Thank you everyone for giving me a through-the-keyhole view of the Nutch
project. I really appreciate the time it takes to read messages and
composing a reply -- time which could otherwise be spent coding or
writing documentation. ;)
I am somewhat saddened, but unsurprised, to find a slightly antagonistic
relationship between the coders and the users. I've followed a number
of open source projects and a polarised dialogue seems to arise of it's
own accord, not always mind you, but often. I'll depart with a
suggestion which in the past I've seen provide to some lubrication and
make for a more easeful coder-user dialogue:
On the mailing list, initiate a "Summary" convention, wherein people who
ask questions are politely asked to summarise the results and post back
to the list. How it works:
Ms Newbie asks "how do I get Nutch to crawl my coffee pot archives?".
Half a dozen people reply with an asortment of tips. Some are terse,
"read faq 13.4", and some offer a little more hand holding, "first
connect the archive via caffeine plug 3a, then power up the filter
holder", and another adds "but don't forget to place receiving
receptable A1:Final under the spout or your results will be all over the
floor". Ms Newbie then posts a message titled "SUM: crawling coffee pot
archives" back to the mailing list summarising the suggestions and her
results.
The "SUM" or "Summary:" part is important for people searching the
archives. They want to start with the results before crawling back
through the initiating questions.
Until the convention has been used enough to become natural, it will be
necessary to *politely* remind/ask questioners to summarise.
There will always be some who just won't or can't summarise. Don't waste
time chewing them out for it, that just adds noise. After a suitable
interval ask them nicely once or twice to summarise, if there is still
nothing forthcoming simply stop responding to their questions in an
informative way.
Lead by example. It will take some time for the custom to gel. A small
handful will need to resign themselves to going it alone for awhile. It
won't be forever, people know a good thing when they see it (eventually!).
Keep an eye on the SUMs and periodically grab the juicy ones and
reformat for the wiki and/or documentation.
Summarisers: Please don't just concatenate the replies into one big
verbatim message -- we can read the mailing list for full details! Keep
only the core info which really helps. Strip out signatures, anecdotes,
chatter, unneeded controversy and anything else which doesn't answer the
question. Also, always credit the people who've taken time out of
*their* work to help you with *yours*. P:-)
I've run out of time today, tommorrow I'll SUMmarise this thread to show
more concretely what I mean. After that, well, if it works use it, if
not leave it to collect dust in the bit bucket and move on.
cheers,
--
matt wilkie
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