evidence for the pros
"Unfortunately there were no communication between me and counterparty, since gitcoin platform doesn't offer it. The message worker submitted when accepted his job was shown to me on github comment section AFTER the work was already done, which is obviously too late. Gitcoinbot should post the worker's message immediately when job was accepted. However, it would be even better if there was real-time chat between issue founder and worker(s)."
"The most time-consuming part of participating in gitcoin (or open source in general) is the communication overhead. Most issues require some discussion before you can go heads down and code. It takes time to ramp up on a new project. I could see it might be useful if I can get a sense of how responsive the maintainers are for each project easily."
"The Discord channels were also great. I chatted with a couple of other developers and some of them even tested and reviewed my work before I submitted it. It made me feel like being part of an event."
"Poor communication of applicants." (ghosting on github)
"The feedback from funders is at times very slow which can slow my speed when working on an issue, because i'm blocked till the funder responds"
"with fluid communication the bounties could be turned around faster"
"I was hoping to get more feedback from core engineers on the approach I hinted at, using templates to print ou the status update and updated copy"
"due to lack of guides or the user experience of the platform I ended up doing most of the communication outside of the platform only adding key updates to the site. I relied heavily on the funders for guidance. I wish the site was better structured for someone to know exactly how to contribute their code for the bounty regardless if they contributed to open source or not. ( simple things like where am I forking/ pull request to, metamask guide, easier way to keep the communication and code flow on the website)."
"Responsiveness from org and delayed follow ups. Shouldn't have taken me 3+ months to get through the red tap of this PR. I've used it before but after this experience, was a little bummed out and now lacking some motivation"
"extended period of requirements definition. I'd post suggestion with code, several people would discuss over time, repeated requests for formatting tweaks and things like getting the pull request exactly right to meet the style of a big, established project (several reviewers to please before acceptance)"
"Suggesting better coordination channels (text or calls) between client and worker because Github isn't always the most efficient (create a Gitcoin messaging platform, pair with Status or something)"
"For me the communication with the team was a large part of the task. The platform is not being used for this and doesn't externalize it enough as I saw. Maybe a plugin into their communication channel that is being used for supporting new contributors so people can see how it is like"
"Lack of freelancers to do the tasks, and non-existing communications with freelancers."
"Another issue I just met is about the communication. It's a bit messy generally as I communicated via email, Telegram, Discord, GitCoin, GitHub, etc. and the POC is not clear. I believe it will be helpful to set up some communication structure to improve the GitCoin stakeholders/users' efficiency and transparency in communication and reduce friction. Sometimes I ask a question, or ask for test tokens/test data, and no response for quite a few days. And later, a new person come in, and I have to introduce the context and background again because info are not shared in the same place. It might not be necessary to build a brand new communication channel by GitCoin, but might be good to tune the existing tools to make it easier to follow."
"But communication took place on another channel (Discord) so that was not perfect but again, Discord works very well so no complaints in regards to that."
"The worst thing was whenever I applied for bounties it takes a long time for funders to get back. It would help everyone if the communication layer could be more realtime or more frequent."
evidence for the cons
"The worst is the setup and the communication. I have looked at a couple few other bounties which seem easy to solve, but they do not give proper on-boarding instructions making the whole process slow and complicated."
"For me, the communication doesn't take a lot of time. What is important is that you need to write clearly what needs to be done in the issue. If you express it clearly, you can save a lot of communication costs."
"More communication needed than I had hoped. The quality of the work in the end wasn't fantastic, and one of our engineers had to put quite a lot of time into tidying it up. We think we can avoid that in the future though by having a clearer style guide, etc."
"Some bounty maintainers dont respond, and if someone else starts work I have to manually unapply myself, which somehow shows up on my profile."
"communication overhead is caused by an unclear bounty description"
market observation: chat applications are plentiful, and other stand alone companies do it better than us (slack, discord, etc)
observation: funders expect it to be turned around with minimal help, that's the point of the bounty
observation: chat won't fix the fact that some funders are super slow to review/respond
themes
slow responses from funders and contributors - (slow response on any medium will be an issue)
discussion of the actual issue on github is high ramp up (the problem may reside before chat)
communication with the team is necessary to complete the task (chat may help)
communication with the team is not necessary to complete the task (funders get annoyed that they have to walk contributors through)
communication overhead (the problem may reside before chat)
perhaps the real root problem is not chat, but rather, communication expectations?