Transcript: Contributing to Django - Sarah Boyce
Hi, welcome to Django Chat, a podcast on the Django Web Framework.
I'm Will Vincent, joined by Carlton Gibson.
Hi, Carlton.
Hello, Will.
And we're very pleased to have Sarah Boyce join us today.
Welcome, Sarah.
Hi.
So, you have sort of quickly become like an indispensable figure in the Django community.
Tell us about yourself, you know, let's, how did you, let's, as we always do, let's start
the origin story i believe you studied maths in university not programming yes correct is that
correct yes and then how did you you find your way to the django space and then we'll just go from
there uh okay so yes i i did a maths degree um i wasn't on the traditional uh computer science
route i did have some computer science courses i enjoyed it uh but i all of my internships were in
banking so I did that and decided I didn't enjoy it very much and was like what can I do that is
anything else and I ended up being a project analyst in a consultancy that is in automotive
data and there was a lot of excel work involved in being in there and then anything that's involved
with excel has a variety of vba kind of around it and i was then kind of not intimidated about
playing around with things like that and they had a like an internal team who were managing those
tools and there was a position that opened up to join that team and i joined it and so it was
predominantly vba tools at the beginning but they also had a uh internal website which had all of
their time sheets and their personal development and all this kind of stuff and this was a django
web application which was maintained yeah which was maintained also by this team and then they
kind of decided that web development was more fun than making vba tools and so then it progressed
that we were predominantly doing uh django web applications and that was my introduction to
everything in that space and yeah and then eventually i i've moved on i moved on to another
job uh as a back-end engineer also django but this time uh so previously it was always
like a full django with django templates but uh at the company that i was at up until very recently
it was uh django rest framework and a react for intent and then yeah now moving on so well i have
to say in the in the hierarchy of degrees where someone says yeah you could figure this out i
think philosophy if you don't like numbers carlton and then maths maths is pretty much at the top
like because they're both you know the articulation of patterns well we often talk on this show about
people who are self-taught programmers versus those that did a cs degree and like um like
self-taught programmers they've always got this little sort of you know imposter syndrome thing
about how they didn't really do cs but cs grads have that about maths right like maths is to cs
and cs is to self-taught programming yeah it's like cs chemistry physics maths i think
so it's like oh yeah i did cs yeah i did maths no but i mean i i've seen this even hiring people
it's like oh they don't have like a formal background what oh they're physics or math
yeah yeah they'll figure it out they'll manage somehow yeah well so what was if you recall what
was that like so you just jumped in feet first then because you were coding on or helping on a
real project as opposed to having time to do sort of kiddie projects was were you able to learn from
your colleagues were there resources or is it too long ago or do you remember that like sort of
Oh, my God, what is Django?
What is web development feeling?
I think it's a really unusual team because everybody was the same.
Everybody was pretty new at it, I would say.
Everybody had not done a computer science degree
and everybody was learning on the job.
And so we all had this very similar pathway.
So it was a combination of really great
because we were doing like real applications straight away uh but there's still a lot of
imposter stuff in it because we we knew we didn't have that um kind of confidence of somebody who's
been around in a few more places and that misplaced confidence yeah confidence of a bloke
yeah confidence of a mediocre white guy i mean i was just talking to my well someone i know quite
well this weekend who's a django developer and he was saying like oh my god he works at a company
the django code base and he's like it's one step away from being on fire and we wish we could bring
someone in and make it better i was like that's there everything is like that you know like open
source open source is not but everything else is but there's that's the same feeling you know even
you know he's got years of experience there's always like well someone must know but like you
know carlton what does it feel like carlton i don't know no idea every every app i ever worked
on was duct tape everywhere um that's but that's okay i was going to ask you about so you you know
working with excel and macros and vba and all these things and so what about um like engineering
practices like unit testing and these other you know how do you teach in that you know what was
your exposure to those kind of practices well exactly so this is kind of part of the reason
that it's uh it was missing because in vba you don't really have unit tests or this kind of
stuff it's very much and i do think it's an interesting thing because not only were we
looking after uh tools that we had made but we would also be dumped with tools that other people
had made and they're sometimes these kind of man in dark room crazy thing that they've created
and it's got obviously no tests and it makes sense to them and you have no idea why it's doing
this and it opens up an email at some stage and it does all sorts of things like it can open up
internet explorer and click around and then i don't know so um and without any tests
and the entire business is run on it yes and yes everything is important like all of the reporting
is somehow coming out of this tool and um yeah so some of these practices that now
it seems madness to not have it it just it just kind of wasn't there and uh we did get there
uh but some of those lessons were hard learned i think okay but that's the best way to learn them
right like actually maybe yeah actual scars that you could it's like children carlton right like
no one listens to you until you know they like get a boo-boo oh man don't start me on that
i just see the same pattern everywhere and maybe it's because yeah it just someone has to either
really want it or have something bad happen to like impress upon them that like no this is actually
matters i was when i was a junior one influential comment that was made to me was like why are you
oh you're really you know speaking to a colleague oh you're really diligent about writing the test
and they're like well i can either write the test or i can open the browser and manually click
around in the application to make sure it was working and i'd much rather do that um
so let's see i want to we have a whole long list of things to talk about maybe
we carlton no segue there though but so you so you know with that background you obviously did
learn all the testing because you turn up on the django issue tracker and you know make massive
commit um massive contributions and you clearly have all the engineering chops and all the good
practices and all those things so you know there's a there's a pathway there i mean it's interesting
because uh part of the i think part of the reason that i really wanted to jump into open source and
to django was because of this lingering uh impostery feeling that you have and back when
you had this belief that there are real developers out there and there are people who are kind of
pretending to be it somehow and you want to get rid of that feeling and establish yourself as
someone who is legitimate and not somehow stumbled into this role um open source contributions have
this thing about them where it makes you sound or feel like that you you kind of know what you're
doing because you are confident enough to do it in public and that other people can see it
or and all sorts of other reasons I suppose um and I I wrote this goal that I wanted to try and do
some any open source contribution and then ultimately uh contributed to Django with kind
of my i don't know like a stretch goal kind of thing and it took some time for me to actually
get there because uh whenever you open it open track up uh it took me some time to i guess find
a process that works for me to find tickets that i felt like i could pick up
but then once you get there then then it starts to become like like a job where you can figure
it out and you've got a routine and and you're set up and then you can repeat it and uh but yes
i appreciate that especially with things like django that tests are essential and that it it
It couldn't function without the
Quantitude of tests
That it has
I think the good thing
People come up with these issue requests
And they're like can I change this
And you're like well let's change that and see what breaks
And there'll be half a dozen tests that break
And then there'll be a PR that added them
And there'll be a ticket discussion as to why that's the way it is
And then you can say well no we can't do that
Because of X
Without the test suite it'd just be impossible
It's 3000 or something odd tests
I don't know how many there are now
oh i i checked there was uh 16 000 tests oh there's quite a few more than i just said
no wonder they take so long to run
yeah it's a bit crazy um yeah i always say um when they um i did sorry well i did in the um
contributing to janga workshop i've run a few times i always try and say to people like it's
not about two hours we've got a workshop it's not about getting anything necessarily done it's just
getting that taste of a ticket and getting enough into a ticket to see that you could
understand it and that you could offer something back because people feel
intimidated does that resonate with your experience yes
and i do think that i'm seeing this pattern again and again with some people and you can tell
that it is a person who is not sure because they will ask for
validations and permissions quite often they will ask for permission to to look at a ticket
they'll be like oh is anyone working on this can I pick this up the answer is always yes
but uh you and I did the same my first comment is going oh can I work on this is this allowed and
um and then there's uh people who are saying you know I've had a look at this and I think it might
be this and this and it's a question and it's like sure maybe it might be why not and and I think
having that confidence that to be honest if you at the start you just need to write a test that
validates either the new feature or the the bug that you're trying to fix and then if if you got
all the tests passing
it works
in my opinion
and then you just need someone to
go through it with a
fine tooth comb and make sure that
it is following all of the
style guidelines and any
other kind of
ideas and stuff about it
but yeah
Well, so that experience, there's two things and you can pick which one. So maybe Django Not Space. So what is this new program that you're actively involved with that we'll have a link to that's sort of trying to, I think, mimic and have help others go through that journey you just described without doing it in the dark?
Yes, exactly. So there have been a few people who've been pushing for mentorship in Django for some time, and Django is already involved in Google Summer of Code, and there are perhaps some other initiatives that Django is involved in.
But this idea of Django having its own mentorship program or idea around it or support space has been something that a lot of people have wanted.
And in the last DjangoCon US, I wasn't there, conference, there was a panel discussion around, I think it was called the future state of Django or something like this.
and mentorship was discussed there again.
And there were two people there
who are organisers of Django Not Space.
They basically founded it
pretty much after this discussion.
And they are Dawn Wages and Rachel Colquhoun.
And yeah, they just kind of decided
that everyone's talking about it.
Why don't we just do something?
And so that's what they did.
and they also acquired Sarah Abdomen I think fairly early on and they started
having some ideas and progressing it and then there was a point about six months ago now probably
where myself and Tim Schilling kind of got involved and we have helped start with this first
program now what is the jangonaut space program so the concept is we take about six to eight
jangonauts and that's the term we're using for the participants of the program
and they will be assigned a navigator there's a space theme with this quite heavily that the
navigator is someone who has um experience in the django contributes code contributing space
so they are familiar with track and the review process and can give some kind of tips and tricks
and guidance they don't need to know everything no one knows everything and they don't need to know
all the nuts and bolts that somebody could ask anything on any ticket and they would know the
answer of that um but then we also have a role of a captain and they are kind of our pastoral
support so they kind of give this um personal touch and community element uh of the program
that we have in Django and hope to bring that to the participants so and part of this is also to
try and share the responsibilities out as to what we hope would make a positive experience that it's
not just down on to a couple of people and that we can hopefully have more ownership across a few
people and then that will make it a bit more sustainable and i think as just from my experience
with google summer of code is we've it was always very very hit and miss in it always has been very
we've had some wonderful successes you know absolutely wonderful successes um uh you know
the json field um that sage did who's now working on wagtail and the redis cashback end and you know
the list goes on and on of features that have come out of django of google summer of code but
the mentoring's always been our sort of weak point in that we'd you know we'd have a mentor
and then if somebody was active and they contribute you know that would work but then if people were
struggling we never really had that support network and i see that what you're doing in
janganaut as as or janganauts.space is a really good like you know there's a there's a there's a
the discord there's support there's check-ins there's these different roles this pastorial
and the mentoring i just think it's just a wonderful initiative i think everything about
it is just you know really well considered and being implemented just wonderfully thank you
we're trying so hard well what is that it's that structure of marketplace right because again like
that that panel which carlton i think we both were on that as well i mean that's not a new discussion
and it's you need someone to say oh right like you can mentor like oh you need help and and just do
all, all the work to put it together. Because it's sort of invisible work in a way, but it's
challenging and necessary. And otherwise, people just talk about it and don't do it.
I think that's another thing that I've gained from being part of this. And I feel like that's
something that each of us who are in the organizer space, but hopefully we're encouraging that from
of the people that at the start it was very much like oh we have this idea who who do we need to
get permission from to to to do something here and and it can very easily be that you end up
not doing anything at all because uh you perhaps you don't quite get the validation that you want
And there's been, I think, a number of times where people have had really good ideas and then I think they were hoping that it would perhaps get adopted by some authority.
And when I say some authority, the default is probably the DSF kind of thing.
And I think with this, it's been a nice proof of concept that if you want to try something out, like you would a meetup, right?
If you want to do a Django meetup, you don't need to get approval to do this.
You can just set it up.
And I think we can do this for different initiatives in the community that you can start with something small and validate that there is a need for this or there is some value that you're bringing here and then grow it from there and get more support as and when required.
And I think that has been a really validating experience that when you say, you know, what kind of like you are the Django community, the community is you.
So you can do things if you want something to happen in the Django community, that that's something you can do.
So and I think that's been very powerful.
think especially over the covid years the dsf the dsf board doesn't have capacity to you know take
on another thing to take to be the driving force behind something they can they can put a rubber
stamp on things if if that rubber stamp is necessary but um short of self-organizing working
groups materializing which this is kind of like a self-organizing working group you've put together
the dsf just doesn't have the um kind of the aristotelian term impetus to get things moving
because there just isn't that power there.
I mean, this is the strength and the weakness of Django
and open source communities is it's a democracy in a way.
Like, it would be nice if someone just said yes or no to things instead of.
And I think on a code side, it's not clear until you get into it,
like, who do you ask?
Who has permission?
And not that anyone has permission, but, you know,
there's maybe a half dozen people who, you know,
Carlton being one of them who can kind of push things in the right direction if they need to go.
So the default is, oh, there's this thing called the DSF.
And I recognize now, especially not being on the board, that when you're on the board, you're so busy doing stuff, you don't spend a lot of time communicating what the DSF is.
What do they do?
What do they not do?
So it is this higher power, but the reality is it's a volunteer position.
It's supposed to be one hour a month.
It's not.
And it's really not about code itself at all.
It's really just if you come with a fully baked thing and you want funding or you want approval, they can do that.
But they're not going to provide that other support that people would like.
So like your first ticket, right?
Can I work on this?
It's like, can I set up a mentoring program?
Like, sure you can.
Like, just do it.
You just need some kind of auto-approved bot that's at the DSM.
Well, I think it's a community.
yeah it's a communication thing I mean you know it's a big reason why we have this podcast is
because you know I'd never been to DjangoCon and suddenly I like almost everyone it seemed who I'd
seen online was there and was you know approachable and it's like oh wow like I wish I'd known about
that and then you know and that feeds into as well the newsletter so there's a Django News newsletter
that Jeff Triplett and I run and that you've we can talk about your contributions but you know
Django itself doesn't have a newsletter. Now, why doesn't it have a newsletter? Someone has to do
it. And I can attest, it's a lot of work to do a newsletter. And it's just everyone on the board
already has more than they can do. And so maybe at some point, it can be merged in. And if Django,
in quotes, wants to take it on, they can. But there was a need, Jeff and I thought, to have
this. And one of my favorite things is that you then just approached us and said, hey, there's
all these updates happening and it's really been interesting because you know talking to carlton
all the time he's telling me how like excited he is about django and how active issue you know track
is but unless you're looking at it you don't know and so now this updates the django section it's
like double digit prs a week oftentimes and new contributors maybe so maybe to you like what was
how is that from your end to adding this new feature because right now we just give you
permission and you basically yes do this do this section which is amazing which is what well you
know you you built that trust right like good reviewing triage team like i met you at jango
con europe i forget what the timing was but you know at the end of the day like we're not
we're not dealing with lives here you know it's like you can always revoke someone's permission
too so it's also true yeah see um and it's true there's so much work that is going on
with Django all the time and I sometimes I wonder whether there's because there is like
a narrative of a story that sometimes we adopt and I've heard that and okay so sometimes track
is called the fire hose for example and i think there is so much more to django in like a positive
empowering space where different people are coming up and contributing quite fantastic features
and also even the first time contributors it's it's not like there aren't that it's very
a rare occurrence it's every week that somebody that's what's really jumped out to me like three
or four sometimes new people absolutely and so if you want to do it it's not that you would be
one in a million you might be but you but it's a it's an achievable thing it takes i think it
takes a bit of perseverance and grit more than i think it takes i don't know 10 years of python
experience or something like this you just need to have the willpower and some time that you can
continue to to push through the the rounds of review and make those changes and then it will
get accepted it's it's a process rather than a a lone wolf genius yeah figure or something like
this and it's it's complex but there's no secret handshake either it's totally yes you know do the
do the things to handle the review the first thing is understand the ticket right because the ticket
won't it's not like there's any tickets which are obvious you have to get into them and think about
them. But as you say, if you do it, if you, you know, it will get accepted. There's no
barrier beyond the difficulty of the time and the commitment.
Yeah.
But I wonder if we, I mean, you know, attribution and validation, as you said earlier, is, is
a problem in terms of like, like.
It'd be great if we could have just like a badge on GitHub, like you contributed, like your first, you know, not that we need to gamify it, but like, you know, contributed to Django or, you know, and this is, I'm just thinking out loud, something Django could do somehow to absent the DSF having to maintain a list or something.
But, you know, it should be something, you know, an employer or people can see without you having to like have an about page and link, yes, Carlton, link to it somewhere.
Well, yeah, I mean, I mean, I've thought about this loads.
I think one of the really exciting things
about a mentorship program like Janganauts
is that it's possible to show people
how they can, you know, just put together a look.
This is what I did.
And, you know, they can put it on their blog
or their CV or their, and that,
but being told, hey, do you know what?
That discussion you had on track was a good discussion.
And that PR that you did and that you got merged,
that's a good thing.
And if you write that up as a, you know,
these hiring managers,
oh, how have you contributed to some project?
Well, there, that story, which is publicly verifiable.
But youngsters, they don't know to maximize that.
They don't know to talk about the things they've done.
Well, some people don't have the, I guess it's confidence to do that.
Like there's a couple of people I mentor and I'm constantly like, you should just for yourself write up this thing you discovered.
Because like I promise you, you're going to forget it in six months or, you know, and they just don't.
So that's why when you were saying, Sarah, you're like, I wanted that validation.
Like, yes, yes.
Like this is what Carlton and I are always saying.
Like, in some ways, it's the easiest way to prove your chops is to contribute to Django.
It's like, well, you could probably write for our little app doing whatever if you can contribute to Django because the standards are going to be a lot higher.
But many people don't, you know, power through the barriers that you did of like, can I do this?
Should I do this the time?
But yeah, in some ways, it's the easiest way to get hired, I would think.
and i think it's part of the program what i hope from it is we are really trying to celebrate each
of the achievements that our jangrenauts are are having and we are hopefully we're trying to be the
voice for them until they learn to have their own voice because there is so much
it's very it's all well and good to say okay you can make a blog post about this thing but
it's kind of like learning in public and any piece of code that you wrote two years ago and
you read it now and you go oh that's awful and so every blog that is also probably very similar
that you go oh I can't believe I thought these things at that time and that oh I thought this
was clever and I think having that kind of habit or those ideas that that this is going to be
a useful resource or something that is going to benefit you is is intimidating especially when
you feel like you don't have anything particularly interesting or new to say or that you've just kind
validated that you you have only just learned something that you feel like everybody already
knew for a long time now and you're just publicizing that you you're new to this or
something like this and um i think contributions to an open source library there's a there's a
pride in it because it shows that you're giving back to something and I it shows that you are
willing to put in some effort into things that we all benefit from and it somehow gives you
permission to to brag a bit about yourself because there's a little bit of of feel goodness about
doing this and Django is obviously a well-known library and there is some status element of saying
oh yes I did this and that's a very good thing to to point to well but I think you're I'm a little
bit older than you are like you're perfectly placed in your programming journey to do this
in that you have the expertise but also remember and are kind of in that middle ground like one of
the issues i found less so in django but in other places is most of the you know poobahs in charge
have lost all perspective for the beginner experience because they've been doing it 10 20
years so it's it's like this abstract thing so it's not that they don't know but it's just it's
like oh i remember childhood like oh yeah like you just like just as a child like just just make a
make a pr but you know when you again like when you write something down like in the moment you
discovered you have those frustrations that point of view that you're not going to have same like
your first um contribution to Django so you sort of need in a way like someone where you are where
you're just like uh you know this is a problem and I'm gonna do something about it and then in
five years you'll be like oh yeah it is a problem someone should do something about it but like
you're gonna have different problems because um so I think it's fantastic and I think that's why
I always tell encourage people to write as they're learning because that's the best
time I mean that's kind of for me like for me the problem I have now is that I'm almost too
familiar with things to write from that beginner's mind but like when you're a beginner you're asking
questions that you're like oh everyone knows this like no they don't like and if they do they won't
google for it and find it you know so but carlton you still have empathy and compassion for people
somehow i try to i try to um that's because i do tai chi and you can't do tai chi without a
beginner's mind so there you go there you go you have to practice you have to practice it it is it
is a muscle i remember like when i very first began vividly being stuck for like days because
i had the wrong version of my programming language installed and i didn't even know about versions i
didn't know how to get a different version of it installed and i didn't know you know it was i was
destroyed by it i didn't have a support network to ask by or i remember not knowing anything about
anything about anything and you know so i try to maintain as much as i can an awareness of
you know what it's like coming to it from the outside yeah and i think to be honest we all
continue to learn if we keep okay you can choose not to you can you can definitely choose to like
i'm comfortable at this thing now and i'm going to only do this thing now and and that's completely
fine you know you you've earned your your stripes and you can you can stay there um but there is
infinite capacity for you to continue to learn and you can push yourself to get back into that
position where you feel stupid again and I feel stupid all the time so it's not that hard to to
feel it again um and it's also nice to see how far you've come at the same time and I think even with
um with this program there's so many things that that I I hope for it because at the at the minute
it's around uh getting getting people into django and into that space and helping them identify
with it that they can be a a django code contributor because it is kind of an identity
problem in some cases that people somehow feel like it's it's too prestigious or it's it's it's
there's a fancy thing around it um and hopefully we get them feeling like this is something they
want to be a part of and that this is there's a team in this and that they're working with
real people here who really care about other people and really want to see you succeed and
that you can be one of those people who are also working on really interesting problems but also
working with some experienced talented wonderful people and you can be this experienced talented
wonderful person too and and you probably already are you know and you almost everybody has
some experiences and some special skills that they can bring on board
and then with it there's also there's still levels in in my head there's still like a journey
from going from like a first-time contributor to on the other end of the scale some form of
co-maintainer or fellow or whatever you want to call like the one on the other the other end of
the scale and there is still like almost milestones going through it so it's all well and good
when you got your first contribution in but there'll be a time where you are able to help
other people get a contribution in and that you feel comfortable reading someone else's code and
and saying oh i feel like this and this doesn't fit with this thing or perhaps it would be better
like that and there's other steps there that i think you go counter yeah well i just want to
say because you'll remember we haven't talked about but you're a member of um django's triage
and review team which is explicitly about having community members who are active on github active
on track helping with the the the massive task of triage and review and get pushing pr prs and
issues forward and being able having more than expertise than just say the two fellows can have
you know being able to comment sensibly on a you know there's it's a really important role i mean
it's one i think we should in in the community if we could somehow um give it more um kudos that
would be um an important thing because actually it's it's in a way can be more important for
helping driving django forward than coding itself i mean so you talk about your perhaps your
experience there and as well because how did you get tapped tapped to join oh it's from marish so
i need to give lots of kudos to marish he's been a very big advocate for me and he's uh reached out
to me on several occasions and I was pretty much a nobody and he's helped bring me here and so I
will always be very grateful to him but yes so review and triage team what is it it's it's
initially I would say it's a validation of the work you've already done and kind of a
a way that Django can give recognition to active contributors because there aren't that many
tools that we have to recognize people and that's something we can develop but this is one way to
give that recognition and then what do we have so uh on the django discord there is a channel
for uh contributed i think it's called contributor discussions and there's also contributors getting
started and both of these channels is a chat that you can go into and you could talk to some people
who are actively working on Django so if you're a first-time contributor you perhaps want to be in
the getting started section and and people will respond to you and I would say think about what
you're asking because sometimes i would say the question is better on a ticket or better to be
then later moved to the ticket because i think there's better history and documentation of
if this was a valuable discussion and i think there's the i think moving to discord's pretty
new and there's a lot of value in it because you get that um that validation so back when i was
saying sometimes people are just there and they're going i want to be able to can i assign myself to
this ticket right this is not a a valuable comment because it is just a person is looking for some
kind of um social validation and you can get that validation on the discord and people can be like
yeah absolutely and it doesn't need to uh you know and i don't mean to say that in any form of
criticism way.
It's not gonna help solve the ticket 12 years later
if the ticket's still open.
Exactly, that's what I mean.
But this kind of encouragement is still really useful
and I think it's quite humanizing to have other people
who are on more of a live time chat who can be
you're talking and they're talking back to you and you can see that they're typing and all this
kind of stuff rather than you write a comment somewhere and then three days later you get an
email that someone's replied and then you check it and all this kind of stuff it's it feels like
the the gods that be have replied and you burning that chicken was worthwhile
and i think it's a supportive group because even the people who have been contributing for
quite some time they don't always feel very confident in the things that they want to do
and they want to talk it through with some people and they want to check that oh what do you think
this is a good idea and all this kind of stuff and there's a difference between doing that kind
of chat rather than it's some kind of proposal that's on the jango developers mailing list which
is hoping to get some kind of voting system on or um so there's kind of like different types of
communication in there and i i think what i like about the discord is you feel the or at least i
feel the community element a bit better there because you can even get the very small
interactions of the heart and the thumbs up emoji and all this kind of stuff where you're getting
kind of validation in a subtle way uh which is not as um what's the word like surgical or clinical
or something as something that it's it's probably also generational a bit in that i mean you know
carlton and i are on the other side of 40 and like i prefer email well i prefer chats with people i
already know but discord maybe i'm just not i know that that's like what the kids use and i you know
your articulation of it being an actual conversation and emojis just like i would
text with someone i know is much more encouraging and validating than a normal discussion um but i
think so i think there's you know django doesn't have one canonical place where everyone goes
which is good and bad right because i agree that the official mailing list seems
seems super intimidating and then um yeah discord is more humanizing i mean i remember when i was
on the board the discord because the disc you know part of it is what can django maintain like
the discord i believe is not official like they asked for permission and we said um you know we
should have one but need to make clear it's not like maintained by the dsf because we don't we
don't have someone ownership if something goes awry because those things can happen but yeah i
think we should probably have more like how does someone find out about the discord right like or
people often aren't on the discord and the mailing list there's very few people who are
crossing between those um i'm just thinking out loud here but i think my um you articulate it in
a way that makes it makes a lot of sense to me and i don't know maybe there is an answer maybe
it's just different people and you know different realms work for them because for me in terms of
um i've always worked okay in my professional career i've always had slack yeah and it feels
quite similar to having a slack and so it feels like i have i have a team and that i i've got a
team here and i feel like i'm part of something and i think without that being in the review and
triage team would have felt just like a title that i've achieved or some badge of honor that
I've achieved but now I I can see what people are doing in different ways because it's easy for me
to see PRs that people are raising because I'm also writing about it each week but in terms of
like you know people engaging in different discussions and and things I find it easier
there than, I find the mailing list intimidating personally. And that might be a very personal
thing. No, I think, you know, I think the problem is that, yeah, the problem is that one email
someone sends late at night may or may not have the tone they intend. And then it comes down like
the voice of God and it just completely stops someone in their tracks when the reality is
they may not have intended that or you know there's like 19 other people in the room who
can say you know what that person that's just kind of how they are and we love them but don't
take that as gospel for how the rest of us feel about certain things you know like because this
will sometimes happen with um great contributions to Django that the majority of people are excited
about and someone who's a big poobah doesn't particularly love it and they might say something
and not realize how it comes across um so yeah i think i also think that is that fair carlton
like right i mean i've seen this i was just gonna say i quite like i think the mailing list has had
its day to be honest i think um what we've got going on with the forum for the more asynchronous
comments which also does have emoji and it's quite easy to follow and if somebody posts in the wrong
channel it's very easy to move them to the right channel it's well moderated and ken there is just
an absolute rock of you know um there and then with the discord for the more so i have to admit
i hate synchronous i hate chat i hate live chat when i was a junior it was all skype and then it
moved to slack and i could just never get any work so i was always just have to have conversation
with my boss saying i won't be on skype or it won't be on we do what we do to avoid that carlton
right like i mean exactly so so often they're like oh there's a slack and i'm like but i've
got discord set up just on my phone and i've managed to filter it so it's only the channels
that i want to and i check it a couple of times a day and i've managed to okay i found a way that
i can do discord so you can teach an old dog new tricks yeah but the forum really works for me and
i think the mailing list just i think it's you know there's still very low traffic there but
i certainly won't will never start a thread on the mailing list again over the forum i've you
know i did make that decision a while back and i think the forum is the way forward it's a much
nicer ui it's a much nicer environment emojis help you know replies threaded replies everything
about it is just much better i mean same with members this isn't you're a dsf member i assume
sarah right or are you yeah okay um you know the 200 or something of us that there are uh you know
there's communication issues because there's just like an email and it sorry i think mimics in some
ways sometimes some of the less good things of the official forum or email channel but perhaps
Perhaps we should move that to the forum.
I wonder if it would be possible to have a, even on the forum,
because I guess the point about the DSF members list is it is private to DSF members.
So is there a possibility for a private channel or private?
Yes, I'm pretty sure there, I'll look into that.
But that might be a good idea to improve it.
But I mean, so the DSF membership is meant to be, again,
that community sort of acknowledgement of your contributions.
It's meant to be, it is, it's like, so the PSF fellow,
are like people who've contributed to the Python ecosystem.
And the Django Software Foundation individual member
is that same, like, you know,
you've done, yeah, you've done good stuff for Django.
And I don't think we advertise that enough either.
Well, Sarah, we're getting to the point
where we always like to ask,
you have your magic wand, you know,
what do you want to change about Django
from where you sit?
Because I always find this interesting.
Code community, you know, like dictator,
dictator for a day i quite like this theme of this uh communication element that we were talking
about so i i do think we can really um make some improvements there i think that would be a good
improvement having it on the on the forum i i want to give kudos to ken i i think this was
i i will eventually get to what my magic wand but uh i i do agree that i think uh
it's the moderators and it's the ownership of those two of the forum and of the discord is
stronger than i think of the mailing list and and because of the work that certain people are doing
and it's great work in in both of those areas people feel it's rare that people ask a question
or say something and that it goes completely unanswered and there's some confidence in that
that that there are people there who are looking after it and are going to be like yeah good
question perhaps it's been asked before look over here or something like this and they kind of prune
it and and there's a niceness in that that it it feels quite welcoming in my opinion um so yeah
having this way that we can communicate amongst the the DSF as a group a bit better would be
really interesting because it has I have been I have tried a couple of times and I've made some
progress with some some some messages on the DSF mailing list but it it isn't always as perhaps
um inviting as it could be and not as active as it perhaps could be and i think uh there is an
element of and i understand if these are people who have already contributed there's no kind of
um what's the word requirement thank you that you need to do any more you've already done enough and
And I appreciate that. But there are still a lot of people who are very passionate and excited and still active in this community that I think could direct that in different spaces.
And I don't think that the DSF membership is only full of people who are gone and burnt out with Django.
And I appreciate the validation of giving me this, but I've had enough.
So I think that would be really exciting because there's a lot of things and a lot of stuff that we can still do.
and uh that that's exciting to me sometimes worry that we don't get the controls into the hands of
the people who are active like it's hard it is also hard because there is um i appreciate there's
this element of trust with new people and how do you define the point that it's sufficient right
That it's not this random person who's come along, they did two things and perhaps, you know, that they are going to go away immediately or that perhaps they don't represent some of the values that we care about with Django and all this kind of thing.
And I think that's hard to, but once it's there, I think you should give permission and stuff very willingly because I think a lot of people can do some really interesting things.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Well, and the good news is there's lots to be done and not enough people to do it.
So I think we can and should be more aggressive in trying.
And, again, it's just code.
Like, you can always change permissions and, you know.
But it's unbelievably.
It's not just code.
I know.
No, it's not just code.
But, I mean, it's, you know, but it's also, it's very self-regulating in that people can see what you're doing.
So it's, I don't even know how you could be, like, a bad actor over time.
Like, what would you gain?
What would be the point?
Like, it's, yeah.
Well, we are unfortunately up on time, Sarah, but so nice to have you on the podcast.
Thank you for having me.
And we'll have to have you back again soon.
I know you have new things in the works, so we can talk about them then.
But we'll have links to everything.
What's the best way if people want to follow up a discussion?
I guess, is it email?
Is it Discord?
What's the best way?
i think i prefer if you email me um and i will get back to you uh so either yeah you can share
my email uh you can message me on on discord if you want uh i find this process a little
bit interesting because they have to friend request you first uh but otherwise you can do
that that's fine that's good i'm anti-direct messages on all things i think direct messages
This is just a bad idea.
Yeah.
Okay.
We'll have links to the GitHub profile and other things where you can find her email.
Sounds good.
So thank you, everyone.
We are DjangoChat.com, and we'll see everyone next time.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
Bye-bye.