[tor-project] How to help people on weekends?

[Matt Traudt]

FWIW, #tor seems to slow down way on the weekends, even when left -R.
That doesn't mean we should ignore the people that _do_ show up on the
weekends, however.

If we want a bot to do something, I'd be willing to write and/or run it.
pastly_bot is going to need some more features anyway if we're going to
keep #tor -R more than we already do.

Also, don't let me unnecessarily turn into an IRC thread ;) Roger
mentioned the mailing lists and blog comments too.

Matt (pastly)

PS: -R means anyone can join the channel; +R means only registered nicks
can join. It's easy to register a nick, but (i) IMO it's too much work
for quick simple questions (ii) the "but my anonymity!" arguments some
people make are at least somewhat valid.

On 8/10/17 09:24, chelsea komlo wrote:
> Hey!
> 
> One thing I have found helpful is adhering to on-call rotations. I'm not
> sure if there is currently an IRC rotation with the expectation to be
> available on evenings and weekends, but it might help with what you
> describe.
> 
> Also, reviewing in Monday meetings who is on call for what might be
> useful too. Teams I have worked on in the past have used irc bots to
> query this information, to make it an easy "x-bot who is on call". task.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Chelsea
> 
> 
> On 08/09/2017 11:56 PM, Roger Dingledine wrote:
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> I've noticed an interesting trend lately. I don't have great answers
>> but I want to raise the topic for us to think about. We used to just
>> all work all the time, and we were burning ourselves out, so many of
>> us have switched to focusing on more traditional "daytime on weekdays"
>> hours. That approach has the big advantage of increased density among
>> core developers: people are more likely to be around then.
>>
>> But while this approach works well for people whose day job is Tor,
>> the casualty is people whose day job *isn't* Tor. These people show up
>> exactly on the weekends and evenings that now have fewer Tor people around
>> to provide quick responses, community momentum, interaction with core
>> developers, and all of the great things that a free software community
>> needs for health and growth.
>>
>> I don't have any quick fixes, but I wanted to raise this issue as a key
>> topic for us to consider as we try to find the right balance between
>> "people can have lives" and "we are responsive to new contributors". We
>> are not being the best that we can be when we have 60-hour gaps on irc,
>> mailing list threads, blog comment follow-ups, etc and those gaps line
>> up exactly with when excited helpful volunteers show up. :)
>>
>> --Roger
>>