How to get new people use IRC?

[Shlomi Fish]

On Thursday 17 September 2009 09:14:30 Gabor Szabo wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am involved in a project where I am trying to get some people who
> never used IRC or participated in any open source project, and some
> of them have never programmed to teach them some programming and
> to get them involved in an open source project.
> 
> I encounter several issues in how to get them to use IRC.
> 
> One of them is that they don't find the IRC clients intuitive for them.
> 
> The other one is that they seem to be afraid of talking on the main
> project channels. I know it is difficult to wonder in a room full of people
> and start talking. It is difficult if the channel is silent and it is
>  difficult if people are already talking. The newcommer can feel that
> s/he is making noise or interrupting the conversation.
> 
> So I was wondering how to try to solve this?
> 
> We have our own channel for the project where they started to talk
> a bit. That's a good step. I was wondering if we should setup a
> 
> #projectname_babytalk or #projectname_kindergarten or #projectname_newbies
> channel in the hope that people can start talking there first?
> If so what name would you suggest?

Well, _babytalk and _kindergarden are kind-of patronising and deprecating. 
Furthermore, as I noted here (too bluntly):

http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/perl-newcomers/

It's not a good idea to use the channel "#perl" a the advanced channel (as is 
the case for EF-Net) and "#perlhelp" as the one for beginner questions. That's 
because people are likely to join #perl , not read the /topic, etc. If you 
want, you can use #${project} as the channel name for newbies help, and 
#${project}-dev or #${project}-cafe, #not-#${project}, etc. for 
development/advanced/off-topic discussions. This should be done by general 
consensus of the channel, and with some discipline.

I can tell the story of #perl and #perlcafe on Freenode - #perl on Freenode 
used to (and still does) accept most beginners questions[FreenodePerlPolicy], 
but there's also a lot of advanced and off-topic discussion there. At one 
point, I registered #perlcafe , in order to move OT and advanced discussions 
out of there. However, it did not meet with a lot of consensus. Eventually, 
#perlcafe took off (with about 30 participants or so - most of them lurkers or 
bots), and now hosts a lot of discussion that we'd rather not see on #perl :

http://perl.net.au/wiki/Freenode_Sharp_Perlcafe

I should note that sometimes a newbie required too much hand-holding that the 
people on #perl got tired of them, and I and other people ended up guiding 
them on #perlcafe or a different channel. See for example:

http://perl-begin.org/topics/references/#perlcafe-chat-log

I eventually started #lispcafe as an anti-thesis to the #lisp policy of 1) 
discussing only Common Lisp 2) having only on-topic discussion and as a way to 
try to create a more civil #perlcafe. The channel had some activity, but it 
seems mostly dead now, and even I don't really join it.

Finally, there's now also #perl-cats started out by a cat-obsessed #perl'er in 
order to discuss and emulate cats in even greater capacity than on #perl. It 
sports a lot of off-topic discussions (and some advanced ones that are of no 
good interest to #perl), and also has been joined by some friends or friends 
of friends of #perl/#perl-cats regulars who are not really Perl programmers 
yet.

---------------------

Maybe I've been straying from the topic too much. In any case, make sure that 
your main channel will be suitable for newcomers, perhaps by moving 
discussions to #${projectname}-dev and/or #${projectname}-cafe . A benevolent 
dictator may be able to "force" the other people of the channel into having 
this, but there should be a general acceptance of it and understanding the 
necessity.

Recently, there have been some further discussions about the usability, 
accessibility and friendliness of the IRC channels, for example:

http://perlbuzz.com/2009/09/dont-optimize-for-yourself-in-communities.html

I hope you found this brain-dump of mine enlightening.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

[FreenodePerlPolicy] - within a few limits such as we don't write or tweak the 
script for you if you're not willing to learn Perl or pay someone to do that, 
and we don't help with non-Perl regex problems (PCRE, etc.). See:

http://perl.net.au/wiki/Freenode_Sharp_Perl_FAQ

> 
> What other strategies do you suggest?
> 
> Gabor
> 
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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
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Chuck Norris read the entire English Wikipedia in 24 hours. Twice.