Walter and Andrei and community relationship management

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 11 April 2017 at 19:18:32 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 10:24:01AM -0700, Walter Bright via 
> Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> On 4/11/2017 2:18 AM, qznc wrote:
>> > It usually comes down to charismatic and visionary leaders. 
>> > Walter and Andrei are good with that, otherwise D would have 
>> > faltered long ago.
>> 
>> For a socially inept nerd such as myself, with all the 
>> charisma of a lamppost, I think D has done very well.
>
> You underestimate yourself. While you're no charismatic hero by 
> any stretch of imagination, you do carry quite some weight in 
> what you say simply by your history of achievements, as well as 
> your technical expertise and wealth of experience in 
> computer-related issues. It's no surprise that in this crowd 
> full of like-minded nerds who respect technical expertise, 
> you're doing none too badly.  It might be a completely 
> different story if you were in a more "typical" social setting, 
> though. :-P

I was going to say something similar.  I have seen responses in 
reddit/HN threads where devs were in awe that Walter Bright 
responded to them.  In the tech community, which has _completely_ 
different ideas of what constitutes charisma and vision, Walter 
and Andrei, with his distinguished history and very entertaining 
talks, are pretty much the definition.  That is not the issue, D 
has those in spades.

The issues I see are communication and delegation, both of which 
probably come down to the same problem: bus factor 
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor).  I get the sense that 
the communication problems come down to reading and responding to 
a ton of threads, in addition to organizing DConf and doing a 
bunch of other D scut work, so that you don't have time to fully 
context switch for each discussion.

Taking a page from Linus, another charismatic visionary (remember 
we're talking charisma _within tech_ here) who heads the most 
successful open source project of them all, is probably in order 
here: choose people to delegate specific roles to and get that 
stuff off your plate.

Andrei has talked about doing this before, and roles like release 
manager, now manned by Martin Nowak, and DIP manager, Mike 
Parker, have been spun off.  I'm guessing Sociomantic has picked 
up a lot of the DConf management.  But I figure there's more to 
be done.

I suggest that Walter and Andrei get together and figure out what 
else they _shouldn't_ be doing and spin those out as specific 
roles, advertising that they want someone to fill them.  Think of 
it like putting up a job ad: you must figure out what work needs 
to be done, specify detailed job roles to do it, then advertise 
the openings.

I've seen vague calls for help so far, but not anything specific 
like this.  You may not get anyone to fill these new volunteer 
roles, but you're more likely to get someone than with the 
current approach.

Of course, I could be wrong and you've already delegated 
everything that you want, but I get the sense that isn't so.  As 
D scales, getting this delegation right is going to be critical.

On Tuesday, 11 April 2017 at 17:28:51 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 4/11/2017 4:57 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>> On 2017-04-11 00:07, Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>>> There are many. A random sampling:
>>>
>>> Jacob Carlborg - Objective C support
>>
>> Actually, this one wasn't my idea originally. It was Michel 
>> Fortin that started
>> this work and did most of it. I just did the necessary work to 
>> get it merged
>> (the initial version).
>
> I.e. you self-selected and emerged as the champion of it, and 
> got it done. You're exactly what I'm talking about.
>
> It's not really about ideas, it's about getting **** done, and 
> the people in the D community that get **** done are inevitably 
> the people who decide what gets done.
>
> Something could be the bestest idea evar, but without a 
> champion it is going nowhere.

While this is undoubtedly how open source usually works, I'm not 
sure it's exactly right for D.  For example, there was the 
checkedint PR that was submitted to Phobos and then rejected by 
Andrei, only for him to write and merge his own.  You could argue 
that the author of the original checkedint got 5#!* done, at 
least in terms of putting up an implementation, but that wasn't 
enough.  Not saying it was a waste, as it's still up on dub, for 
anyone who prefers it to use.

Your original description of getting things done is mostly 
correct, just didn't like you saying it's not "about ideas," 
because it very clearly is that too.  No doubt you're right that 
the "bestest idea" won't matter if it's not championed by someone 
who will build it, but let's not diminish ideas.