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 | 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 | 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 | |
3rd favorite | 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 | 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 source | |
Google Meet | Working group meetings, ad-hoc meetings | Synchronous, excludes participants in different time zones, not open source | |
Zoom | Working group meetings, ad-hoc meetings | Synchronous, excludes participants in different time zones, free plans has time limits for group meetings, not open source | |
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 | Collaborating on documents | Long comment threads can be difficult to follow, version history not always clear, not open source | |
Google Forms | Sending out polls, gathering feedback from community | Limited layout and design options, not open source | |
Figma | In-context design discussions, prototypes | Not open source, not always easy to collaborate across organizations | |
Miro | Collaborative brainstorms, mind-maps | High cost, not open source |
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