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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