--- Leon Brooks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wednesday 06 March 2002 16:04, Warly wrote: > > Leon Brooks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> On Tuesday 05 March 2002 22:51, Borsenkow Andrej wrote: > >>> It is development list. People are expected to debug there problems and > >>> come here with at least suggestions what has to be done to fix them not > >>> coming here ranting and wining. There are enough other places for it. Or > >>> at least report problems in such way that makes it possible to track > >>> them down (not that I am always doing it this way myself :-) > > >> 1. a report that there *is* a problem is more useful even with no hint > >> of a fix than no report; and > > > [...] > > >> So... please go easy on the newbies, please encourage reports even if > >> they don't meet your high standards, please acknowledge reports that are > >> useful to you, please patiently educate rather than browbeating, or at > >> least hold your peace. > > Thanks for taking the time to reply in detail, Warly... > > > Cooker is our principle and precious development help, as a consequence: > > > - If there is too many unexperienced user, developpers will lose a lot > > of time trying to know what it is really going on, and Andrej is right > > to say that if the user investigate a little bit, it is great help and > > will decrease the odds that the bug report is just ignored. > > > - If there is too many noise, developpers will stop to read cooker, or > > reduce the time they spend to read it. This is unfortunately already > > happening. > > > - We have to encourage people so that the distro will be better and > > better, and trying to help and to teach users as you said Leon is > > certainly a good investment for the quality and the future of the list > > > - We do not have to lose time with non efficient people, or people > > that just complain and have no time or no willing to help or to learn. > > > - You are right Leon to says that it is more important to know a > > showstopper than nothing, but it is unlikely than a showstopper will > > only be seen by only newbies and not experienced users, and such > > users have plenty of means to report problems apart from cooker, and > > be filtered by the community and do not make a developper lose his > > precious time 9 times over 10. > > > The conclusion is that we must be very demanding on cooker members, > > but we must be also very tolerant with new commers that have a real > > willing to help and to learn. However there are others mailing lists > > for them to learn too, such as expert or like. And it is very > > important that we keep a very high signal/noise ratio, or developpers > > will simply stop reading cooker, and the same pb that we experienced > > with bugzilla will happen. Of course not everyone could be as > > efficient as Andrej and some others are, but if you do not aim at > > that, I think that maybe this list is not for you. > > Well... it might be possible to have your cake and eat it too... or at least > have some of your cake and eat some of your cake. And no, I don't propose > implementing any of the following suggestion until 8.2 is out the door. > > So... on to the suggestion... > > If you want a serious developer list, you have to trim the noise. If you want > > willing user feedback, you have to put up with a lot of noise. > > This is a contradiction - with one list. You exhaust developer patience and > contributor goodwill. > > If, however, you pick a few (maybe a dozen) `trusted lieutenants' a la Linus, > > and convince them to do four things, you might have heaven on a stick: > > 1. forward genuine bugs from cooker to the serious-developer list; and > > 2. either acknowledge those bugs forwarded, and forward solutions back or > get serious-developers to post solutions straight back to cooker; OR > make serious-developer-list posts visible to cooker; and > > 3. ask for more information if there is insufficient and/or gently direct > the petitioner toward the FAQ; and > > 4. answer the obvious questions not yet in the FAQ and put the answers > there (the individual FAQ answers should all be at least date-stamped). > > If something like this is implemented, I hope Andrej is one of the initial > lieutenants; there's nothing wrong with his technical judgement. He just > doesn's belong in the PR department. (-: > > Also, I ask that the serious-stuff-only list is called pressurecooker. (-: > > Points against discouraging newbies include: > > 1. if there is a 20:1 newbie:developer ratio, it is likely that newbies > *will* trigger/uncover more bugs, necessarily including showstoppers, > than developers; and > > 2. since newbies are an obvious target for Mandrake (SuSE is the only > other large distro which really comes close to Mandrake in the field) > it seems wise to fix things that disturb newbies even if they aren't > `real' bugs; and > > 3. the badwill will flow out to ordinary customers. Mandrake doesn't need > that (who does?); and > > 4. you will be wasting a valuable resource (remember Microsoft firing > their MVP's?) in the semi-serious developers and serious but hurried > contributors who do hit-and-run bug reports because they're already > so busy that even reporting a bug at all is being genereous of them.
<joke-alert> Or we can just: 1. silently expire subscriptions every 3 months. 2. only accept posts from subscribers 3. anyone who re-subscribes more than three time is taken as genuinely interested "cookeroo" (as opposed to "my install failed ... fix my problem ... now! ... opps I forgot to put a harddrive in" kind of subscriber) and given indefinite subscription. </joke-alert> ===== ________________________ Eugenio Diaz, BSEE/BSCE Linux Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Try FREE Yahoo! Mail - the world's greatest free email! http://mail.yahoo.com/
