So concrete things people could do - users could tag subject lines appropriately to the component they're asking about
- contributors could monitor user@ for tags relating to components they've worked on. I'd be surprised if my miss rate for any mailing list questions well-labeled as Kafka was higher than 5% - committers could be more aggressive about soliciting and merging PRs to improve documentation. It's a lot easier to answer even poorly-asked questions with a link to relevant docs. On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 7:39 AM, Sean Owen <so...@cloudera.com> wrote: > There's already reviews@ and issues@. dev@ is for project development itself > and I think is OK. You're suggesting splitting up user@ and I sympathize > with the motivation. Experience tells me that we'll have a beginner@ that's > then totally ignored, and people will quickly learn to post to advanced@ to > get attention, and we'll be back where we started. Putting it in JIRA > doesn't help. I don't think this a problem that is merely down to lack of > process. It actually requires cultivating a culture change on the community > list. > > On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 12:11 PM Mendelson, Assaf <assaf.mendel...@rsa.com> > wrote: >> >> What I am suggesting is basically to fix that. >> >> For example, we might say that mailing list A is only for voting, mailing >> list B is only for PR and have something like stack overflow for developer >> questions (I would even go as far as to have beginner, intermediate and >> advanced mailing list for users and beginner/advanced for dev). >> >> >> >> This can easily be done using stack overflow tags, however, that would >> probably be harder to manage. >> >> Maybe using special jira tags and manage it in jira? >> >> >> >> Anyway as I said, the main issue is not user questions (except maybe >> advanced ones) but more for dev questions. It is so easy to get lost in the >> chatter that it makes it very hard for people to learn spark internals… >> >> Assaf. >> >> >> >> From: Sean Owen [mailto:so...@cloudera.com] >> Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2016 2:07 PM >> To: Mendelson, Assaf; dev@spark.apache.org >> Subject: Re: Handling questions in the mailing lists >> >> >> >> I think that unfortunately mailing lists don't scale well. This one has >> thousands of subscribers with different interests and levels of experience. >> For any given person, most messages will be irrelevant. I also find that a >> lot of questions on user@ are not well-asked, aren't an SSCCE >> (http://sscce.org/), not something most people are going to bother replying >> to even if they could answer. I almost entirely ignore user@ because there >> are higher-priority channels like PRs to deal with, that already have >> hundreds of messages per day. This is why little of it gets an answer -- too >> noisy. >> >> >> >> We have to have official mailing lists, in any event, to have some >> official channel for things like votes and announcements. It's not wrong to >> ask questions on user@ of course, but a lot of the questions I see could >> have been answered with research of existing docs or looking at the code. I >> think that given the scale of the list, it's not wrong to assert that this >> is sort of a prerequisite for asking thousands of people to answer one's >> question. But we can't enforce that. >> >> >> >> The situation will get better to the extent people ask better questions, >> help other people ask better questions, and answer good questions. I'd >> encourage anyone feeling this way to try to help along those dimensions. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 11:32 AM assaf.mendelson <assaf.mendel...@rsa.com> >> wrote: >> >> Hi, >> >> I know this is a little off topic but I wanted to raise an issue about >> handling questions in the mailing list (this is true both for the user >> mailing list and the dev but since there are other options such as stack >> overflow for user questions, this is more problematic in dev). >> >> Let’s say I ask a question (as I recently did). Unfortunately this was >> during spark summit in Europe so probably people were busy. In any case no >> one answered. >> >> The problem is, that if no one answers very soon, the question will almost >> certainly remain unanswered because new messages will simply drown it. >> >> >> >> This is a common issue not just for questions but for any comment or idea >> which is not immediately picked up. >> >> >> >> I believe we should have a method of handling this. >> >> Generally, I would say these types of things belong in stack overflow, >> after all, the way it is built is perfect for this. More seasoned spark >> contributors and committers can periodically check out unanswered questions >> and answer them. >> >> The problem is that stack overflow (as well as other targets such as the >> databricks forums) tend to have a more user based orientation. This means >> that any spark internal question will almost certainly remain unanswered. >> >> >> >> I was wondering if we could come up with a solution for this. >> >> >> >> Assaf. >> >> >> >> >> >> ________________________________ >> >> View this message in context: Handling questions in the mailing lists >> Sent from the Apache Spark Developers List mailing list archive at >> Nabble.com. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@spark.apache.org
