Subtle barriers to entry

[Chuck Murcko]

I've noticed in looking around the Apache sites that there's a lot of 
inconsistency in providing links (usually in the sidebars) where people 
can get on the mailing lists. Some projects, like Foundation, HTTP 
Server, Cocoon and Forrest, provide wide gateways for participation. 
Big, friendly, colorful, clearly marked links. Many have "Getting 
Involved" sidebars that link to lists of things, and the mailing lists 
are in there. Some befuddled me in attempts to find any mailing lists at 
all without going to the project's main page. "Home" != "Get Involved" 
to me.

I speculate that one factor in the breadth and quality of development 
community is the number of clicks it takes to find the -dev list, the 
general navigation semantics of the site, and the amount of camouflage 
those links have, whether on purpose (in the case of Jakarta it sure 
seems that I am being forced to read the guidelines and then be clever 
enough to notice the link - no bypassing Mom on this page!) or not.

Is this just driven by the number of config questions and "suscribe" 
(and other) trolls to the dev lists? Or the rising percentage of 
doofuses in the net world? I knew we should never have let AOL hook up 
that gateway to the net. 8^)

I ask because I'm laying out a Jakarta project site, and I'm used to the 
-dev list guidelines being something short and sweet, like "lurk a bit 
before jumping in, and search the archives to see if your question (if 
that's the only reason you're here) has been answered".

Or maybe I should just point users to 
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html, and say "Read before posting; if 
you don't, YMMV widely". I presume all here have read that.

Just MHO on a community issue.
Chuck