General Discussion group on the OpenSSL communities site

Our discussions are siloed

There was recently a discussion (with a poll) in the small business community group about how to configure a Windows binary distribution. While this discussion started in the small business community, people not in that community might be interested in being a part of it.

All conversations and decisions in the various community groups are visible to anyone, but only members of the group that hosts it can participate in a discussion. In addition, people outside of the group don’t have a means of getting notified of new discussions or decisions. The communities hub only shows items for groups a user is already part of. Only by visiting each individual community is it possible for most users to see the full breadth of conversations on the platform.

As a result, conversations tend to be siloed in their community group unless and until they are surfaced to one of the committees. Even for people with close connections to the project, this can feel as if a decision appeared out of the blue. If the initial discussion happens in a community-specific group, the only way for members of other communities to discuss it is to start their own conversations, which will inevitably result in significant duplication of effort.

Proposal: General Discussion group

There is a Communities group that holds the other groups on the platform as subgroups. This isn’t exactly what we are looking for since it's intended for announcements from admins rather than conversations initiated by community members. In addition, it doesn’t make sense to have decisions (using the voting feature) since that would side-step the BACs and TACs.

Instead I’d like to have a General Discussion group that anyone can join. Ideally if someone joins another group (Individuals, Committers, Small Business, etc.) they would automatically be added to the General Discussion group as well. If a conversation starts in a specific community that really ought to be general, an admin can move the thread. (Or the other way around, though that’s not the main concern in this proposal.)

Side benefits

One happy benefit from this proposal would be lowering the barrier for people who are new to the OpenSSL community. Currently new users must decide which subcommunity to join and are asked to justify their choice.

With no voting, there’s no need to have a gatekeeper for the General Discussion. Anyone can join and decide later if they want to also join one of the communities that has representation on the committees. It’s an easier on ramp than taking a risk your request to join a group will be declined.

Feedback welcome

Please leave comments below about this proposal. As a community manager, one of my goals is to facilitate community-led initiatives and I believe a general discussion group here will help.