Duck Alignment Academy

2023-08-02

Be careful how you treat AI-looking posts

When you prohibit anything that you think is AI-generated, you can end up creating an unwelcoming environment.

Posts

2023-07-26

How to re-write your project

In most cases, the risk of rewriting your project isn’t worth the reward. When it is, the technical part is easy. People are the hard part.

Posts

2023-07-19

A year of Program Management for Open Source Projects

Today, I celebrate the first anniversary of Program Management for Open Source Projects by answering questions from newsletter subscribers.

Posts

2023-06-28

Separating announcements from discussion

The problem is rarely that the important information isn’t communicated. The problem is usually that people can’t find it.

Posts

2023-06-21

How to take meeting notes

If you know how to take good meeting notes, you can help make the meeting useful.

Posts

2023-06-14

Managing the attention budget

Contributors donate their precious time to your project. Make good use of it by managing the attention you require.

Posts

2023-06-07

How a company should stop participating in an open source project

When participation in a community no longer meets business goals, it’s common to leave. The key is to have a graceful withdrawal strategy.

Posts

2023-06-02

Is an accidentally reverted feature a release blocker?

You should have a policy in place, and it needs to be more sophisticated than “yes” or “no”. Decide when adding a feature if it should be release blocking or not.

Posts

2023-05-31

MVP applies to teams, too

It’s hard to contain your enthusiasm when starting something new, but you have to pace yourself. Otherwise, the enthusiasm goes nowhere.

Posts

2023-05-26

Chat is not documentation

Chat is somewhat ephemeral. When you try to use it as a long-term resource — even if you have years of logs — it gets rough.

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