Thank you for your input Steffen,
I think going out and experimenting is the right mindset to address such
issues.
One should not underestimate the fact that all emails on this user
mailinglist go to all subscribers (in contrast to a forum where people
have to actively look for things to answer).
What happened in many of the projects that I have been involved in is
that users, who might not have the time to contribute code, but are
still passionate about the project, start to answer questions on the
mailinglist. Its also much easier for new people to participate in a
discussion compared to sending pull requests.
The ASF was for example able to attract Ted Dunning (who's now a
Director of Apache) via a user mailing-list. He started to regularly
answer ML-related questions on the mailinglist and wasn't very keen on
contributing code first :)
Best,
Sebastian
On 20.06.2018 17:43, Steffen Rochel wrote:
I had a discussion yesterday with Jun Wu (wujun....@gmail.com) to get a
better understanding about the concerns raised, that users might get
confused and maintenance efforts.
I agree with Jim that building and fostering the community is important.
First of all, I suggest we should be open minded and not make claims that
we have a good understanding of user preferences. We might have insights
about preferences of current users (which I also would question as we
sampled only a small set), but we certainly don't have insight about the
preferences of new users we are trying to attract.
In such situation it might be better to run an experiment, offer choices
and collect real feedback - lets be customer focussed.
My suggestion is to establish a user@ list and support the list with a
volunteer subset of contributors and committers to minimize the maintenance
impact on the whole community.
After a reasonable time like 6 months we can evaluate the adoption of user@
and effort to support and can make an informed, data driven decision how to
proceed.
I recommend to create the user@ list and call for volunteers to support the
list.
Regards,
Steffen
On Tue, Jun 19, 2018 at 8:10 AM Hagay Lupesko <lupe...@gmail.com> wrote:
Jim,
Earlier on the thread you suggested to clarify and expand on the usage of a
user@ mailing list and how it is useful for a project.
It may be helpful for the community to learn a bit more about it. Could you
expand and/or share relevant links and examples?
Thank you,
Hagay
On Tue, Jun 19, 2018, 07:31 Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com> wrote:
Just so we are clear: building and fostering a community takes effort.
Either it is something important to the project, or it's not.
My assumption is that It Is.
On Jun 18, 2018, at 8:59 PM, YiZhi Liu <eazhi....@gmail.com> wrote:
I am personally not a big fan of mailing list but agree with Thomas
that we may get extra users, which worth a try.
On the other hand, I also have concern that we do not have a community
big enough to support multiple forums. If people asked questions but
got no response, that can be worse than not having the mailing list at
all.
On Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 5:46 PM Thomas DELTEIL
<thomas.delte...@gmail.com> wrote:
I was actually the one stating that we didn't need a user mailing list
during the Seattle meetup, given all the reasons already exposed
above.
However given what proponents of a mailing list said, I personally
wouldn't
mind adding a new channel as a user mailing list, and monitoring it.
There
seems to be a subset of users, used to apache projects, that wouldn't
use
the forum but would use a mailing list. Though I think it is not as
feature-rich as the forum and there is a risk of dilution of
information.
It is more about reaching those extra users. If we see a dilution of
traffic on the forum towards the mailing list (~currently 100
posts/week)
then maybe we can reconsider our assumptions?
All the best,
Thomas Delteil
On Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 17:30 Pedro Larroy <
pedro.larroy.li...@gmail.com>
wrote:
I agree with Tianqi, Eric and others. We shouldn't dilute the
community
with another forum. Disqus is already working and has healthy
participation, you can get an email digest if you so desire.
Subscribing to
a mailing list to get a question answered is quite a heavyweight
investment
for many people and users who might not have the resources nor mental
bandwidth to receive more email volume in their inboxes.
On Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 10:19 AM Tianqi Chen <
tqc...@cs.washington.edu
wrote:
The problem of having multiple separate channels of communication is
that
users get confused, and the cost of maintenance goes up(people have
to
watch both). As the current community was at discuss forum and many
users
prefer it, having a mail-list is only a burden we will bring
Tianqi
On Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 9:48 AM, Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com>
wrote:
IMO, that is the wrong way to look at it.
A users@ mailing list is a great, easy, low-cost and low-overhead
way
of
*increasing* the user community and providing an extra level of
support.
Unless there is "strong evidence" that this is NOT the case, I
would
recommend we create the list.
On Jun 16, 2018, at 12:28 AM, Tianqi Chen <
tqc...@cs.washington.edu
wrote:
So unless there is a strong evidence that our community users
prefers
the
mail-list, I would recommend we keep the current way
Tianqi
On Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 9:25 PM, Sergio Fernández <
wik...@apache.org
wrote:
Are we targeting just Seattle as our community? I really hope we
are
thinking a bit beyond that...
On Fri, Jun 15, 2018, 21:22 Tianqi Chen <
tqc...@cs.washington.edu>
wrote:
I remember last time during the mxnet meetup in Seattle, we did
a
survey,
and most users preferred the current discuss forum. So I would
say
we
stick
with that given the user community prefers that
Tianqi
On Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 9:13 PM, Sergio Fernández <
wik...@apache.org
wrote:
Then, if everybody agree, let's request the mailing list
creation
to
INFRA
;-)
Marco, I wouldn't do that. Typically developers are also
subscribed
there,
since they may be the most informed people for answering users'
questions.
But the topics discussed there may not be of the interest for
pure
development purposes. Some discussions will jump from users@
to
dev@,
but
at a different level. So I wouldn't forward one mailing list to
the
other.
On Fri, Jun 15, 2018, 21:01 Marco de Abreu
<marco.g.ab...@googlemail.com.invalid> wrote:
I think nobody was opposed to it in the past, right?
I'd propose that all emails automatically get copied to dev@
to
ensure
high
visibility initially. What do you think?
Sebastian <s...@apache.org> schrieb am Fr., 15. Juni 2018,
20:51:
I have already proposed this many times in the past and would
strongly
encourage it.
-s
On 15.06.2018 21:56, Sergio Fernández wrote:
Hi,
is there any good reason why the podling doesn't have a
users@
mailing
list
yet?
Honestly speaking, I'm not a big fan of the other tools the
podling
is
using. Slack and Web forums a cool tools, and I used them a
lot
in
other
contexts. But when it comes to transparency and community,
mailing
lists
play a crucial role in the Apache Way.
Users are the most important asset a project can have. Even
more
than
developers, believe me. So I think it's time to create a
users@
mailing
list for to helping MXNet grow its community beyong the core
team.
Cheers,
--
Yizhi Liu
DMLC member
Amazon Web Services
Vancouver, Canada
