Re: When and how to to contact the Git developers (gist)

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 13, 2015, 21:10 UTC
Message-ID: <20150413211002.GD5467@google.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAEcj5uW2Shh4QvtmenW2h6KXYUCoEe5bHYNv_HVFQgUit=cJ0w@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

Thomas Ferris Nicolaisen wrote:

>              Perhaps someone here would prefer to use my gist when
> redirecting people with "user questions" away from this list, or
> inspire them to write better bug reports.

This won't come as a surprise given what I said at Git Merge: I'd rather we don't redirect people with user questions away from this list. The current volume has been pleasant and manageable.

I especially disagree with

	Generally speaking, Git has very few bugs, and if you're not
	sure what you are doing, it's probably a user-issue, and not
	an issue for the Git developers.

User issues are an issue for git developers. The hardest part of making git work well is getting it to match how humans work, not getting it to be technically correct or theoretically bug free.

So if I were writing it, I'd drop everything up to "If you believe you've found a bug in Git for Windows".

Another alternate forum to point people to is #git on freenode. It is reachable from https://webchat.freenode.net, so a person seeking quick help doesn't even have to set up an IRC client.

It might be nice to add a note to the "If you can find no existing discussions" paragraph: if there's been a previous discussion, it's fine to raise the subject again. A good practice is to link to and summarize the previous discussion so people can learn from what has happened before.

On the other hand inspiring people about how to tell stories better or write bug reports in a more useful way is always welcome.

Thanks, Jonathan