Although working in the computer industry for more than 30+ years, I am new to the Let's Encrypt community. I have to admit that I'm shocked on a number of fronts, and completely confused by the behavior that is being demonstrated here.
When I ran into problems last night, the first thing that I did was look for an IRC channel for some immediate assistance. Being a more experienced developer and user, it's the normal place to look for "real-time" assistance from like minded people. I did NOT go there intending to find Let's Encrypt support personnel. I was completely floored when I could find a working channel.
Today, in order to try and contribute to the conversation and technology I came here. I was immediately presented with a thread that I felt was well written, and offered some simple, useful suggestions:
Please review the decision to close the channel and open #letsencrypt again for discussion or change the bot to point at ##letsencrypt. The first one is is preferable.
This seemed well reasoned, and pretty common sense. No harm, no foul. I was about to post a comment on that thread when it was locked out from under me. WTF?
Ok, fine ... I read the arguments about this being the "official" place where these conversations are to take place. So I opened my issue/topic and wrote a post here - as was said to do - and 8 hours later not a single response. WTF?
You see ... although some people believe that forums such as these are the greatest thing in the world, IRC is the place where real time conversations can take place. Sure ... force everyone here, and keep good strong control on everything. But it sure seems to me that the responsiveness is not like IRC.
I'm not arguing that you endorse or support IRC ... but I do think the suggestions presented above, related to the IRC channel, were good ones if you want to build an even bigger community of varied talents and commitments.
Can't wait to see when I'll eventually get some feedback and response on my topic ... I had truly wished that I could better understand the failure that occurred, and maybe offer some actual real-world feedback that might assist in improving the project.