Frank, comments below...
> > I certainly have concerns about using this list for a great deal > of "back and forth questions" style debugging of problems. With > around 2400 subscribers every question and answer is hitting a lot > of mailboxes. Is it really a useful approach? To some extent it > is good because it gives others a chance to chime in at different > points with suggestions, and hopefully some people on the list > are picking up hints and new knowledge that helps them in the future. > But ... well, I often prefer to take debugging session off-list with > the intent of summarizing final findings to the list. I do this > despite the prevailing KEEP IT ON THE LIST! mantra of some of our > leading contributors. > One of my reasons to send the "back and forth" emails to the list is to illustrate the method of tracking down the cause of the problem (divide-and-conquer, isolate the problem, small test case, etc) . But this is only valuable if the new users search the list archive; which I suspect most don't do (but I have no idea on how to measure this). Fortunately David Fawcett has a section on the archive on the "New Users" Mapserver page. > Summer-of-code is very software development oriented. For instance, > a SoC effort cannot be primarily focused on writing documents, providing > support, etc, except as a by product of software development. So I don't > think this problem is very much a SoC solvable one. I was fantasizing about a OSGeo-hosted (Plone-based? MapBender?) mapserver site where new users could upload their small tiff or shapefile and get a map file in return to help them get started. And perhaps a temporary URL where they could pan and zoom, etc. Then I got to thinking about the types of support problems: - the dreaded "hello world" learning curve with using your own data - new users vs. new versions of mapserver - other problem classes? Is it possible to have some automated system to classify archive email based on problem type? Is it worth it? And do some questions go un-answered? Should we have "support" tickets? Yikes! Should we "reward" people who respond to questions to encourage better support (hmm, or would that cause more noise on the list?) > Ultimately, I think we need to create better documentation, especially > starter and troubleshooting documentation so folks can "self serve" through > the standard problems, and just fallback to other people for the harder > stuff. Helping to write such documentation might well be something a paid > maintainer could effectively do. While I agree (good documentation is a joy to read), I heard that written documentation was dead (nobody reads anymore!); everything should be on YouTube... Or a text message to your iPhone... > > I will say that user to user support is very important, and scales up better > than user to core developer support. That's why it is so valuable when you > and other super users (or even just average users with experience in some > stuff) step up to the plate. I think this has been a notable success of > the MapServer community though there is always room for improvements. I guess that is what prompted this email: Is there a way to provide better support with less effort? To some extent, this topic is about the future of an Open Source project: ease of use is vital to wide spread acceptance. Support and documentation are a big part of that ease of use. Thanks for listening! Brent Fraser GeoAnalytic Inc. Calgary, Alberta _______________________________________________ mapserver-users mailing list mapserver-users@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapserver-users