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

From: Thomas Ferris Nicolaisen <tfnico@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 14, 2015, 11:38 UTC
Message-ID: <CAEcj5uUzGfqCUwR+bEjDCF4W8+oL5TjbfBFfG6xRgPUn94Ktvg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20150413211002.GD5467@google.com>

On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 11:10 PM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> 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 see your point. And I do see this working out well for freshly created open-source projects with low traffic mailing lists.

However, this is a high traffic list, and that has the disadvantage of blending user questions into a majority of patch- and expert discussion.

This makes it (a) harder for the user needing help to recognise existing contexts, and (b) harder for "amateurs" like myself to spot other users that I can easily help out.

And then there is the whole Majordomo blocking emails for various reasons issue, HTML being one of several, ref <http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html>. Here are some examples of when we tried helping people on the Google Groups user list with sending mail to this list:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/git-users/iiNBWq3_uUs/ke2eDiumPEsJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/git-users/eT_UDv7TpjY/CfYE8jHQ_vYJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/git-users/qibnKchBf6I/UPtv1_Ctxm4J https://groups.google.com/d/msg/git-users/4KXBwBXNd5Q/4yuBELlc8lUJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/git-users/Tl141kCJ45Q/-ToWHYfdmXEJ

And then there is the mental hurdle: I mean, I still consider it intimidating to send mails to this list. A new user could in some cases be terrified.

My personal reference are Apache projects: they always have one dev-list, and a separate user-list. The key there is that the user-list is adjacent to the dev-list, and all the devs (who are interested) monitor the user-list closely.

So I'm historically/personally biased towards the dev/user split. Perhaps you see this differently, and it is up to you (the consensus) to choose what kind of traffic you want, or which behaviour you want to discourage/encourage.

I'll also note the trend of how modern users are becoming less and less users of email, turning to web-based forums instead for assistance, and I enjoy the fact that Google Groups is an alternative that offers seamless web- and email-based interaction.

To summarize: I think that usability problems of Majordomo have lead you into a situation where you could consider embracing a user-list like the one found at Google Groups.

Unless, of course, you believe that the users that make it through here are a good representation of your user-base, and they provide just enough input for you to steer the project forward. The rest of the users in need of help, and I think that is a vast majority, will find another outlet.

My own motivation is that I want all Git users to figure out their problems as soon and as efficient as possible, and directing them to the Google Group seems to be the best way IMHO.

Show 12 quoted lines

> 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".

I've removed that sentence, and reformulated the part below. I'll keep the link to the Groups list and StackOverflow for reasons mentioned earlier.

> 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.

Thanks, I've added this.

Show 5 quoted lines

> 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.

OK, added.