I am in the same boat: I'm subscribed to both but the dev@ ones are more visible to me. That being said, I do think it's valuable to have segregated discussion (otherwise why have two lists), and "lurkers" on users@ can learn from questions answered there.
I would say that it is on us to redirect traffic to the correct place if we want to effect a change. Forking the conversation is a problem, but enough people have answered this thread (and likely many more have read it) that if we consciously set a convention we should be able to follow it. This could be as simple as responding to such queries as "I am forwarding your email to users@ [and will answer it there]" and not responding to threads that have been resolved as such. +1 to Kenn's idea about explicitly calling out dev@ as the forum for those interested in contributing to beam. (This can be community/design contributions of course.) On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 2:21 PM Pablo Estrada <pabl...@google.com> wrote: > My impression is that Boyuan is right: People may email dev@ because they > may feel they're more likely to get a response. I'll confess that I am > subscribed to both, but pay more attention to dev : / > > On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 2:16 PM Kenneth Knowles <k...@apache.org> wrote: > >> Note on the data: dev@ is much higher volume than user@ right now (maybe >> 2x?). [1] [2] >> >> I think https://beam.apache.org/community/contact-us/ has an OK >> description. I guess we could make it more clear about "Developer and >> contributor discussions" / "Developer mailing list" to mean that it is >> about developing Beam itself. But personally, I think it is OK to be >> ambiguous. For Beam, any user request might be a PTransform we want to add, >> after all, etc. Of course, my opinion should not be taken too seriously, >> since I am subscribed to both so they both hit my inbox. >> >> Another practice I have: When something on user@ makes me think of a >> feature request or a complex issue, I send the thread also to dev@. I >> think it is OK for users to also make this decision for themselves, at >> least for now. Maybe we should have this deal: feel free to send your >> issues to dev@ if you are willing to become a Beam contributor to >> improve it aka "mail dev@ if you are interested in developing Beam" :-) >> >> Kenn >> >> [1] https://lists.apache.org/trends.html?u...@beam.apache.org >> [2] https://lists.apache.org/trends.html?dev@beam.apache.org >> >> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 2:04 PM Alexey Romanenko < >> aromanenko....@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> >>> On 10 Mar 2021, at 22:13, Onur Ozer <sametoze...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> One of the sample mails belongs to me, sorry for that. I thought the dev >>> list was a better place. Will ask similar to the other list as well. >>> >>> >>> Onur, >>> Well, I just picked up a random example of one of the latest emails, >>> that, I believe, should be addressed to user@. >>> So no worries on this =) and thank you for a good question! >>> >>> >>> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 12:13 PM Steve Niemitz <sniem...@apache.org> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> As a frequent emailer of dev@, I'll admit that it's often very >>>> difficult to figure out if I should be emailing user@ or dev@, and >>>> typically just chose dev@ because it seems more likely to get an >>>> answer there. Having clearer guidelines around what is a "dev" topic would >>>> be very useful to better guide people towards the correct list. >>>> >>>> An example here was my recent email about schemas. [1] Should this >>>> have gone to users@? I count myself as a "developer" so I feel like >>>> it fits into "developer and contributor discussions", but I can certainly >>>> also see how it would fit into "general discussions" for users@ as >>>> well. >>>> >>>> [1] >>>> https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r881ab4d0ccbc7dc2e8c478f9b68b18b313f3740b419fdf7e91a17a83%40%3Cdev.beam.apache.org%3E >>>> <https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r881ab4d0ccbc7dc2e8c478f9b68b18b313f3740b419fdf7e91a17a83@%3Cdev.beam.apache.org%3E> >>>> >>> >>> Steve, >>> I think your question is somewhere between these 2 lists =) Since, on >>> the one hand, it’s more about some specific user’s problem, but, on the >>> other hand, it probably requires some internal dev knowledge to answer it. >>> Personally, I’d send it to user@, but it’s a tricky example - so any is >>> fine, imho . >>> >>> I agree, that we don’t have strict borders and rules to decide where a >>> question should go and sometimes, as an example above, it’s not so obvious, >>> but I think we can improve the description of both lists on web site to >>> make it more clear for new users. >>> >>> >>> >>>> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 2:52 PM Ahmet Altay <al...@google.com> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 11:16 AM Alexey Romanenko < >>>>> aromanenko....@gmail.com> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> What do you think should be the right behaviour for managing such >>>>>>> emails? Forward this email to user@ (and remove dev@ address from >>>>>>> copy) and ask politely to continue a discussion there? I tried it >>>>>>> several >>>>>>> times but sometimes it happened that discussion was "forked” and >>>>>>> continued >>>>>>> in two different lists which is even worse, imho. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I like your proposal but I do share the same concern of forked >>>>>> threads. One suggestion, instead of forking the thread we can ask users >>>>>> to >>>>>> ask on user@ list next time and still answer the question in the >>>>>> original thread. Hopefully that can reinforce good habits over time. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Agree with asking and not to fork, since it usually won’t help. >>>>>> >>>>>> Anything else? What do you believe should work better in such cases >>>>>>> (maybe some experience for other projects)? >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I wonder if there is a reason for people to ask on dev@ instead of >>>>>> user@? Web site instructions look pretty clear to me. There is a >>>>>> good amount of activity and engagement on user@ list as well. I am >>>>>> not sure about why users pick one list over another. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Maybe we need to make it even more clear on web page that dev@ list >>>>>> is _only_ for dev-related questions, that are supposed to have any >>>>>> relationship with project development in any sense (new features/ >>>>>> infrastructure/ bugs/ testing/ documentation/ etc) and provide some >>>>>> examples for both of the lists? >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> +1 this makes sense to me. And reading the website again "review >>>>> proposed design ideas on dev@" might imply that you can bring your >>>>> design ideas about your own use cases/issues to the dev list. >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>>
