# How does the Discourse project work?

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-does-the-discourse-project-work/19059
**Category:** Site feedback
**Created:** [2014年八月19日 18:51 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-does-the-discourse-project-work/19059 "2014-08-19T18:51:07Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 8

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### Author: ![downey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/downey/32/166878_2.png) [@downey](https://meta.discourse.org/u/downey)
#### Post date: [2014年九月17日 20:12 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-does-the-discourse-project-work/19059/8 "2014-09-17T20:12:56Z")

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I have a feeling that a non-trivial portion of changes & strategy are being discussed, debated, and decided in the non-public Slack® chat room, or other private venues, rather than here on meta or on the [#discourse IRC channel](https://meta.discourse.org/t/a-new-irc-channel/2235).

As a data point, many or most open source projects have policies that all decisions are made publicly, and many open source contributors & users will presume that’s the way things happen. (e.g., Apache has always been famous for their saying “if it didn’t happen on the mailing list, it didn’t happen”.)

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