Discussion with the community

[JonathanHuot]

Hi Community,

I'd like to propose using Gitter as a chatting tool to discuss about requests-oauthlib between dev or between users.
Some communities are using Discord, but it seems overkill.

It can be useful sometime to have a dircet discussion instead of communicate with github.
Note that it is not going to replace Github issues comments or PR discussions, as it is very useful to preserve the history of them and let everyone participate when required.

For oauthlib, we have created a space here https://gitter.im/oauthlib/ with a default "Lobby" room, we could create a dedicated room for requests-oauthlib or share the same room.

Please share your thoughts,
Thanks

[justin-f-perez]

What's the question here, and what problem does answering it resolve? "Which chatroom should we use?" is a silly discussion to have for a project that appears to have been functionally abandoned. IMHO the chatroom will be just as neglected as the many unreviewed PRs and only serve to dilute the community.

not going to replace... PR discussions

Will someone moderate the chatroom to ensure it doesn't displace issue/PR discussion between users? I don't see that happening.

For that matter, what discussion? I see a community opening PRs that solve legitimate use cases and deficiencies in this library- and they're just left open, without discussion.

[JonathanHuot]

Hi @justin-f-perez, given the huge amount of cleanup to do in issues and discussions around PR, it is sometime useful to discuss between community members about priorities or in a more direct manner to the contributors.

As I said, this is not to replace or dilute the community across multiple tools. Sometime more convenient to discuss interactively.

You probably already noticed that we have a couple of discussions around the lack of maintainers (#385) and any help are welcome.

If you think you can help on anything, please create PR, do some code review, add unit tests, and participate to the community effort.

As you already noticed, it is a open-source project based on volunteer's time, so the best effort that everyone can do is to help.

[justin-f-perez]

@JonathanHuot I hadn't caught that one- that provides a lot of context for this issue, thank you for the link.

The conversation we're having right now might fit better into a chatroom format. On the other hand, I don't think I would have visited the chatroom if it existed already. Although we wouldn't be having literally this conversation if the chatroom already existed because this conversation is about whether or not one should exist, I'm sure you can imagine a similar scenario in which an ignorant newbie like myself comes along with questions that are probably best asked and answered in the issue tracker. Not that my personal preferences should dictate the outcome of this issue (just an anecdote to help inform a decision), I personally don't ever visit these chatrooms unless I find some information that probably belongs in an issue tracker or project docs via search engine.

For my point/against your point: I don't think anyone has time to police the chatrooms to ensure relevant info makes its way back into the issue tracker, and I think whether the intent is there or not there will be some amount of dilution.

Against my point/for your point: Who polices the issue tracker? No one really has time for that either. A chatroom might siphon away some of the noise contributing to the appearance of a functionally abandoned project. Furthermore, folks who feel more comfortable communicating in an interactive format like that could be more willing to jump in.

On a side note: #385 should probably be pinned (and I'll probably post this side note there too after I have a chance to read the full thread). I was discouraged from even thinking about trying to contribute after noticing how many open PRs there are without any kind of review, thinking, "what's the point of trying to contribute if the PR won't even be looked at?" There are some PRs I'd be interested in seeing merged, and I'll see if there's a way for me to help that along after I do some more reading. Thanks again for the link!

[JonathanHuot]

That's a good idea, I have pinned the issue.