Re: [Tails-project] [Tails-dev] Request for change in commun…

Delete this message

Reply to this message
Author: sajolida
Date:  
To: Public mailing list about the Tails project, tails-dev
New-Topics: Re: [Tails-project] [Tails-dev] Request for change in communication culture
Subject: Re: [Tails-project] [Tails-dev] Request for change in communication culture
intrigeri:
> Sandro Knauß (2020-05-24):
>> anonym wrote:
>>> Let me first express the change we're seeking: when leaving a comment on a
>>> ticket, consider it your responsibility that the right person(s) will read
>>> it! If you don't @mention someone, you probably are failing this
>>> responsibility!
>>
>> On the one side, yes doing @mention somone helps, so the person knows, that
>> they should answer.That's why I propose, that we also add groups/function
>> mentions like @ft, @sysadmin, @help desk... Than people outside the team can
>> make sure, the other teams know about it and the teams itself can make sure,
>> that there are shifts and forward issues to the correct person in their teams.
>> This should reduce the informal hierarchies and give the teams to define their
>> own shifts etc.
>
> I understand that at any given time, mentioning one such @role account
> would notify the team member(s) who is currently on duty — as opposed
> to every single member of the team. Is this what you're proposing?


I don't think that hefee's proposal was specific about automating a
single notification to the person on duty. Otherwise they might not have
written "the teams itself can [...] forward issues to the correct person
in their teams".

> Assuming I got it right, I it a lot. I think this idea complements
> nicely other tools that we either have already or that we would like
> to have:
>
>  - @group mentions: great for raising attention of *every* *single*
>    member of a team, which most of the time is not great IMO.

>
>    I just documented this tool:
>    https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/commit/49476de8863c91c5bf8feb2ab6056776149e8fa5


I understand that hefee was proposing this.

>  - "Core Work: $team" labels: it's rare that folks outside of a team
>    dare adding this label, which is a bold statement that essentially
>    means "I think X is your job"; I believe the tool you're proposing
>    would allow expressing a range of somewhat weaker
>    statements/questions, thus making it more likely that
>    non-team-members will dare using it, which sounds great.

>
>  - Document who is on shift on a given team: on the one hand, I think
>    this would nicely complement your idea for matters that are not
>    worth tracking on GitLab (e.g. sometimes a 2 minutes chat on XMPP
>    saves lots of paperwork)

>
>    https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/17763

>
> What do others think?


I'm not in team that does shifts. But if I were, I think that receiving
a few notifications even when I'm not on shift would give me some useful
context about what's happening to the other person's shift. For example,
I could give them relevant information about a previous shift or acquire
knowledge that would be useful for a future shift. I feel like it would
help share knowledge and avoid creating silos inside a team.

As someone that asks questions to Help Desk, I think that I would always
prefer asking my question to the whole group, assuming that the team is
self-organized and that the person on shift has the responsibility to
answer while leaving more opportunity for others to jump in, than to
only ask it to the person on shifts.

So, for my communication with Help Desk, I'm afraid that having
@help_desk point to a single person on shift instead of everybody in the
team might slow down my work and I'll probably fallback to explicitly
mentioning everybody in the team.

--
sajolida
Tails — https://tails.boum.org/
UX · Fundraising · Technical Writing