Weekly Hangout for Slicer user and developer

[fedorov (Andrey Fedorov)]

@jcfr what do you think about:

1. making a “sticky” announcement about Slicer weekly event (whatever will be its name) on the front page of the forum

2. just referencing the dedicated page with the weekly agenda from that post, instead of adding a new entry every week

I think short, simple and prominently visible announcements are easier to interpret.

[jcfr (Jean Christophe Fillion Robin (Kitware))]

That would work. And for the week were we can’t organize the meeting, we would hide it ?

[fedorov (Andrey Fedorov)]

Maybe we could coordinate among the developers to make sure there is always someone “on duty” in case there is a user/developer who needs help, even if we don’t have an “agenda”?

If that’s not the option, and we only have the meeting when it can be organized, things become more complicated.

[lassoan (Andras Lasso)]

I like the weekly posts (at least one that announces the meeting, and another one with the link to the meeting minutes) because they are sent to me in an email and serve as reminders. All people who would like to get these email reminders can set notification setting for this topic to “watching”. Having a sticky note may be useful but I think the wiki is a more appropriate place for permanent, non-changing instructions, description of processes.

[fedorov (Andrey Fedorov)]

I don’t mean to extrapolate, but for me Slicer forum is just one of the many I use to seek help on various tools I use. I almost never subscribe to get all updates from the forums I use - I usually only get notifications for the posts I contributed to.

If we assume that every user subscribes to get and read every message on the forum, the current approach might work. But even those notifications arrive with delays. With all the love and attention I give to the Slicer forum - I recall getting planning notifications after the hangout already happened.

I believe most users do not look for updates on every thread. I think developers usually go to forum to find answers, and ask questions if they cannot find answers. With the current approach of publicizing the weekly meeting in an existing thread, chances of finding it for a new developer/user are really slim. That is why I would strongly recommend making the thread sticky so it is prominently visible for the new visitors of the forum.

[lassoan (Andras Lasso)]

I think most people do the same thing: follow all topics in a few projects and follow own topics in many projects. Using Discourse, you can explicitly sign up/cancel notifications for each topic. So, if you want to be notified about weekly hangouts then you set that topic to “watched”.

We can add a note about this on the new developer’s checklist on the wiki and we can advertise at other places, too (including some pinned topics).