Open source projects understandably face a lot of challenges. One of those challenges is to communicate effectively with the user base. It is my claim that many of the common channels of communication are ineffective.

If you're a developer, put yourself in a user's place. Users have questions. Sometimes they have requests. Some projects go the extra mile to establish a channel for quick, uncommitted communication. But most projects don't do this, they rely on the classical communication channels.

Mailing lists are the way most projects exchange ideas between developers. They are archived, which makes them good for keeping track of what has been covered. But in order to post a single question to a mailing list, you first have to subscribe to it. Think about this for a minute. You're not a developer, you just want to ask one question, but in order to do that, you have to commit yourself to receive all the emails exchanged on the list. I have faced this problem countless times. Currently I'm on the cmake list, because I needed to ask a question about a month ago and I thought why not just remain there in case I have something else to ask in the near future.

This is completely pointless. Even if I just want to ask one question, I have to subscribe to the list, validate my email address, sometimes even await moderator approval (for some reason or another, joining a mailing lists always seems to take half a day between subscribing and being subscribed), post the question, wait for the answer, receive all kinds of irrelevant emails, see if I'm satisfied or I ask a follow-up, get more irrelevant emails, then finally unsubscribe. In the past couple of years, I've been through the subscribe-unsubscribe loop at least 20 times, usually with no lasting interest in the project. Not that it's a big problem, my gmail account is basically unlimited storage, and with the filters I don't have to look at these emails at all (which I don't). But cmake's mail server still keeps sending them even though I don't want them. It's a waste.

Naturally, there are reasons why it works like this. Lists have to protect themselves from spammers and trolls, but it doesn't make the user role any more fun. And even though mail archives are nice for developers to keep track of their ideas, more often than not they suck for finding information. A lot of mail archives don't have a search function. Of course, that begs the question why even have an archive then? In one or two cases I actually had to download all the monthly archives and grep them locally. And that's when the archive actually was downloadable.

Another common channel is irc. Great for irc people, less amazing for the rest of us. Irc demands that you find yourself at the channel at same time that the person who can answer your question is also there. If not, you can hang around all day, and pay attention to the channel, so that you don't miss it when the person is there and can help you. Some people probably have that kind of patience, but I don't.

Again, irc can be archived, but it's a very noisy medium. In between actual technical questions, there tends to be a lot of chatter. Nothing wrong with that, but it makes it less than ideal for effective communication.

An increasingly popular channel is the forum. Forums work really well, if they get enough traffic. Unlike irc, they aren't real time so it doesn't matter when you're there. And they are far more organized than mailing lists too. Again unlike mailing list, the sign-up procedure tends to be speedy. And again unlike mailing lists, it's non-committed: you can post a question today, get the answer, and never visit the website again. Your account remains, but there's no stream of emails coming after you. And forums are searchable.

Forums have their own problems. If they aren't sufficiently active to get your questions answered, they are useless. And they require more moderation too.

A non-interactive, yet still highly effective channel is the wiki. Wikis are fantastic for ad hoc, unofficial information. And their informal, editing-oriented feel encourage updates. Superb for all kinds of tips and frequently asked questions.

But, unless unrestricted (and thus open to spam), not useful for informal interaction.

This isn't to say that existing, well established channels are obsolete. Gmane certainly gives you more out of mailing lists, with a threaded view and searching. But the fact remains that many of the tools in use today are not optimal, and in some cases, very ineffective.

I didn't mention bug trackers, because they are quite effective at what they set out to do, and because they aren't quite general purpose either.