What I Have Learned Hanging Out in #kohanews
About a week ago, I set up an IRC bot in #kohanews on freenode to monitor the goings on around Koha and report them. It announces when new patches have been added to the git repository, when there as activity in bugzilla or the wiki, and some other useful events. I mentioned it to a few people and encouraged them to idle there if they’re interested.
In the past week or so, I have learned a few things:
- There is a lot more happening on the wiki than I knew. The english part of the wiki is just the tip of the iceberg, I guess. There are articles there in languages I can’t even make out. I’m excited to see the large and growing amount of documentation we have
- People report a lot of bugs. I only see a small fraction of the bugs reported, probably because I’m not set as the owner for any parts of the application, and I have only worked on a few small parts of the application so far. But, there are a ton of bugs being reported, and a ton of information about existing bugs is being added. I think that’s a great thing. I don’t actually use the application for real work, so I may never notice the problems that the users do. We developers depend heavily on input from our users to point out areas for possible improvement. Now, of course I wish that there weren’t as many bugs in the application, but we can’t fix them if they’re not reported. I’d rather have the same bug reported 10 times than not at all.
- There are lot more people actively contributing to Koha than I knew about. Not all contributions are patches. There are a bunch of people editing the wiki, reporting bugs, testing new features, and helping in ways other than submitting patches. Thanks. You’re really helping out. Please keep it up.
So, if you’re interested in keeping tabs on the newest activity, and you’re comfortable with IRC, feel free to drop by #kohanews on freenode and idle. You can even speak up occasionally if you want!