Hello Brent and Frank,
I hope you don't mind me joining this rather usefull discussion! I
stepped on it, because the new title triggered me (an example of how
using a clear title on the mailing list is of importance).
Yesterday I was doing some translation work on the OSGeo website (I
signed up for the dutch translation) and I noticed all the mailing lists
that are hosted there, it had me thinking about mailing-lists and the
value they hold.
Basically, the mailinglists that are most active, such as the mapserver
list hold a rich set of solutions, answers, tips, tricks and so on. But
I find them hard to browse. Most items are not categorized and sometimes
it is hard to show the trees in the forest. But again, a lot of the
posts are extremely valuable! I ended up looking for software capable of
importing mailman lists into Google Groups or into forums or into... and
I came out blank. But this tought is still on my mind.
Next thing I was wondering about was if it was possible to rate answers.
And if it would be possible to easily transform answers into
documentation. But I haven't found a real solution yet.
Ok, back to the discussion;
With around 2400 subscribers every question and answer is hitting a lot of
mailboxes. Is it really a useful approach? To some extent it is good because
it gives others a chance to chime in at different points with suggestions, and
hopefully some people on the list are picking up hints and new knowledge that
helps them in the future. But .. well, I often prefer to take debugging session
off-list with the intent of summarizing final findings to the list. I do this
despite the prevailing KEEP IT ON THE LIST! mantra of some of our leading
contributors.
Of course users that don't like the ammount of mail hitting can always
subscribe to get digested mail, I find this convenient enough. And
compared to the ammount of global video and audio downloads, the traffic
generated by mailinglists is still a tip of the iceberg, but I
understand your concern. I like your intention to discuss offline and
finalize a summary. I often invite users that are stuck to skype-chat
with me. Then I record the chat as we go along. At the end of a session,
I pick up the chat history, delete all the chit-chat and store what is
left for future reference.
One of my reasons to send the "back and forth" emails to the
list is to illustrate the method of tracking down the cause
of the problem (divide-and-conquer, isolate the problem,
small test case, etc) . But this is only valuable if the
new users search the list archive; which I suspect most
don't do (but I have no idea on how to measure this).
Fortunately David Fawcett has a section on the archive on
the "New Users" Mapserver page.
This is also a solid approach. Divide and conquer is the biggest
strength of mailing lists! And indeed new users should be encouraged to
read documentation.
Summer-of-code is very software development oriented. For instance, a SoC
effort cannot be primarily focused on writing documents, providing support,
etc, except as a by product of software development. So I don't think this
problem is very much a SoC solvable one.
Is it possible to have some automated system to classify
archive email based on problem type? Is it worth it?
This question hits the jackpot for me. classifying, categorization,
sections with moderators, the possibility for people to rate an answer.
It is already in the Google Groups, perhaps there is some way this can
be adapted? The google groups are in a lot of way interesting since they
offer mail integration, user rating, good insight of the most active
topics. The only thing they miss is categories like they are on forums,
maybe a tagging system would be good.
And do some questions go un-answered? Should we have "support" tickets? Yikes!
I have seen some fair examples of a combination of forums, mailinglists
SVN-repositories and bug tracking systems; The Joomla Open Source CMS
forum for instance has a pretty good combination.
Should we "reward" people who respond to questions to encourage better support
(hmm, or would that cause more noise on the list?)
This could be an option, as long as it doesn't require users to pay for
accessing the list. One of the most anoying sites on earth I find
ExpertExchange. They always pop-up first on a google search, but you
need to sign in and pay 25 dollar a month or so for that one single
question you have! Yikes on that method too.
Ultimately, I think we need to create better documentation, especially starter and
troubleshooting documentation so folks can "self serve" through the standard
problems, and just fallback to other people for the harder stuff. Helping to write such
documentation might well be something a paid maintainer could effectively do.
This I would be interested in! More then in payed support. It encourages
people (like me) to share solutions they found. Now it often happens
that a solution is lying on my desk, but snows-under because of paid
projects that are running at the same time.
While I agree (good documentation is a joy to read), I heard
that written documentation was dead (nobody reads anymore!);
everything should be on YouTube... Or a text message to
your iPhone...
In my life as a developer and GIS specialist I only came across a good
video tutorial twice. At a lot of others I fell asleep because of the
slow pace or boring commentary. I think digital documentation that is
ranked high in the major search engines is still the best of all.
Imagine a search engine looking for usable meta-information in a video
to make it available in search engines... It would have to learn to listen!
I will say that user to user support is very important,and scales up better
than user to core developer support. That's why it is so valuable when you and
other super users (or even just average users with experience in some stuff)
step up to the plate. I think this has been a notable success of the MapServer
community though there is always room for improvements.
I take this as a compliment. And I must also say deep respect for all
the people that take the effort and patience to answer to others!
I guess that is what prompted this email: Is there a way to provide better
support with less effort?
In my opinion: No, divide and conquer cannot be replaced by better/less
effort methods, but the way lists and documentation are organized could
be enhanced to give all users a better change to hit the answer before
asking the question to a real person. That's why I think that looking
for a technical solution for the way lists are organized and bring
collaboration, summarization and easy access to them has a better change
for success. Enhance this with the possibility for moderators to put
tags or categories in the list AND the option to generate documentation
from a list.....
But that is my own personal opinion of course. I am open to all suggestions!
To some extent, this topic is about the future of an Open
Source project: ease of use is vital to wide spread
acceptance. Support and documentation are a big part of
that ease of use.
Thanks for listening!
Brent Fraser
GeoAnalytic Inc.
Calgary, Alberta
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