Proposal for How to Navigate Communication

[blockstackers]

Discord should be used for...

• Live chat and brief discussions, e.g. new member introductions, daily community stand-ups
• Meeting or project coordination, e.g. figuring out a time to host a working group session
• Announcements and news snippets, e.g. reminders about upcoming events, new blog posts

The Blockstack Forum should be used for...

• Open-ended, longer form discussions, e.g. sharing thoughts on a big topic like "governance"
• Soliciting feedback on ideas, e.g. collecting input on draft governance proposals
• Voting on topics to become official issues on GitHub, e.g. selecting one proposal for community members to refine

GitHub should be used for...

• General project management, tracking progress of community projects, e.g. mapping out milestones needed to build out a technical feature request
• Tracking community members' contributions, e.g. comments on various issues

Example Cases

Discord → Forum

• When a discussion in Discord becomes more extensive (i.e., there are more than 4 active participants, the exchange is longer than 5 minutes, or each response is more than 4 lines long), it is the responsibility of community members to 1. identify the core problem/topic being addressed and whether it is important for others (who aren't online at the time) to see, and 2. create a Forum post on it where longer form discussion can continue.

Discord/Forum → GitHub

• If any community members are requesting a new resource, such as a wiki or infographic, they should ask other community members for their support in creating one. On Discord, voting could simply be in the form of emoji reactions (perhaps 10+?). On the Forum, these kinds of requests should be upvoted. Once a request has attained sufficient community support (threshold to be determined), the request can be added as an issue in the relevant repo and delegated to the appropriate parties. If necessary, the request can also be added as a project with corresponding milestones.

[blockstackers]

An alternative for specific working groups: Instead of collecting emoji reactions or upvotes, group leads could work with community representatives to decide on which issues to post to GitHub (after soliciting community feedback, of course).