[wp-hackers] Community Views on Now and the Future

[Jason S.]

steve caturan wrote:
> i also think the WordPress project should maintain both development &
> support channels, separately. and that more core developers & testing
> folks should be part of it, at least the ones that can make a genuine
> commitment, not just lip service.

I don't want more wordpress IRC channels.  I absolutely LOVE #wordpress.
It's not overly active, but there is almost always someone in there
talking/gauking/working/commenting/etc.

Oh, and it's not nearly as elitist as a lot of other freenode channels.

There is no reason to make more channels because:
1) Everything you're suggesting can (and has) been answered in #wordpress

2) If you're going to create these 'official' channels, you need bodies.
Bodies that are ready and willing to provide quality answers alllll day
to the best of their ability.
I really do respect Podz for doing what he does.  Podz, and all the
other hugely active members on the WP.org forums.
You *cannot* get that same thing on IRC.
That is, you cannot get this officially.  Peers and other users power
#wordpress, and they do a damn find job of it IMO.

3) IRC is not a good outlet for the resurgence of help questions.  What
is *is* good for is special cases when the flow of
information/discussion/questions will continue occurring for a period of
time.
i.e. something that is too fast for forums, too slow for a phone call.
IRC support is akin to AIM/Instant Messaging support.
Who does that, and who will do that? Surely you realize that more people
use instant messengers than IRC, IRC is 'too complicated' for some users.
Won't you OBVIOUSLY instead set up help channels on multiple IM networks
to help?
Or install a JAVA chat app (home-hosted, not an IRC client) into the
website? Have at least one operator 'available' to answer questions all
day out of the kindness of their heart?

I am whole heartedly against multiple channels. Time and time again they
fail under other projects ( #phpbb had a #phpbbchat channel, *poof* it
went ) that don't merit the kind of fragmentation and split channels.
Multiple channels is good for huge things like Gentoo/Operating Systems
where there are literally TONS of fine grained topics that lumping them
into one single channel would be chaos.

Wordpress does not have anything remotely close to this.

Long story short:
[User] has joined #wordpress-dev
<User> Can anyone tell me how to make my own theme?
*10 minutes later*
[User] has joined #wordpress

Why not just cut the crap and let things go the way they already do?

I am against IRC as official support
I am against multiple channel for unique wp topics

[/soapbox]

P.S. I'm now looking forward to seeing ML stats for March 2006 :-).