Re: Web Platform Public Involvement

On 6/6/13 4:14 PM, Nic da Costa wrote:
> Hey Everyone
>
> I have been chatting with some folks over in IRC about general public 
> involvement and how we can look at improving this aspect and one of 
> the ideas that came up was to setup a sort of "Dev Rel" team. The aim 
> of the team would be to be the main interface with the public, sort of 
> a buffer or intermediate for those people who do not wish to take part 
> in the mailing list but have ideas to bounce around. The aim of this 
> would be to try and improve our channel of communication with the 
> general public, to get more involvement, even if it is for some base 
> ideas. The team could then report on people's behalf and carry on any 
> discussions that need to take place.
>
> They could also act as an entry point and help any new comers on how 
> to get started, even if it means pointing them in the right direction 
> or telling them who would be best to speak to.

I like the idea of having "welcomers" who help people get started and 
connect them to appropriate other people. I don't like the idea of such 
people becoming intermediaries who end up having extended games of 
"telephone" between the list and others. That doesn't seem like it would 
be good for anyone involved.

It sounds like the mailing list is a barrier to entry. Casual 
participation is discouraged by having to subscribe to the mailing list 
(and implicitly, receive all of the list traffic in your inbox) in order 
to post something. Maybe we should move towards a communication channel 
that is easier to drop into, like a web-based discussion forum (for 
example, Discourse, http://www.discourse.org/).

We previously had a Q&A forum, but that was geared toward support rather 
than discussion. (BTW, the forum link on this page: 
http://talk.webplatform.org/ no longer works.) I thought we were keeping 
it around, but hidden, but maybe I misunderstood. In any case, it would 
not really be suitable as a replacement for the mailing list.


-- 
Janet Swisher <mailto:jREMOVEswisher@mozilla.com>
Mozilla Developer Network <https://developer.mozilla.org>
Developer Engagement Community Organizer