Hi all, I'm a bit late to the party, sorry, but wanted to say that I support the proposal for a user mailing list.
On the Slack vs ML topic: I know this is highly subjective, but I personally have way too many Slack workspaces and I find it difficult to keep track of what's happening in all of them, often missing important updates. Mailing lists, OTOH, allow me to consolidate all messages into a single inbox, facilitating triage and filtering. Combined with Gmail's "snooze" feature, this workflow is the best I've ever had. On the distinction between user and developer mailing lists: this distinction is common in other Apache communities. Generally, user lists focus on configuration and deployment questions, while developer lists delve into code-related discussions. While some overlap is inevitable, it's not a significant concern imho. Furthermore, the Apache philosophy of "if it didn't happen on the ML it never happened" highlights the importance of mailing lists for official communications, making Slack more suitable for informal discussions or one-on-one interactions. Anyways, just my 2 cents. Alex On Sat, Sep 27, 2025 at 6:12 AM Jean-Baptiste Onofré <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi folks, > > I see your point. The idea is more to focus on discussions purposes. > Everything about "code" (including I create my own metastore, etc) can > go in dev. > The user should be more for questions/help on the polaris default > core. Concretely, it's the questions we have today on Slack (like, how > to use polaris cli, what's the purpose of this configuration, etc). > It would be a way to directly find questions and answers, as a "user > resources". > > But ok fair, we will see later about the user list. For now, it's up > to the contributor and user to create their own filters in their mail > client to "classify" the discussions (else, they will have a lot of > noise of with "our" pure dev discussions :)). > > Regards > JB > > On Fri, Sep 26, 2025 at 10:22 PM Eric Maynard <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > I share this concern — further, it’s not entirely clear to me what the > > distinction between a user and a dev is. > > > > Namely, we’ve had many discussions in this mailing list about extension > > points within Polaris. It could be said that in many cases, users are not > > expected to use the service completely out of the box but rather to do some > > “development” to suit their needs. > > > > If I’m implementing my own metastore or building an integration with my > > IdP, am I a user or a dev? Which mailing list can best address my question? > > > > If we do create a new mailing list, I think we’ll need to consider what > > exactly the use of each list should be. > > > > —EM > > > > On Fri, Sep 26, 2025 at 1:13 PM Yufei Gu <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Hi JB, > > > > > > Thanks for bringing this up. It’s a good problem to have as the community > > > grows :-)! > > > > > > My only concern is that the set of people who can answer most questions > > > are > > > mainly on the dev list today. Splitting into two lists might risk some > > > fragmentation, duplicated answers, and less participation overall. Right > > > now Slack already works well for quick user questions, and we also have > > > GitHub Discussions as another channel. Maybe once the community grows > > > larger, it would make sense to revisit the idea of a dedicated user list. > > > Just my two cents. > > > > > > > > > Yufei > > > > > > > > > On Fri, Sep 26, 2025 at 12:15 PM Dmitri Bourlatchkov <[email protected]> > > > wrote: > > > > > > > Hi JB, > > > > > > > > Adding a users mailing list would be good from my POV. I imagine we > > > > could > > > > leave slack for more informal user-to-user discussions, while treating > > > the > > > > users ML as a means for requesting information from Polaris developers / > > > > maintainers. > > > > > > > > I imagine if something new or unusual but affecting many users were to > > > come > > > > up in slack, it would not be unreasonable to move such a conversation to > > > > the users ML so that responses and advice would be archived for future > > > > reference. > > > > > > > > That said, I see some overlap with GH discussions, so I wonder if we may > > > > want to make GH discussion read-only if we enable the new ML (in order > > > > to > > > > direct all questions to one system). > > > > > > > > My personal preference is with users ML over GH discussions. > > > > > > > > Cheers, > > > > Dmitri. > > > > > > > > On Fri, Sep 26, 2025 at 2:55 PM Jean-Baptiste Onofré <[email protected]> > > > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > Hi everyone, > > > > > > > > > > It’s great to see more and more users asking questions on Slack. > > > > > To give a voice to anyone and a way to ask questions, I wonder if we > > > > should > > > > > not create a user mailing list. > > > > > Dev will be used to discuss technical details, changes, proposals, > > > > > decisions (as we do today). User will be dedicated to users about > > > > > questions, help requests, etc. > > > > > > > > > > Thoughts ? > > > > > > > > > > Regards > > > > > JB > > > > > > > > > > > >
