Thanks everybody for your feedback! I also agree, that dev@ is mostly like a forum for every topics potentially related to Beam improvement (in different ways, not only the code) and I’d ask more developers to take a look on user@ from time to time as well (even if it’s not very active but we still have Slack channels and StackOverflow, btw) and help with user-related questions.
For the user questions sent to dev@ I’d suggest to kindly ask to continue a discussion on user@ list. Cheers, Alexey > On 11 Mar 2021, at 00:08, Valentyn Tymofieiev <valen...@google.com> wrote: > > > I would say that it is on us to redirect traffic to the correct place if we > > want to effect a change. > +1 to this. > > I think the clean way to accomplish this is to say: "Let's continue this > conversation on user@", add user@ and move dev@ to bcc (to avoid the fork), > then (hopefully), answer the thread on user@ in the next message. > > > > > > On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 3:04 PM Robert Bradshaw <rober...@google.com > <mailto:rober...@google.com>> wrote: > I am in the same boat: I'm subscribed to both but the dev@ ones are more > visible to me. That being said, I do think it's valuable to have segregated > discussion (otherwise why have two lists), and "lurkers" on users@ can learn > from questions answered there. > > I would say that it is on us to redirect traffic to the correct place if we > want to effect a change. Forking the conversation is a problem, but enough > people have answered this thread (and likely many more have read it) that if > we consciously set a convention we should be able to follow it. This could be > as simple as responding to such queries as "I am forwarding your email to > users@ [and will answer it there]" and not responding to threads that have > been resolved as such. > > +1 to Kenn's idea about explicitly calling out dev@ as the forum for those > interested in contributing to beam. (This can be community/design > contributions of course.) > > > On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 2:21 PM Pablo Estrada <pabl...@google.com > <mailto:pabl...@google.com>> wrote: > My impression is that Boyuan is right: People may email dev@ because they may > feel they're more likely to get a response. I'll confess that I am subscribed > to both, but pay more attention to dev : / > > On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 2:16 PM Kenneth Knowles <k...@apache.org > <mailto:k...@apache.org>> wrote: > Note on the data: dev@ is much higher volume than user@ right now (maybe > 2x?). [1] [2] > > I think https://beam.apache.org/community/contact-us/ > <https://beam.apache.org/community/contact-us/> has an OK description. I > guess we could make it more clear about "Developer and contributor > discussions" / "Developer mailing list" to mean that it is about developing > Beam itself. But personally, I think it is OK to be ambiguous. For Beam, any > user request might be a PTransform we want to add, after all, etc. Of course, > my opinion should not be taken too seriously, since I am subscribed to both > so they both hit my inbox. > > Another practice I have: When something on user@ makes me think of a feature > request or a complex issue, I send the thread also to dev@. I think it is OK > for users to also make this decision for themselves, at least for now. Maybe > we should have this deal: feel free to send your issues to dev@ if you are > willing to become a Beam contributor to improve it aka "mail dev@ if you are > interested in developing Beam" :-) > > Kenn > > [1] https://lists.apache.org/trends.html?u...@beam.apache.org > <https://lists.apache.org/trends.html?u...@beam.apache.org> > [2] https://lists.apache.org/trends.html?dev@beam.apache.org > <https://lists.apache.org/trends.html?dev@beam.apache.org> > On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 2:04 PM Alexey Romanenko <aromanenko....@gmail.com > <mailto:aromanenko....@gmail.com>> wrote: > >> On 10 Mar 2021, at 22:13, Onur Ozer <sametoze...@gmail.com >> <mailto:sametoze...@gmail.com>> wrote: >> >> One of the sample mails belongs to me, sorry for that. I thought the dev >> list was a better place. Will ask similar to the other list as well. > > Onur, > Well, I just picked up a random example of one of the latest emails, that, I > believe, should be addressed to user@. > So no worries on this =) and thank you for a good question! > > >> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 12:13 PM Steve Niemitz <sniem...@apache.org >> <mailto:sniem...@apache.org>> wrote: >> As a frequent emailer of dev@, I'll admit that it's often very difficult to >> figure out if I should be emailing user@ or dev@, and typically just chose >> dev@ because it seems more likely to get an answer there. Having clearer >> guidelines around what is a "dev" topic would be very useful to better guide >> people towards the correct list. >> >> An example here was my recent email about schemas. [1] Should this have >> gone to users@? I count myself as a "developer" so I feel like it fits into >> "developer and contributor discussions", but I can certainly also see how it >> would fit into "general discussions" for users@ as well. >> >> [1] >> https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r881ab4d0ccbc7dc2e8c478f9b68b18b313f3740b419fdf7e91a17a83%40%3Cdev.beam.apache.org%3E >> >> <https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r881ab4d0ccbc7dc2e8c478f9b68b18b313f3740b419fdf7e91a17a83@%3Cdev.beam.apache.org%3E> > Steve, > I think your question is somewhere between these 2 lists =) Since, on the one > hand, it’s more about some specific user’s problem, but, on the other hand, > it probably requires some internal dev knowledge to answer it. Personally, > I’d send it to user@, but it’s a tricky example - so any is fine, imho . > > I agree, that we don’t have strict borders and rules to decide where a > question should go and sometimes, as an example above, it’s not so obvious, > but I think we can improve the description of both lists on web site to make > it more clear for new users. > > >> >> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 2:52 PM Ahmet Altay <al...@google.com >> <mailto:al...@google.com>> wrote: >> >> >> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 11:16 AM Alexey Romanenko <aromanenko....@gmail.com >> <mailto:aromanenko....@gmail.com>> wrote: >> >>> What do you think should be the right behaviour for managing such emails? >>> Forward this email to user@ (and remove dev@ address from copy) and ask >>> politely to continue a discussion there? I tried it several times but >>> sometimes it happened that discussion was "forked” and continued in two >>> different lists which is even worse, imho. >>> >>> I like your proposal but I do share the same concern of forked threads. One >>> suggestion, instead of forking the thread we can ask users to ask on user@ >>> list next time and still answer the question in the original thread. >>> Hopefully that can reinforce good habits over time. >> >> Agree with asking and not to fork, since it usually won’t help. >> >>> Anything else? What do you believe should work better in such cases (maybe >>> some experience for other projects)? >>> >>> I wonder if there is a reason for people to ask on dev@ instead of user@? >>> Web site instructions look pretty clear to me. There is a good amount of >>> activity and engagement on user@ list as well. I am not sure about why >>> users pick one list over another. >> >> Maybe we need to make it even more clear on web page that dev@ list is >> _only_ for dev-related questions, that are supposed to have any relationship >> with project development in any sense (new features/ infrastructure/ bugs/ >> testing/ documentation/ etc) and provide some examples for both of the lists? >> >> +1 this makes sense to me. And reading the website again "review proposed >> design ideas on dev@" might imply that you can bring your design ideas about >> your own use cases/issues to the dev list. >> >
