I agree that a FAQ seems like a good idea no matter what. Is anyone against this idea independent of the argument of whether or not to split the list?
As far as splitting lists, I still think if people want to propose potential new lists, they need to be much more explicit about what the list will be for. I'll take the "enterprise" example. Let's assume for a second it has only one correct meaning (which is an assumption I agree with, but many people disagree with me on that). "Enterprise" has become a buzzword with many different commonly understood meanings, and most of those meanings are vague. There's no way for everyone on the list to be sure that we're talking about the same thing unless someone explicitly spells out what we are talking about (I'm not going to because I'm against having a "enterprise" list given every way I know to interpret the word). And if we don't have a common understanding of the proposal we can't efficiently criticize/support/amend the proposal. I'm not saying there has to be a fine line separating the lists, but it should at least be a fuzzy line. Also, to Bjorn, that's a point I hadn't thought of. The idea of having an arch/concepts list might be interesting. The two questions I would have would be: 1) would the questions on this list have any connection to Flex other than the fact that the users code in Flex (I think it probably would) or would it just be piggybacking on the user base; 2) Will it avoid stratification of the user base (i.e. will it be practically accessible to users of all skill levels)? Lastly, I'm going to reiterate my opinion that we shouldn't separate the lists based on skill/level difficulty. The distinction is too fuzzy (Too much cross-posting and too much posting to the wrong list). Sometimes you don't know if you're question is advanced or not until you get the answer. I've had a few times where I've asked what I thought was a simple question and the response from Gordon was "I talked to a guy on the player team..." If a question has a one line answer it can't be complex...unless the one line required going through the player or compiler code to understand it (sorry for the overstatement). - Daniel Freiman On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 10:31 PM, Douglas Knudsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Having been on this list since 2004, yeah back when the Iteration > folks were not Adobe Robe Wearers yet, I've seen this discussion come > up a few times. I've asked for a associated FAQ a few times, but > there was no interest from the Iteration folks on this or splitting up > things, no offense Alistair or Stephen you more than rocked with > helping this community. I'd certainly agree to a good FAQ be made > available and sent to the list monthly for all to be reminded and have > it linked at the footer. > > Bjorn has a good point later in this thread about the idea that > answers are terse due to volume. > > Matt, I do agree with your #1, but #2 and #3 sounds too much like list > mommies or invitations for list mommies. Something quite uncommon to > the best of my recollection on flexcoders is the real need for list > mommies. > > I'm in Anatole's camp on this, having multiple lists could be > beneficial to all as well as the community. Do we know this for a > fact? Nope, my crystal ball isn't helping, but it has with many other > topics in the past. Conversely it may have hindered others, but > perhaps because the introduction of split lists was premature, who > knows. Hey, there are already multiple lists, besides flexcomponents > there is HOF_Flex for one and the India based list too, I'm sure there > are others. > > I suggest we start off with a couple very generic variants. > flexcoders_enterprise seems ok to me, those that work with enterprise > tools would find it obvious. leave flexcoders as is, add in a > designer centric list, and a advanced list and go from there, revisit > in a few months to see how it went. > > Oh, BTW< there are other email readers that do threaded tricks like > GMail...though I don't use them. :) > > DK > > > On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 1:48 PM, Matt Chotin <[EMAIL > PROTECTED]<mchotin%40adobe.com>> > 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 > > > > > > -- > Douglas Knudsen > http://www.cubicleman.com > this is my signature, like it? > >
