One of the first challenges an open source project faces is how to communicate among contributors. There are a plethora of options: forums, chat channels, issues, mailing lists, pull requests, and more. How do we choose which is the right medium to use and how do we do it right?
Sadly and all too often, projects shy away from making a disciplined decision and instead opt for “all of the above.” This results in a fragmented community: Some people sit in Slack/Mattermost/IRC, some use the forum, some use mailing lists, some live in issues, and few read all of them.
This is a common issue I see in organizations I’m working with to build their internal and external communities. Which of these channels do we choose and for which purposes? Also, when is it OK to say no to one of them?
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