I think a few things need to be laid out clearly:
1. This mailing list is the “official” user discussion platform. That
is, it is sponsored and managed by the ASF.
2. Users are free to organize independent discussion platforms
focusing on Spark, and there is already one such platform in Stack
Overflow under the |apache-spark| and related tags. Stack Overflow
works quite well.
3. The ASF will not agree to deprecating or migrating this user list
to a platform that they do not control.
4. This mailing list has grown to an unwieldy size and discussions
are hard to find or follow; discussion tooling is also lacking. We
want to improve the utility and user experience of this mailing list.
5. We don’t want to fragment this “official” discussion community.
6. Nabble is an independent product not affiliated with the ASF. It
offers a slightly better interface to the Apache mailing list
archives.
So to respond to some of your points, pzecevic:
Apache user group could be frozen (not accepting new questions, if
that’s possible) and redirect users to Stack Overflow (automatic
reply?).
From what I understand of the ASF’s policies, this is not possible. :(
This mailing list must remain the official Spark user discussion platform.
Other thing, about new Stack Exchange site I proposed earlier. If
a new site is created, there is no problem with guidelines, I
think, because Spark community can apply different guidelines for
the new site.
I think Stack Overflow and the various Spark tags are working fine. I
don’t see a compelling need for a Stack Exchange dedicated to Spark,
either now or in the near future. Also, I doubt a Spark-specific site
can pass the 4 tests in the Area 51 FAQ
<http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq>:
* Almost all Spark questions are on-topic for Stack Overflow
* Stack Overflow already exists, it already has a tag for Spark, and
nobody is complaining
* You’re not creating such a big group that you don’t have enough
experts to answer all possible questions
* There’s a high probability that users of Stack Overflow would
enjoy seeing the occasional question about Spark
I think complaining won’t be sufficient. :)
Someone expressed a concern that they won’t allow creating a
project-specific site, but there already exist some
project-specific sites, like Tor, Drupal, Ubuntu…
The communities for these projects are many, many times larger than
the Spark community is or likely ever will be, simply due to the
nature of the problems they are solving.
What we need is an improvement to this mailing list. We need better
tooling than Nabble to sit on top of the Apache archives, and we also
need some way to control the volume and quality of mail on the list so
that it remains a useful resource for the majority of users.
Nick
On Wed Jan 21 2015 at 3:13:21 PM pzecevic <petar.zece...@gmail.com
<mailto:petar.zece...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi,
I tried to find the last reply by Nick Chammas (that I received in the
digest) using the Nabble web interface, but I cannot find it
(perhaps he
didn't reply directly to the user list?). That's one example of
Nabble's
usability.
Anyhow, I wanted to add my two cents...
Apache user group could be frozen (not accepting new questions, if
that's
possible) and redirect users to Stack Overflow (automatic reply?). Old
questions remain (and are searchable) on Nabble, new questions go
to Stack
Exchange, so no need for migration. That's the idea, at least, as
I'm not
sure if that's technically doable... Is it?
dev mailing list could perhaps stay on Nabble (it's not that
busy), or have
a special tag on Stack Exchange.
Other thing, about new Stack Exchange site I proposed earlier. If
a new site
is created, there is no problem with guidelines, I think, because
Spark
community can apply different guidelines for the new site.
There is a FAQ about creating new sites:
http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq
It says: "Stack Exchange sites are free to create and free to use.
All we
ask is that you have an enthusiastic, committed group of expert
users who
check in regularly, asking and answering questions."
I think this requirement is satisfied...
Someone expressed a concern that they won't allow creating a
project-specific site, but there already exist some
project-specific sites,
like Tor, Drupal, Ubuntu...
Later, though, the FAQ also says:
"If Y already exists, it already has a tag for X, and nobody is
complaining"
(then you should not create a new site). But we could complain :)
The advantage of having a separate site is that users, who should
have more
privileges, would need to earn them through Spark questions and
answers
only. The other thing, already mentioned, is that the community
could create
Spark specific guidelines. There are also 'meta' sites for asking
questions
like this one, etc.
There is a process for starting a site - it's not instantaneous.
New site
needs to go through private beta and public beta, so that could be a
drawback.
Like btiernay, I must say: there might be something about Apache
projects
and mailing lists that I do not know, so excuse me if that is the
case...
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