 maintainers would see active value in the Slack channel while only a single maintainer would not.
Absolutely. There are a couple hundred maintainers with roughly 10 somewhat engaging in the discussion. That’s only a ~2% slack participation, and we don’t want to require maintainers enage on slack if they prefer not to, see the concern?
…having the #maintainers channel won’t bring any harm but benefits.
I think with this forum we have a better center of gravity to record discussions such that we don’t inadvertently abuse the maintainer slack channel. As I mentioned above, even if maintainers choose not to engage here, they will have access with full history retention. And I think that’s infinitely better than evaporating history on slack where a maintainer may not even install the application or ever open the web interface. The last piece, IMHO, is that we proactively monitor ourselves on the slack channel to ensure any binding votes occur outside of slack (e.g., either here or on github) such that they are properly retained for audit purposes.
Some of the discussions/threads/topics could be also moved from Slack to forum or the other way around.
Hi Nick, I stand by the points listed previously. I think that @reta suggestion to recap discussions from one location to another is a great idea as well.
To clarify one point with regard to:
I was referencing “the echo chamber effect” where according to the article you linked “An echo chamber circulates existing views without encountering opposing views, potentially resulting in confirmation bias.” Perhaps that is not what you meant? Your follow-up suggests that you are more concerned with logging of decisions etc. I think that is a different discussion than the one I originally addressed. My apologies if I was not clear originally or misunderstood your intent.
Regardless, if there is any thing I can help with to move a #maintainers channel or alternative forward let me know.
My apologies if I was not clear originally or misunderstood your intent.
No apology needed! I think you’re right that a discussion echo chamber alone isn’t a serious concern. It’s that the maintainers have karma to make changes that affect the project and downstream users as a whole. That’s what I meant in the OP by “…conversations without all maintainer views create an echo chamber affect, and chat history is not retained past 30 days thus any decisions inadvertently made or influenced would not have source traceability.” My apologies, I think my OP is probably confusing in this point.
…if there is any thing I can help with to move a #maintainers channel or alternative…
I don’t think we’ll need to move anything? I originally -1 the creation of the channel in the informal discussion but if we’re all good with leaving formal votes and change decisions to this forum or github where we can retain an audit trail then I’m a -0.
Maybe we let this discussion bake for the next few days? If we largely think there’s no need for a formal vote then we can just create the channel and throw a sticky reminder at the top?
Curious if others have any concerns or if we’re largely unanimous?
I think we’ve left this one open for any further discussion for enough time. Looks like the overall consensus is to go forward with a #maintainers channel.
I’ll take the action item to create it and post a reminder at the top to please use this forum category for any deeper conversations that get into governance or overall changes to the way OpenSearch maintainership works. This gives people options and allows a space to have an archive for bigger discussions that don’t belong on Slack.
agree!!