I plan on gathering a complete archive of the list over the next week and doing some analysis. I'll post the full dataset once I get it compiled to let others play with it too. I'm working on a variety of ways to get a compiled list of all messages, but I think between either scraping the mail archive site and scraping the yahoo group site I should have it figured out in another week.
Then of course I'll build some flex apps to crunch some of the data :) Doug On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 6:20 PM, Matt Chotin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > As far as stats, we've had about 100 people join in the last week. I don't > know how many folks unsubscribed, that seems to be a little harder to track > easily and I don't have time to read through all the logs (if someone would > like to write some scripts to go through the logs and build up these kinds > of stats let me know and I'll get you access). Also hard to know how many of > the folks who joined are spammers, but I don't think that many :-) > > This is a tough position for me to comment on because we want the community > to thrive and have a life of its own that isn't controlled by Adobe. That > said, we clearly want to see it succeed and will involve ourselves as > necessary to try to make that happen. > > Based on the comments I'm seeing in this thread I don't see the big clamor > to divide the list. I see folks who have figured out workflows that work for > them, and suggestions for how to make things more manageable. That said, the > issue that Anatole raises is whether we are preventing new users from > getting help, or preventing advanced users from participating. Most of those > folks who have been "hurt" we can assume are folks who are not on the list > anymore, so it's difficult to really know without some sort of data as to > why they left the list. If people are willing to wait a few weeks, maybe we > could work on trying to gather that data and make a decision after. Another > piece of data we could use is an analysis of the kinds of posts that have > happened recently, perhaps compared to posts from a year ago, and see if the > skill level of posters is increasing, how many threads are going un > answered, semi-subjective view of signal vs. noise. This would help us > understand if there is meaning behind the low rate of increase in total > number of members, as well as the generally flat nature of posts per month. > > Does doing this kind of analysis interest anyone? Are the folks who advocate > separating the list interested in waiting for this kind of analysis? For me, > it seems kind of critical to have real data before making this kind of > decision, as we're going with hunches as to what's really happening here. > I'd have a hard time getting behind a real split when we don't know if doing > so would actually improve things. > > Matt > > On 6/17/08 3:15 PM, "Anatole Tartakovsky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > Doug, > As far as I know, I am the only one in the NY office who did not unsubscribe > from the group. Looks at the stats ( provided by Tim) or just go to the > group page. Also, the number of users if I remember it correctly has been in > 9K for at least 6 month - meaning you have the same number of people in and > OUT - obviously you need to ask Matt if he has more detailed stats on > unsubscribes count. > Regards, > Anatole > > On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 5:35 PM, Doug McCune <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Actually, this is worth going back to, because your initial email said that > the group was "stagnant" and has plateaued with the number of new users and > questions. Except your reason for bringing it up is that the traffic has > gotten too much for you to read every message. So clearly the level of > traffic isn't stagnant. Unless what you're saying is that about 6 months ago > the traffic reached a critical level where you couldn't deal with the > traffic but then it stopped growing. > > So I guess I'm saying I question the claim that this list is "stagnant". > Almost 10,000 members and an average of 100 messages a day. Are you saying > that these stats have been the same for the past 6 months? And even if that > is true (although I'd like to see numbers before I accept that) then I don't > even necessarily think that this indicates that there's a problem. There's a > simple fact that a ton of questions have already been accurately answered by > this list. I would hope that the archived knowledge of the list serves to > answer more and more questions that newcomers have, meaning they don't need > to post the questions over and over. > > What is the real problem? I haven't heard anyone say that the traffic on > this single list has stopped them from asking any questions (although I'm > open to the possibility that this is true, and just hasn't been voiced). And > largely I think that the number of people answering questions has remained > high and the response times are still good. I have heard that the traffic > level has stopped people from reading the questions that others ask (I > certainly skim and sometimes skip entire days). I'd argue that a combination > of self-moderated subject tagging, as well as more aggressive pointing > repeat questions to cached answered (and then tagging the entire thread as a > repeat) will largely solve this problem. > > So do you have numbers that indicate the stagnation you are worried about? > > Doug > > On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Anatole Tartakovsky > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Matt, > Let us review the goal - in the original post I explained that single group > causes stagnation. If you agree with the numbers and reasoning behind it, > let us look at the proposition in that light. IMHO, the mentioned measures > while staying within the same single group would probably extend the number > of users by 20-30% byhoping to reduce number of posted messages by the same > percentage - but it is hardly the goal we are trying to achieve here. > > Realistically Adobe should be looking for place public pace to exchange > ideas and networking as well as getting trivial help. The product and > community are just too big for one group. Let us split it up and let each > subgroup speak their own language. I would gladly moderate standalone > enterprise/j2ee/best practices track. But looking few times a day @ the > whole stream to fish out what might be related to the topic and having some > messages falling through the cracks might be not the recommended "best > practices" solution. > > Sincerely, > Anatole > > On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 1:48 PM, Matt Chotin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hey folks, let's calm down a little here, K? > > Alright, based on what I've been seeing people say, here's my suggestion. > > 1) Let's get an FAQ going that can be edited by moderators or members of the > community. This will be about common problems that folks run into. One > suggestion of course from me would be that we use the Cookbook for "how-to" > type questions. But for things that don't seem like they're cookbook > appropriate, we can put them in the FAQ. I like the idea of doing it in > Buzzword, though Buzzword docs won't come up in Google. Long-term I think > the right place might be in whatever we set up in the Adobe Developer > Center. But for now how about we just allocate a page off of the opensource > wiki. We can pick some moderators who can edit the page and I will get them > added so they can take care of it. We can also add the link to the FAQ to > the bottom of every email. > > 2) Some folks suggested that you either mark in the body or in the subject > something that indicates what you're talking about. Seems reasonable. We > could use some of the topics that were being suggested. [UX], [Enterprise], > [Data Services] [Announce], etc. We don't need to limit this, but by > following a convention of placing the general area of discussion, folks will > know if they're going to be capable of getting involved in the thread. The > more people follow this convention, the more efficient it will become. > > 3) We can get aggressive on the moderation. Rather than just scanning for > spam, moderators can actually look at the posts by new users and decide if > they meet the general criteria for asking a question. If they don't, the > moderator can reject the post and point the user to the forum FAQ which has > posting guidelines. > > 4) We can update the flexcoders FAQ (which is actually linked at the bottom > of every single post) to include the updated posting guidelines and remove > the common questions section so that the forum FAQ is only about forum > etiquette and the coding FAQ is about the actual problems. > > If this sounds OK then what we need are the two kinds of moderators: > > 1. moderators for the forum itself who are willing to really look at all > posts that are in moderation and analyze whether they should be passed > through. If it is a poorly formed question, the post should be rejected with > a pointer to the forum FAQ. > 2. moderators for the FAQ who can pay attention to common questions and > update the FAQ as appropriate. > > If we're all on board, send those moderators to me and we can get things set > up. And folks can start following the tagging convention instantly in the > meantime. > > Matt > >
