Wikimedia Developer Summit/2016/T113490

T113490 - This is the session pad for the How to interact with communities when developing software? session, slated to begin at 11:30 am on Tuesday, January 5. (Slides)

Purpose
Problem solving: As a developer or a community member, what are the best/worse experiences you have known? How can we improve communication between users and developers? How can Community Liaisons help?

Agenda

 * 20 minutes - introductory presentation
 * results of the survey conducted at the end of December
 * Q&A about the results
 * Presentation of the goals of the discussion
 * 45 minutes - open discussion
 * 15 minutes - wrap up

Etherpad
https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/WikiDev16-T113490

Goals

 * Share experiences of good communities interactions
 * List things which can be improved easily concerning communities interactions from the developers side

Chronology
''This section is where an attempt is made to capture the gist of who said what, in what order. A transcript isn't necessary, but it's useful to capture the important points made by speakers as they happen.''

Possible tips/solutions

 * Separate what we expect when interacting with communities: feedback about bugs or feedback about features?
 * Define the responsabilities on a team, between the PM and people in charge of liaising? Product managment vs. communication?
 * "Don't be a jerk" rule -- have someone whose role is to review interactions, and quietly point out to people acting out that they should behave better?
 * Matt Flaschen: Help out with https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct/Draft
 * Give advice on when and how to communicate (relevant channels)
 * A bit outdated, but as a start: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Development_process_improvement/Communications_recommendations
 * Have a centralized place for community feedback; phab:T98354
 * Translate all possible messages, say people can communicate in the language they want
 * When a problem/controversy occurs, respond timely in the discussion
 * Describe the problem you want to solve (in detail), the goal you want to achieve, the homework you have done, the questions you have (even if you have only broad ideas)
 * Have the right tool for the right purpose (talk page or survey?)