[Foundation-l] Wikimedia main office

Fri May 26 22:54:08 UTC 2006

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 5/26/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> On 5/26/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> If you consider your own contributions of such low value that they are
>>> not worth going out of your way to present, even including sending
>>> someone else in your place... then why should we expect them to be
>>> worth our time reading on a mailing list?
>>>       
>> I find questioning people's financial situations in poor taste.
>>     
>
> Huh? I was refering to the IRC meetings which is what almost all of
> them have been.
>   

Oh, I thought you meant the in-person meetings.

I don't find IRC (or "chat" generally) a useful or efficient means of 
communication.  Email gives enough space that people can look up 
sources, consider their positions and arguments, read other material if 
necessary, and then respond.  IRC is a mixture of off-the-cuff and 
prepared remarks, broken up into small bits with a lot of asides and 
chit-chat that you have to sit through in real time.

There are some projects that use it effectively, but most projects I've 
been involved with have dropped it pretty quickly in favor of the 
mailing lists.  The exceptions are ones with a high proportion of people 
who hang out on IRC to socialize anyway.

-Mark