As Craig pointed out, not all open source projects have reached the same level of cordiality. I was thinking of one such project at the time and I only wish they could acheive the same level of friendliness as the Struts project.
Robert Michel
Niall Pemberton wrote:
I don't see this as a big issue and my intention was more of "polite request" rather than "reprimand" - although it may not have come accross that way. Seems to me that in a large and (hopefully) expanding community there are always going to be new people that don't know the conventions that this community operates under. My impression is that once people have been asked to use the user list rather than bugzilla they do (and querying "INVALID" tickets in bugzilla seems to back this up).
Niall
P.S. I'm -1 on Robert Michel's suggestion to give me a good flogging for including an answer when closing the bugzilla ticket :-)
----- Original Message ----- From: "Matt Bathje" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Struts Developers List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 6:50 PM
Subject: Re: DO NOT REPLY [Bug 30364] -
org.apache.struts.validator.DynaValidatorActionForm.validate(DynaValidatorAc
tionForm.java:115)
Sorry, I must have been REALLY unclear here - I am not saying Iexpect/want
people (or myself in particular) to ask questions on bugzilla and get aunderstood
quick answer - just the opposite in fact. I totally understand and agree
with all the reasons you mention for asking on the user list, and
them before bringing this (non?)issue up. I have never myself asked anever
question on bugzilla that wasn't related to a bug or enhancement, and
shouldplan to!
What I am saying is that when people do ask questions on bugzilla, the questions are almost always answered as they are closed out. Also (in general) when somebody answers and closes the "bug", it is within a few hours.
Sometimes responses on the user list aren't so quick, or they never come, which can be discouraging.
These discouraged people may see bugzilla as a quick way to get what
getbe a user-list question answered, because the commiters and other people that watch bugzilla tend to answer the questions even if they aren't bugs.
Now - like I said, if it doesn't bother anybody that questions routinely
org.apache.struts.validator.DynaValidatorActionForm.validate(DynaValidatorAcasked and answered in bugzilla then this isn't an issue, and sorry for bringing it up. If people are bothered by it, then I was offering one possible solution.
Hopefully I've made myself more clear about this.
Matt Bathje
----- Original Message ----- From: "Craig McClanahan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Struts Developers List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 12:28 PM
Subject: Re: DO NOT REPLY [Bug 30364] -
wrote:tionForm.java:115)
On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 11:16:51 -0500, Matt Bathje <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
reportplease------- Additional Comments From [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2004-07-2815:57 -------
P.S. Rather than raising a *bug* report against Struts could you
thepost
problems like this to the user list first.
Raising *Bugs* is not the best way to get help - asking questions on
filinguser
This is going to sound bad maybe - but from some peoples perspective,list is.
Thanks
a bug report IS the best way to get help.
Some questions to the users mailing list go unanswered (even something
simple like this may get ignored.) When somebody files a (non)bug
theanlike this though, it always seems to gets closed out very quickly with
answer and a "reprimand" to use the users list. The bug reporter gets
exactly what they want - a quick answer. They can completley ignore
questionbotherreprimand if they want.
Now maybe this isn't a problem to anybody and it certainly doesn't
fewme, I just thought I would bring it up based on what I've seen in the
itmonths I've been part of the struts community.
Of course, if this does bother people (especially if those people are
committers) we need a solution. The only one I can think of is to stop
rewarding the behavior - when somebody posts a "question" to bugzilla,
mailinggets shut down quickly, but with no answer, just a pointer to the
list. (Whoever closed it down can also be sure to watch for the
onmention
the user list and answer it so as not to piss people off...)
Again, sorry if I am raising a non-issue, I just thought I would
it.
Matt, there are several "big picture" reasons that questions (as opposed to bug reports) should be raised on the user mailing list.
* Issue tracking systems do not make it particularly easy to have a conversation and explore possibilities, particularly compared to how you can interleave conversational elements in responses to mailing list messages.
* The audience of people available to answer your question is much larger than the audience of people who read bug reports.
* The audience of people on the user mailing list probably has more experience *using* Struts than the developers do; they are much more likely to have run into something similar and figured out what to do.
* When an answer is given on the mailing list, it is archived in many locations that provide powerful searching capabilities. The number of people who search mailing list archives before asking the same question again (while not as large as user list subscribers might prefer :-) is orders of magnitude larger than the number of people who would ever search the bug tracking system's archives.
If you expect to actually get your questions answered, then, the user mailing list is the best place. However, if you expect to *always* get an answer, in a timely manner, then I'm afraid your expectations are never going to be met (no matter what approach you take for asking them) -- the people who answer questions (as well as create Struts) are all volunteers.
Matt Bathje
Craig McClanahan
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