Organizational - commenting in other communities

If the tool allows such separation of ACL's I don't see an immediate problem. But just to ask the question, what prevents a person who wants to comment from simply joining the community so that they can comment?

@Neil Horman AFAIK The concept is that a person can join a specific community only if they are affiliated with it. For example, you can join the “Large Businesses” community only if you work for a large business. This idea applies across all communities.

However, everyone can view and read the threads in any community, even if they are not a member. The only restriction is that non-members cannot participate or engage in those threads.

For Individuals community- anyone and everyone can join.

Err...

The only restriction is that non-members cannot participate or engage in those threads.

And that precisely is a massive restriction: It stops discussions right there and thus totally voids the value of an open discussion system:

IMO, membership of/in a community should only restrict voting rights there, not discussion contributions.

For Individuals community- anyone and everyone can join.

And that in my eyes leads the Community concept ad absurdum, too:

1) This policy dilutes the value of the "Individuals" Community: Originally I had the impression that it would represent people NOT affiliated with any company (or academia). But that clearly is not the case as now explicitly stated: fwiw, noticing that reduced my interest in participating in that Community substantially --and just maybe I'm not the only one.

2) Doesn't this policy obviate the need for a "General community" (that supposedly anyone can/does join)?

3) Thinking this through, this policy further violates the "one person one vote concept", say a person from a small business joining there can influence two communities. And in the case of a community leader - conceptually representing two conceptually entirely different communities (e.g., employees/SMB owners vs. volunteer individuals), isn't this cause for concern whether the same effort is/can be spent on that task as compared to a Community leader committed to supporting exactly one specific community, spending time to driving discussions to conclusion (votes) there with the interest of those members at heart?

Personally, I dont have any problem with having an option on commenting on cross community. It's infact similar to how some communities work on discord.

Individuals community group has been there before the General Discussion group was formed and now General Discussion group has 221 members and Individuals has 151-- that means not all the community group members are interested in joining the individuals group, hence General Discussion is the go-to place for discussion for anyone who would like to be a part of openssl community.

Many people use OpenSSL for various purpose- for example it is used in my company work(my company is a small business) but as an individual i use it too in my daily life and even for learning purpose.. so for the latter one if i have any problem or i have to suggest any feedback I would like to probably discuss with the individual community members.

Now someone working for an entity-- the entity might have different plans when it comes to OpenSSL but this doesn't mean that particular someone as an individual may definitely have the exact same idea or plans for openssl, moreover there definitely are more individual contributors who contributes to openssl for the sake of open source and are not here to represent their companies-- individual community like this can be considered as a good place for them. and then there are independent consultants(which i am once in a while) that use openssl in their work too.

When i start threads in Individuals group or small business group i always wear a different cap because the context and perspective changes.

Now, to your third and last point: I think that could be a topic for me to think more but right off what comes on the top of my mind is I think there could be a possibility of what you mentioned could occur and not just individuals, that same idea can be applied to any other opensource project and the general discussion group too. I think it will be a responsibility of the TAC to look into the community more carefully + the poll system is not the final decision making thing it is used as a feedback that TAC brings in front of directors.

Thinking this through, this policy further violates the "one person one vote concept", say a person from a small business joining there can influence two communities.

@Michael Baentsch you are looking at this through a very different lens - the communities are a place of discussion and feedback on a range of topics and we have a very diverse group of communities where the opinions on any topic often have contradictory views. We aren't trying to have a voting mechanism to make all decisions across all community users or any plan to make decisions on the basis of direct votes.

What we are seeking to understand what issues each community is concerned about and their relative priority within each community. Where we get common views across communities it does make decision making focus for us much clearer.

Each community is not the same size (look at committers as the smallest community) so we cannot weigh each community against the other - and we do recognise people hold multiple roles and the answers are often materially different.

The good thing about what we are doing here is that everything is transparent and visible - the community interactions are open, the advisory committee elections are open, the advisory committee meeting minutes and recommendations are open, and the responses from the board of directors to the advisory committees are open.

So think of the communities as discussion groups of people with common backgrounds interacting with their peers to see what the commonality within each community happens to be.

We had a single forum previously - it did not work to get the sort of discussions we are now having - and it didn't get the same sort of engagement. You are basically asking for a single place for everything.

You are always free to kick off a discussion in any community that you are in and you always see what the various discussions are - and those discussing in other communities can also see what you discuss on the same topic. And there is the general community if you want to have a discussion in a single place (and others feel the same way).

Note that each discussion on a topic is actually different in each group - if you look at it. And note that some discussions have been that a community would like to do something but has no idea on the impact in other areas - look at the community discussions on platforms - some people are very clear that we should drop pretty much all older platforms (or even drop platforms that aren't in CI currently). All perfectly valid points - but definitely not something that community members who are using those older platforms or supporting customers running on those older platforms. Those are places where we expect substantial differences to appear.

Separate communities allows these discussions to flow ...

@Tim Hudson I do not question any of the above and do see the value of different perspectives in different communities (please see commentary already provided below).

What I do question is whether it is sensible to disallow discussion feedback by people not formally part of a community but with feedback to share to that community, in essence, positively answering @Dmitry Belyavsky 's question at the beginning (my mistake to use possibly too many words/arguments, apologies).

What I also question below is whether the obligation to drive a discussion across different communities should fall onto the shoulders of a single person, e.g., the person that asked the initial question in any community.

This is not just an impression, it's what several people already pointed out as a weak point of the system, e.g. here. It's a thing that severely curtailed your very own discussion here, @Dmitry Belyavsky . For that particular discussion, I'd strongly suggest moving it out of that "walled garden" to garner more feedback. Don't know how that'd be done, nor who can do it: @Anton Arapov ?

The issue with the community separate areas for discussion (all of which is public) is so the participants in those discussions are doing so in the context of the community in which the discussion is happening.

The same person can and does have different views depending on the context.

We also got feedback that much of the discussions to date in other contexts were too overwhelming for others less frequently contributing to participate in - and that having separate spaces would help a lot.

I get there are those who want to have a single place for all discussions - but that simply isn't realistic or even practical - we need to hear the different voices - and jamming it all together has proven to not work.

We are getting feedback from people we have never heard from previously - and that really is the point of trying a new approach.

There are areas created (by Jon) that anyone can participate in - so if you want a cross-community free for all discussion - those places already exist. Start using them and see if the meet your needs.

And having the same topic discussed in different communities can and does lead to different outcomes - and that basically is one of the points.

I know that when I'm commenting as an Individual, the views are very different to those of a Small Business and different again as a Committer - those are different mindsets with different considerations.

@Tim Hudson Recently I had a problem related to, say, Clemens had an important information relevant for Committers' voting - but couldn't express it in the Committers' community. So I'd separate voting and possibility to comment

This "diversity of perspectives" view point is very valid @Tim Hudson . Doesn'd this raise a "practicality" problem, though? By way of worked example, the discussion regarding PR review policy started in the Committers Community would need to be raised in all communities in parallel to gain all those perspectives. I'd personally consider it unlikely that a single person would then be able/willing/have the time to follow all separate discussions (what'd be your take @Dmitry Belyavsky ?). So, assuming this is right, wouldn't this "diversity of perspectives" argument then call for a different way to start and conduct such discussions, namely as follows:

Any discussion that has the potential to be interesting for more than one Community is started in the "General discussions" place set up by @Jon Ericson ; every community leader detecting the need for a Community-specific discussion need then copies it over to his/her Community, and shepards/drives the discussion in that community instead of/in addition to the original author. That way, a person --like Dmitry-- can trigger the discussion, contribute where possible, e.g., time-wise, but otherwise be sure that each Community delivers its perspective in the end.

Caveat Emptor: Non-Community-specific thoughts/generally valid feedback voiced in one community risk being discussed multiple times then -- unless very active moderators bring such contributions back to the "General discussion forum" (and from there, back into all other Communities).