Hello all, I think Nutch is a fantastic product. I used 0.6 initially, then 0.7. My 0.7 installation is in production, and mostly works really well. I haven't made the move to 0.8 yet, because the direction that Nutch has gone for 0.8 is quite different from what my organisation requires from its search engine. I owe Doug and the team a huge thank-you for all the effort they've put into Nutch. Well done. However, it's a sad day when someone like Richard Braman gets shot down in flames for making some fair and valid criticisms of the Nutch project. Apart from his statement about Nutch being in "proof of concept" stage, I agree with everything Richard has said. The documentation DOES leave a fair bit to be desired. The initial learning curve CAN be precipitous. It's easy to get confused with all the various settings in the XML configuration files and the various plug-ins. I can understand that he doesn't feel that he's in a position to contribute to the documentation base, because he doesn't know all the answers yet. I think moving everything, including the tutorial, to the Wiki is a fine idea; provided that we encourage new users to comment on what did and didn't work for them. I think we'll find there's a lot of common ground among their comments. Long-term readers of the nutch-user mailing list know that many newbies ask the same questions. Also, I've lost count of the number of times someone has posted something to the effect of "I'll pay someone to give me Nutch support", simply because they find the existing documentation and mailing lists inadequate. Usually, that person gets told that the best way to get Nutch support is to ask questions on the mailing list; but since questions often go unanswered, this isn't a very good way to get Nutch support at all. All of this is acceptable in a product that hasn't yet reached "version 1.0". The code has moved ahead faster than the documentation; and that's fine, provided the documentation will eventually catch up. Maybe, once 0.8 is deemed production-worthy, the team should down tools, stop coding, and put some effort into really producing a really lovely set of documentation, including a comprehensive FAQ. I believe that this will help grow the user base, faster than adding new features ever could. So in summary, well done to the Nutch team for this great product. Well done to Richard Braman for pointing out what could be done. And let's all not flame people whose opinions differ from our own. David.
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