Hello Rob, Dave,
I agree that we should be flexible with learners and that not everyone
is supposed to “have years of experience of a software engineer and the
concept of MVCE drilled into them”.
But I assume that someone who takes the step to write to dozens of
strangers to ask for help is willing to read and take good note of the
answers they get. My concern is with the individuals who are given
guidelines to improve the way they ask their questions, but who never
improve.
I mainly wanted to raise this concern to Andy and Lorenz, who often are
those who reply, and I understood they more or less agreed. I believe
kindly asking them to improve their questions if they don’t want to be
ignored is a just response.
Again, to me, it’s not about naive questions, it’s about consistently
not valuing and learning from the given responses.
Thanks for your attention,
Colin Maudry
On 2016-10-24 10:10 (+0200), Dave Reynolds wrote:
There have been student questions on the jena users list since long >
before Jena moved into Apache. While there’s a burst at the moment I >
don’t see it as particularly worse than historic levels.>
In the past sometimes teachers have stepped in and stopped it,
sometimes >
not.>
I’m not convinced that the number of such questions at the moment is
so >
great as to be a problem for other subscribers.>
It is fine for the list to simply ignore the really poor/off-topic >
questions, especially from serial offenders. I would not be keen any >
more active steps such as “publishing rules” unless the problem were >
more acute than it seems to be.>
Dave>
On 23/10/16 23:06, Stian Soiland-Reyes wrote:>
OK, I think that is a good idea to get in touch with the
teachers; perhaps>
so they can give us an advance notice and we can understand what
their>
course is meant to teach. So a more friendly request for the
teachers to>
get in touch (or we ask directly the name/email of their
teacher), but>
without the “so you stop irritating us” bit :-). Presumably the
teachers>
dont want us to do the assignment for their students!>
There could even be opportunities to do like a webinar or
video with a>
short Jena intro, there are is probably some material from
Elixir’s Bring>
Your Own Data training events and similar that we could link
to; if the>
teachers have better background materials and tutorials it
can hopefully>
reduce our email load.>
On 23 Oct 2016 10:43 pm, “A. Soroka” wrote:>
Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem
to ask us the>
actual assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair
for us to dodge>
those, but perhaps in a less hostile way.>
It seems to me that this is the entire question: there
aren’t really the>
kinds of problems Colin Maudry raised /except/ with
these examples. And the>
messages that worry me are not the initial questions
that amount to “please>
do my assignment” but the fact that helpful voices on
the list give in>
response to such questions good advice and next steps
which are repeatedly>
ignored.>
I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too
helpful!), but I wouldn’t>
go to a “go away and talk to your teacher” route, but
rather in general>
respond with what is expected of a good question and
what the poster should>
try first.>
I’m not sure if this particular remark is in response to
my suggestion,>
but just in case, I will clarify: I don’t want to tell
the students to go>
away, I want to tell them to ask their teacher(s) to
contact Jena directly>
(instead of inadvertently and indirectly by giving
assignments that show up>
immediately as questions on the user list), hopefully to
help create a more>
appropriate kind of engagement for their students with
the Jena community.>
-→
A. Soroka>
The University of Virginia Library>
On Oct 23, 2016, at 5:24 PM, Stian Soiland-Reyes >
wrote:>
Agree to not go too aggressive in general, it could
also strike down>
users>
who like Jena as a tool (remember we have command
lines and servers!) or>
have been recommended Jena, but who have not before
used Java as>
programming language before. Here, tutorials and
examples is what we>
should>
point to.>
Then there are the obvious school examples, which
seem to ask us the>
actual>
assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair
for us to dodge those,>
but perhaps in a less hostile way. Many students and
researchers I have>
interviewed in the Big Data community say they
struggle to post their>
questions on mailing lists for the tools they use,
as they get hammered>
down for basically not being geeky enough.
Consequently they don’t come>
back when their skill sets have improved and they
could potentially have>
contributed back.>
Also remember that students have perhaps never
before used a public>
mailing>
list and already struggle to separate what is RDF,
what is OWL, what is>
Java, what is Jena, what is just a bug in their own
code.>
I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too
helpful!), but I wouldn’t>
go>
to a “go away and talk to your teacher” route, but
rather in general>
respond with what is expected of a good question and
what the poster>
should>
try first. Point to gist.github.com or similar as a
way to paste code>
rather than getting it in the abstract (“I tried
setting the literal”)>
helps a lot.>
Also I think we can reply shorter (but friendly) as
a bounce, rather>
than a>
complete reply to help them with the more obvious
assignment side. We can>
point to tutorials for coding as well; Software
Carpentry has many great>
starting points.>
On 23 Oct 2016 7:43 pm, “Paul Houle”
wrote:>
I find this thread disturbing. Many people in the
RDF community have>
worked a long time and it’s just recently that the
uptake has broadened>
(people are looking at JSON-LD and starting to
understand what it means,>
not what any particular authority says that it
means, but what it>
actually means.)>
I do believe that problems should be made
reproducable and as a group we>
could industrialize that. For instance, a test
project that can be>
forked in github would be a great place to put
in a query, put in a>
graph, and then put in some rules at which point
they could ask good>
questions.>
I carefully read the answers to the bad
questions because I am intensely>
curious about strange details in Jena that trip
people up.>
→
Paul Houle>
[email protected]>
On Sun, Oct 23, 2016, at 06:07 AM, Colin Maudry
wrote:>
Dear Jena developers,>
Upon Andy Seaborne\u2019s suggestion, I
would like to share with you a>
concern we have with certain posts shared on
[email protected].>
In the last couple months, we have seen
certain users repeatedly>
sending>
questions that are either:>
* hardly related to Jena and Fuseki>
* very basic questions about RDF or SPARQL>
* betraying the lack of common knowledge
in Java programming and>
coding good practice in general>
What\u2019s worse, these users, in spite of
repeated remarks, keep on being>
very vague in their questions, requiring the
most patient subscribers>
to>
ask many questions just to obtain a decent
understanding of the>
problem.>
A problem that is, again, often not much
related to Jena or Fuseki.>
As a subscriber, I\u2019m tired of their
consistent failure to propose clear>
and concise questions and I wish the patient
people who answer them>
spend their mailing time on more interesting
threads. I also fear it>
makes certain subscribers silently go away
because of this \u201cnoise\u201d.>
I first thought of publicly complaining to
these users, but I thought>
that the managers of the Jena lists should
discuss it and take the>
appropriate measures.>
My suggestion is to:>
* inform the subscribers of an upcoming
enforcement of the publishing>
rules (relevance, clearness,
completeness, etc.)>
* stop answering the vague/off-topic/badly
presented questions>
* if they insist, remind them the topic of
the list and good practices>
in problem reporting, and warn them of a
possible ban.>
Thanks for your attention,>
Colin Maudry>
https://twitter.com/CMaudry>
<https://twitter.com/CMaudry%3E>
\u200b>
