A list of communication tools used across the Community, how they are used, and any drawbacks, and how popular they are with Core Contributors.
Tool | CC Popularity | Use Cases | Drawbacks | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Community favorite | Discussion Forum: Questions, requests for help, announcements about Open edX software, new blog posts, events, feature deprecations, core contributor nominations, posting polls, getting community, job posts | Relatively high barrier to entry creating a new thread, moderation required, notification fatigue | ||||||||
2nd favorite | Messaging Platform: 1:1 conversations, coordinating meetings, working group discussions, community announcements, quick questions, opportunistic synchronization of work, sending reminders | History disappears after 6 months, limited searchability, requires invitation, encourages synchronous communication, very easy to post direct (i.e. private) messages, information can be lost in threads, not open source | ||||||||
Questions, requests for help, announcements about Open edX software, new blog posts, events, feature deprecations, core contributor nominations, posting polls, getting community, job posts | Relatively high barrier to entry creating a new thread, moderation required, notification fatigue | |||||||||
3rd favorite | Issue Tracking / Project Management: Open edX Roadmap, projects, issue tracking, product review tracking, bug reports, code reviews | Potentially intimidating for non-developers, communication is tied to issues, proprietary features, not everyone has a GitHub account | ||||||||
4th favorite | Knowledge Bases / Wikis: Current and past projects, programs like the Core Contributor and Maintainer programs, working group agendas and meeting notes, product proposals, release information, upcoming features, how-tos, code of conduct | High cost, can be buggy, unclear what is documented in the docs and what is documented in the wiki, not open sourceGithub | Open edX Roadmap, projects, issue tracking, product review tracking, bug reports, code reviews | Potentially intimidating for non-developers, communication tied to issues, proprietary features | ||||||
Google Meet | Video Conferencing: Working group meetings, ad-hoc meetings | Synchronous, excludes participants in different time zones, not open source | ||||||||
Zoom | Video Conferencing: Working group meetings, ad-hoc meetings | Synchronous, excludes participants in different time zones, free plans has time limits for group meetings, not open source | ||||||||
Email: Contacting Core Contributors (by inputting a single email address in your email client) | Inbox fatigue— people become overwhelmed by the volume of emails they receive, leading to important messages being overlooked | |||||||||
Google Docs / Sheets | Collaborative Documents: Collaborating on documents | Long comment threads can be difficult to follow, version history not always clear, not open source | ||||||||
Google Forms | Surveys / Polls: Sending out polls, gathering feedback from community | Limited layout and design options, not open source | ||||||||
Announcements, information about releases, events, meetups, posts about online learning | No commenting capabilities | |||||||||
Is this used? | Miro | Is this used? | Newsletter | Does this exist? | Figma | Figma | Collaborative Design: In-context design discussions, prototypes Relevant? | not Not open source | ||
Documentation for site operators, developers, educators, and documentors. how-to guides, OEP’s Relevant? | Unclear what is documented in the docs and what is documented in the wiki, various versions of the docs exist | |||||||||
YouTube | Conference presentations, Open edX Meetups, how-to videos Relevant? | Google Drive | Storing working group meeting recordings Relevant? | Google Calendar | Working group meetings, Open edX Meetups Relevant? | Open edX Meetup information and registration, Open edX Conference information and tickets Relevant? | Sessionize | Relevant?, not always easy to collaborate across organizations | ||
Miro | Collaborative Design: Collaborative brainstorms, mind-maps | High cost, not open source |