scratchee wrote:QUOTE (scratchee @ Aug 30 2010, 02:23 PM) IRC is almost mandatory for long distance development, when someone is testing a bug for a dev (something I've done 2 or 3 times), they *cannot* do this via the forums, some bugs take 4-5 hours and maybe 100-200 replies to each other to resolve, doing this on a forum is an insane idea (a week? 2?).
I agree totally, and said much the same thing further up.
I was just saying that (IMO) it shouldn't be the be all and end all of dev. communication.
QUOTE As to the paper trail, at least if you want to see whats going on, you can. with a closed dev forum, there is absolutely no paper trail whatsoever, for anyone who doesn't have access.
Anyway, if you want IRC to have a better paper trail, it's easy, just make a bot to log the channel and stick it into a webpage.[/quote]
We have several open dev. forums if something needs to be open (Like um this one)>
My point was - there are a number of problems that are faced by the developer, some of them are simple bugs in code, some of them are organisational, and some require a response from someone.
IRC is not ideal when you need a response from a specific person and/or a specific small number of people, unless they are constantly on IRC at the same time as you.
Plus more measured discussion can happen over the big questions when people are given time to digest and formulate a proper response rather than let it devolve into an argument with people demanding immediate responses to such things.
Onion - the search engine on these forums is as adequate as searching a large page of text for a specific phrase. Plus separate issue can be more easily arranged into different threads so you have some structure rather than several issues being discussed at once by different people.
Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit.
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