Once a user gets a response from one of these channels, there is a chance that they'll come back, especially if they don't get an answer on the user list. And once an answer appears after a reprimand, then the effectiveness of reprimands is diluted for everybody.
Here's my recommendation: Set these ground rules for responding to user questions:
* Direct users to a web page with Craig's (polite) words of wisdom on the topic
* Do not provide any answers
* Provide additional info only if it is of value to the developer community
This saves the developers from having to post a reprimand, which wastes developers time and, worse yet, alienates potential users.
Robert Michel
Craig McClanahan wrote:
On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 11:16:51 -0500, Matt Bathje <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
------- Additional Comments From [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2004-07-2815:57 -------
P.S. Rather than raising a *bug* report against Struts could you pleasepost
userproblems like this to the user list first.
Raising *Bugs* is not the best way to get help - asking questions on the
list is.
Thanks
This is going to sound bad maybe - but from some peoples perspective, filing a bug report IS the best way to get help.
Some questions to the users mailing list go unanswered (even something simple like this may get ignored.) When somebody files a (non)bug report like this though, it always seems to gets closed out very quickly with an answer and a "reprimand" to use the users list. The bug reporter gets exactly what they want - a quick answer. They can completley ignore the reprimand if they want.
Now maybe this isn't a problem to anybody and it certainly doesn't bother me, I just thought I would bring it up based on what I've seen in the few months I've been part of the struts community.
Of course, if this does bother people (especially if those people are committers) we need a solution. The only one I can think of is to stop rewarding the behavior - when somebody posts a "question" to bugzilla, it gets shut down quickly, but with no answer, just a pointer to the mailing list. (Whoever closed it down can also be sure to watch for the question on the user list and answer it so as not to piss people off...)
Again, sorry if I am raising a non-issue, I just thought I would mention it.
Matt, there are several "big picture" reasons that questions (as opposed to bug reports) should be raised on the user mailing list.
* Issue tracking systems do not make it particularly easy to have a conversation and explore possibilities, particularly compared to how you can interleave conversational elements in responses to mailing list messages.
* The audience of people available to answer your question is much larger than the audience of people who read bug reports.
* The audience of people on the user mailing list probably has more experience *using* Struts than the developers do; they are much more likely to have run into something similar and figured out what to do.
* When an answer is given on the mailing list, it is archived in many locations that provide powerful searching capabilities. The number of people who search mailing list archives before asking the same question again (while not as large as user list subscribers might prefer :-) is orders of magnitude larger than the number of people who would ever search the bug tracking system's archives.
If you expect to actually get your questions answered, then, the user mailing list is the best place. However, if you expect to *always* get an answer, in a timely manner, then I'm afraid your expectations are never going to be met (no matter what approach you take for asking them) -- the people who answer questions (as well as create Struts) are all volunteers.
Matt Bathje
Craig McClanahan
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
