[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Andrew Badera and...@badera.us wrote: And there's no reason in the world to expose this list to people who aren't making API calls -- period! This line suggests that you should be currently developing an app (thus making API calls) to access this list, which is contrary to what almost everyone has already said in this thread. I think this thread has out lived it's usefulness. Most everyone seems to agree it is in everyones best interest to keep this group open to all. If you have something you need to keep private please consider some other means than this group _cts
[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
Perhaps it may be possible to have some kind of community agreement on a don't Tweet meta-character. Obviously this would be usless for bots that didn't follow the request but would be a start. On Mar 29, 11:23 pm, Chad Etzel jazzyc...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All, Wondering what everyone's feelings would be toward making this a private list. It is becoming more apparent that the feed for this list is being used to blast out posts to the void almost immediately after posting and makes it hard to ask private/closed group questions or get feedback about an unlaunched app before you go public with it. Case in point: I just posted about my iPhone webapp a little while ago asking for dev feedback before announcing it publicly, and already there are 3 tweets linking to the post:http://twitter.com/twittes1/status/1414300783http://twitter.com/twittea/status/1414269472http://twitter.com/ianonmac/status/1414254749 There was also at least one blog that would just copy the content of every post from the RSS feed and jam a ton of ads around it hoping to get clicks off of people just searching for twitter related stuff. I've never admin'd a Google Group before, but is there a way to make this list a little more closed? Or at least turn off the RSS feed? Thoughts? -Chad
[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
On 4/1/09 5:51 PM, rhysmeister wrote: Perhaps it may be possible to have some kind of community agreement on a don't Tweet meta-character. Obviously this would be usless for bots that didn't follow the request but would be a start. Maybe it wasn't a popular meme, but does anyone remember this one: Do you know how to keep a secret? Good, so do I. :-) -- Dossy Shiobara | do...@panoptic.com | http://dossy.org/ Panoptic Computer Network | http://panoptic.com/ He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on. (p. 70)
[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
Chad, As per our collective observations, I'm going to start better moderating posts from new users. This includes heading off basic requests for information that is already widely available before it goes public. I will work to point users to posts, the FAQ, offering answers, etc... and avoid drowning your inbox with unnecessary redundancy. It means a little more work for me on the front end, but it is a win-win as it will cultivate community, promote new-comer self-sufficiency and keep the quality of this group relatively high. Cheers, Doug Williams Twitter API Support http://twitter.com/dougw On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Jeffrey Greenberg jeffreygreenb...@gmail.com wrote: Let's please keep this list focused on developers working with/on the twitter api... other uses, like the promotion of application or looking for help with alpha testing of applications is not appropriate (though we can sympathize with the problem). RE: doug's question about making 'basic information more accessible... it's pretty accessible, and simple, and I think nicely summarized on one page (albeit a _large_ page) ... and sometime RTFM is the right response ... careful of bloating the help so that it becomes unreadably large... cheers! jeffrey http://www.jeffrey-greenberg.com
[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
HI Doug, I have 2 comments here: 1) I think ChazziousJadamous's initial request was more along the lines of how can we prevent scraping/feeds of this content to allow developers more liberty in posting so there are fewer instances of posts showing up all over the web Like, I would love a place where I could honestly post a question without it showing up on schmuckyscmubks ad-filled page, getting crawled by google, that then shows up in search results because I accidenally named my app. 2) You should not have the burden of filtering posts, especially as in 6-8 months there could be 10 million users and 500,000 apps asking the same thing. The metaphor is the exact same as twitter. If you dont like the noise, turn off notifications and just go and check the group when you have a question. Again, just trying to help here. I know you guys have tons of stuff to do. On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 10:41 AM, Doug Williams d...@twitter.com wrote: Chad, As per our collective observations, I'm going to start better moderating posts from new users. This includes heading off basic requests for information that is already widely available before it goes public. I will work to point users to posts, the FAQ, offering answers, etc... and avoid drowning your inbox with unnecessary redundancy. It means a little more work for me on the front end, but it is a win-win as it will cultivate community, promote new-comer self-sufficiency and keep the quality of this group relatively high. Cheers, Doug Williams Twitter API Support http://twitter.com/dougw On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Jeffrey Greenberg jeffreygreenb...@gmail.com wrote: Let's please keep this list focused on developers working with/on the twitter api... other uses, like the promotion of application or looking for help with alpha testing of applications is not appropriate (though we can sympathize with the problem). RE: doug's question about making 'basic information more accessible... it's pretty accessible, and simple, and I think nicely summarized on one page (albeit a _large_ page) ... and sometime RTFM is the right response ... careful of bloating the help so that it becomes unreadably large... cheers! jeffrey http://www.jeffrey-greenberg.com -- Peter M. Denton www.twibs.com i...@twibs.com Twibs makes Top 20 apps on Twitter - http://tinyurl.com/bopu6c
[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
Peter, You are indeed correct, and the post has deviated. Chad, the only answer to your initial request is to connect with respected developers off list ( twitter.com is a good choice) and ask for their opinion. The open nature of the list, and syndication feeds, promote collaboration. The classic trade off is giving that we give the info away to developers and adsense spammers alike. Again, if anyone has ideas around the Chad's original problem, I'm open to suggestions. Second, from my point of view, high level of redundancy is indicative of another problem: a broken system. I am still fresh but one of the goals of my hiring was to make it easier for the community to grow. One way to facilitate this growth is to work toward community awareness of existing sources of information. Toward that end, I see the frontend work of the moderators described above as an initial investment. If we are better able to moderate this list, getting new developers to notice the search box, issues list, and wiki documentation, etc., then these same developers can serve as ambassadors to the next wave of developers. Grassroots support is one of the best ways to prevent the support system from crumbling under the growth. Thanks, Doug Williams Twitter API Support http://twitter.com/dougw On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 11:02 AM, Peter Denton petermden...@gmail.comwrote: HI Doug, I have 2 comments here: 1) I think ChazziousJadamous's initial request was more along the lines of how can we prevent scraping/feeds of this content to allow developers more liberty in posting so there are fewer instances of posts showing up all over the web Like, I would love a place where I could honestly post a question without it showing up on schmuckyscmubks ad-filled page, getting crawled by google, that then shows up in search results because I accidenally named my app. 2) You should not have the burden of filtering posts, especially as in 6-8 months there could be 10 million users and 500,000 apps asking the same thing. The metaphor is the exact same as twitter. If you dont like the noise, turn off notifications and just go and check the group when you have a question. Again, just trying to help here. I know you guys have tons of stuff to do. On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 10:41 AM, Doug Williams d...@twitter.com wrote: Chad, As per our collective observations, I'm going to start better moderating posts from new users. This includes heading off basic requests for information that is already widely available before it goes public. I will work to point users to posts, the FAQ, offering answers, etc... and avoid drowning your inbox with unnecessary redundancy. It means a little more work for me on the front end, but it is a win-win as it will cultivate community, promote new-comer self-sufficiency and keep the quality of this group relatively high. Cheers, Doug Williams Twitter API Support http://twitter.com/dougw On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Jeffrey Greenberg jeffreygreenb...@gmail.com wrote: Let's please keep this list focused on developers working with/on the twitter api... other uses, like the promotion of application or looking for help with alpha testing of applications is not appropriate (though we can sympathize with the problem). RE: doug's question about making 'basic information more accessible... it's pretty accessible, and simple, and I think nicely summarized on one page (albeit a _large_ page) ... and sometime RTFM is the right response ... careful of bloating the help so that it becomes unreadably large... cheers! jeffrey http://www.jeffrey-greenberg.com -- Peter M. Denton www.twibs.com i...@twibs.com Twibs makes Top 20 apps on Twitter - http://tinyurl.com/bopu6c
[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
The way I see it now (or at least in the recent past), this board has been mainly used for asking how to get a source parameter, basic how-to-get-started type questions, and reporting twitter service outages or glitches that the twitter team are probably already painfully aware of. I know there are others that feel the same way, and I'm not alone. I'm not saying these are bad or unworthy topics, I think I have been helpful in answering a fair share of getting started questions b/c it's important to grow the community. I just think it would be nice to have a placed for deeper, more focused discussion for the active 3rd party developers out there. Maybe that's pie in the sky, who knows... I think you comment here hits the nail on the head for me. To be fair most of my posts so far have been of the is-it-down-or-just-for-me, this-doesn't-work-oh-wait-its-just-me variety, but I do work with the API at a deeper level, and I've never occurred to bring those higher architectural level discussions to this group, not because I don't think there are people here trying to solve the same problems as I am, but because a) the deeper topics get about the same response rate as the shallow ones, and b) for the most part the API is self-described, and the challenges are more about the components of the work rather than Twitter's involvement in the work (i.e. user-id caching for graph- aware apps, multithreading incoming periodic data from the API for UX clients, etc.). So, maybe the group is exactly how it should be, I don't necessarily want to see Doug run off his feet moderating the source questions (I built a fluent interface library over the Twitter API and now *I* field the Source question, so CWYWF) and maybe there is a need for another group of people who are active developers who want to compare notes on some of the deeper topics because that group by definition will (hopefully) consist of responsive people who are in the same boat and are not de-sensitized by the beginner-level questions in their digest emails and become less-active as a result. Daniel
[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
I don't think anyone is suggesting the documentation become closed, by any means. I think there is simply a desire to reduce the noise and exposure on the developer channel. And there's no reason in the world to expose this list to people who aren't making API calls -- period! On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 6:39 PM, Matt Cottingham mattcotting...@gmail.comwrote: I'm going to go out on a limb here as a completely new member: 1) The API, supporting documentation, and community, is great. I'd hate for any of that to become closed. 2) It is not hard to contact users and arrange private testing of an app; in fact if you're worried about twitter users trying to use something half finished and then giving up, this should be your first choice, rather than publicising it on a google group. 3) Closing this group will not protect twitter's brand. There are always going to be pundits predicting the downfall of this and that. I'd hope that most people who go to the effort of creating web apps realise that this sort of commentary is essentially a way to generate traffic, and nothing else. Do Twitter's investors get their forecasts from the blogosphere? I hope not. 4) Relatedly, if the API and subsequent usage of it is in some way detrimental to Twitter's brand, then Twitter can deal with it. Changing this group won't help that, only hinder it. Twitter has enough problems with down time as it is, and the likelihood of borked twitter apps stopping people using it seems like a low priority. I hope I've laid this out clearly; to summarize, I think it would be a huge shame for the community to become closed. Conversely, leaving the community open is not detrimental to Twitter. M. On Mar 30, 12:23 am, Chad Etzel jazzyc...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All, Wondering what everyone's feelings would be toward making this a private list. It is becoming more apparent that the feed for this list is being used to blast out posts to the void almost immediately after posting and makes it hard to ask private/closed group questions or get feedback about an unlaunched app before you go public with it. Case in point: I just posted about my iPhone webapp a little while ago asking for dev feedback before announcing it publicly, and already there are 3 tweets linking to the post: http://twitter.com/twittes1/status/1414300783http://twitter.com/twittea/status/1414269472http://twitter.com/ianonmac/status/1414254749 There was also at least one blog that would just copy the content of every post from the RSS feed and jam a ton of ads around it hoping to get clicks off of people just searching for twitter related stuff. I've never admin'd a Google Group before, but is there a way to make this list a little more closed? Or at least turn off the RSS feed? Thoughts? -Chad
[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 8:58 AM, Clint Shryock cts...@gmail.com wrote: How then would you propose acceptance to this group is determined? I don't know, that's why I'm asking. I've never admin'd a google group before. I think it's in Twitter's best interest to allow information on their API for new developers as accessible as possible to build their platform. This list is a great resource in accomplishing that. In my opinion you should have contacted people from this list you've had interactions with privately and shown them in that manner. Otherwise, I would have solicited people interested in screening an app. That, of course, is an option, but getting responses to anything posted here is a total crapshoot, and sending a message to a subset of those people makes chances for a response even worse. I'd rather send a message to the group since that's what it is for, without fear of having it be spread all over the place. Maybe that's not possible, and I can deal with that. Anyway, it was just a suggestion/question. Maybe it's not feasible. If not, then nevermind :) -chad
[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
Chad: what you state IS quite desirable, but is, unfortunately, equally not feasible. You can moderate join requests, you can moderate members' posts, but the distinction you seem to be looking for in your original email is near-impossible to establish. Perhaps membership to the list should be predicated on assignment of a source parameter, and detection of that parameter being in-use? (This would cut off a lot of casual or tangential looky-loos ... not unlike myself, who either haven't had need to apply, or have applied and simply haven't used. It could be a decent yardstick ... but then you have people doing widgets and other integrations, who may never need a source param ...) On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 11:42 AM, Chad Etzel jazzyc...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 8:58 AM, Clint Shryock cts...@gmail.com wrote: How then would you propose acceptance to this group is determined? I don't know, that's why I'm asking. I've never admin'd a google group before. I think it's in Twitter's best interest to allow information on their API for new developers as accessible as possible to build their platform. This list is a great resource in accomplishing that. In my opinion you should have contacted people from this list you've had interactions with privately and shown them in that manner. Otherwise, I would have solicited people interested in screening an app. That, of course, is an option, but getting responses to anything posted here is a total crapshoot, and sending a message to a subset of those people makes chances for a response even worse. I'd rather send a message to the group since that's what it is for, without fear of having it be spread all over the place. Maybe that's not possible, and I can deal with that. Anyway, it was just a suggestion/question. Maybe it's not feasible. If not, then nevermind :) -chad
[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
Chad, A number of people have asked on- and off- list where they should display their app and ask for feedback. Do you think that a separate group for feedback and suggestions for workable apps would be beneficial? Doug Williams Twitter API Support http://twitter.com/dougw On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 10:02 AM, Andrew Badera and...@badera.us wrote: Chad: what you state IS quite desirable, but is, unfortunately, equally not feasible. You can moderate join requests, you can moderate members' posts, but the distinction you seem to be looking for in your original email is near-impossible to establish. Perhaps membership to the list should be predicated on assignment of a source parameter, and detection of that parameter being in-use? (This would cut off a lot of casual or tangential looky-loos ... not unlike myself, who either haven't had need to apply, or have applied and simply haven't used. It could be a decent yardstick ... but then you have people doing widgets and other integrations, who may never need a source param ...) On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 11:42 AM, Chad Etzel jazzyc...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 8:58 AM, Clint Shryock cts...@gmail.com wrote: How then would you propose acceptance to this group is determined? I don't know, that's why I'm asking. I've never admin'd a google group before. I think it's in Twitter's best interest to allow information on their API for new developers as accessible as possible to build their platform. This list is a great resource in accomplishing that. In my opinion you should have contacted people from this list you've had interactions with privately and shown them in that manner. Otherwise, I would have solicited people interested in screening an app. That, of course, is an option, but getting responses to anything posted here is a total crapshoot, and sending a message to a subset of those people makes chances for a response even worse. I'd rather send a message to the group since that's what it is for, without fear of having it be spread all over the place. Maybe that's not possible, and I can deal with that. Anyway, it was just a suggestion/question. Maybe it's not feasible. If not, then nevermind :) -chad
[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 1:02 PM, Andrew Badera and...@badera.us wrote: Chad: what you state IS quite desirable, but is, unfortunately, equally not feasible. You can moderate join requests, you can moderate members' posts, but the distinction you seem to be looking for in your original email is near-impossible to establish. Perhaps membership to the list should be predicated on assignment of a source parameter, and detection of that parameter being in-use? (This would cut off a lot of casual or tangential looky-loos ... not unlike myself, who either haven't had need to apply, or have applied and simply haven't used. It could be a decent yardstick ... but then you have people doing widgets and other integrations, who may never need a source param ...) In my case, I just started developing using twitters api. I came here to ask you guys questions for help. I have no app in production so I can't refer anyone to a particular project. I came here so seek info. I'd feel put off if I couldn't learn anything just because I haven't built anything with twitters api before. Thats kind of a catch22. On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 11:42 AM, Chad Etzel jazzyc...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 8:58 AM, Clint Shryock cts...@gmail.com wrote: How then would you propose acceptance to this group is determined? I don't know, that's why I'm asking. I've never admin'd a google group before. I think it's in Twitter's best interest to allow information on their API for new developers as accessible as possible to build their platform. This list is a great resource in accomplishing that. In my opinion you should have contacted people from this list you've had interactions with privately and shown them in that manner. Otherwise, I would have solicited people interested in screening an app. That, of course, is an option, but getting responses to anything posted here is a total crapshoot, and sending a message to a subset of those people makes chances for a response even worse. I'd rather send a message to the group since that's what it is for, without fear of having it be spread all over the place. Maybe that's not possible, and I can deal with that. Anyway, it was just a suggestion/question. Maybe it's not feasible. If not, then nevermind :) -chad
[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
Doug, This forum is the appropriate place to bring up questions about the API, regardless if you have an application in development. Therefore, please don't feel like you cannot speak up just because you don't have code you can show off. Chances are if you have a question, so do other developers. All we ask is that you check the FAQ and search the archives of this group before posting a new topic. Cheers, Doug Williams Twitter API Support http://twitter.com/dougw On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 12:28 PM, Doug Tangren d.tang...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 1:02 PM, Andrew Badera and...@badera.us wrote: Chad: what you state IS quite desirable, but is, unfortunately, equally not feasible. You can moderate join requests, you can moderate members' posts, but the distinction you seem to be looking for in your original email is near-impossible to establish. Perhaps membership to the list should be predicated on assignment of a source parameter, and detection of that parameter being in-use? (This would cut off a lot of casual or tangential looky-loos ... not unlike myself, who either haven't had need to apply, or have applied and simply haven't used. It could be a decent yardstick ... but then you have people doing widgets and other integrations, who may never need a source param ...) In my case, I just started developing using twitters api. I came here to ask you guys questions for help. I have no app in production so I can't refer anyone to a particular project. I came here so seek info. I'd feel put off if I couldn't learn anything just because I haven't built anything with twitters api before. Thats kind of a catch22. On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 11:42 AM, Chad Etzel jazzyc...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 8:58 AM, Clint Shryock cts...@gmail.com wrote: How then would you propose acceptance to this group is determined? I don't know, that's why I'm asking. I've never admin'd a google group before. I think it's in Twitter's best interest to allow information on their API for new developers as accessible as possible to build their platform. This list is a great resource in accomplishing that. In my opinion you should have contacted people from this list you've had interactions with privately and shown them in that manner. Otherwise, I would have solicited people interested in screening an app. That, of course, is an option, but getting responses to anything posted here is a total crapshoot, and sending a message to a subset of those people makes chances for a response even worse. I'd rather send a message to the group since that's what it is for, without fear of having it be spread all over the place. Maybe that's not possible, and I can deal with that. Anyway, it was just a suggestion/question. Maybe it's not feasible. If not, then nevermind :) -chad
[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 1:38 PM, Doug Williams d...@twitter.com wrote: Chad, A number of people have asked on- and off- list where they should display their app and ask for feedback. Do you think that a separate group for feedback and suggestions for workable apps would be beneficial? If there was a group of people that would be willing to actively participate in such a group, then I think it would be a valuable thing. imho, the value of a group/list is in the amount of response or discussion that is generated by the posts. Right now asking for feedback on apps (for example) is extremely hit-or-miss. As an example: my post yesterday asking for testers/feedback on my iphone webapp did generate some traffic (from my analytics I saw that at least 20 people went to try it out), but only 1 person sent a reply to that thread (publicly or privately). This is just a personal example as a data-point, I'm not whining or having a self-pity party... so turn off your flamethrowers. If there were a separate list where people were willing and able to test apps and give feedback to people before publicly launching something, that could be really helpful. However, I know the perception of creating a separate private list will probably be negative and seen as creating a clique or something, but for the people that are always hanging around these boards I think they would appreciate it. How would you decide who to give membership to? I dunno... again, I know there's not an easy answer. The way I see it now (or at least in the recent past), this board has been mainly used for asking how to get a source parameter, basic how-to-get-started type questions, and reporting twitter service outages or glitches that the twitter team are probably already painfully aware of. I know there are others that feel the same way, and I'm not alone. I'm not saying these are bad or unworthy topics, I think I have been helpful in answering a fair share of getting started questions b/c it's important to grow the community. I just think it would be nice to have a placed for deeper, more focused discussion for the active 3rd party developers out there. Maybe that's pie in the sky, who knows... I'm not trying to start factions here... maybe I didn't phrase my initial question correctly carry on, -Chad
[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
What I would like to do is make the basic information much more accessible, which would ensure that the more fundamental questions are answered implicitly while the conversation can cultivate around more productive topics. The link to the FAQ doesn't curb the thrice weekly request for source parameter help, and there are a lot of requests that redundant. Do you guys have any suggestions to provide community newcomers a checklist of information they need to get started? Do you have any good examples of other communities that do it better? Well, maybe I just gave myself an idea there... Doug Williams Twitter API Support http://twitter.com/dougw On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 12:58 PM, Chad Etzel jazzyc...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 1:38 PM, Doug Williams d...@twitter.com wrote: Chad, A number of people have asked on- and off- list where they should display their app and ask for feedback. Do you think that a separate group for feedback and suggestions for workable apps would be beneficial? If there was a group of people that would be willing to actively participate in such a group, then I think it would be a valuable thing. imho, the value of a group/list is in the amount of response or discussion that is generated by the posts. Right now asking for feedback on apps (for example) is extremely hit-or-miss. As an example: my post yesterday asking for testers/feedback on my iphone webapp did generate some traffic (from my analytics I saw that at least 20 people went to try it out), but only 1 person sent a reply to that thread (publicly or privately). This is just a personal example as a data-point, I'm not whining or having a self-pity party... so turn off your flamethrowers. If there were a separate list where people were willing and able to test apps and give feedback to people before publicly launching something, that could be really helpful. However, I know the perception of creating a separate private list will probably be negative and seen as creating a clique or something, but for the people that are always hanging around these boards I think they would appreciate it. How would you decide who to give membership to? I dunno... again, I know there's not an easy answer. The way I see it now (or at least in the recent past), this board has been mainly used for asking how to get a source parameter, basic how-to-get-started type questions, and reporting twitter service outages or glitches that the twitter team are probably already painfully aware of. I know there are others that feel the same way, and I'm not alone. I'm not saying these are bad or unworthy topics, I think I have been helpful in answering a fair share of getting started questions b/c it's important to grow the community. I just think it would be nice to have a placed for deeper, more focused discussion for the active 3rd party developers out there. Maybe that's pie in the sky, who knows... I'm not trying to start factions here... maybe I didn't phrase my initial question correctly carry on, -Chad
[twitter-dev] Re: Can we make this a private list?
Let's please keep this list focused on developers working with/on the twitter api... other uses, like the promotion of application or looking for help with alpha testing of applications is not appropriate (though we can sympathize with the problem). RE: doug's question about making 'basic information more accessible... it's pretty accessible, and simple, and I think nicely summarized on one page (albeit a _large_ page) ... and sometime RTFM is the right response ... careful of bloating the help so that it becomes unreadably large... cheers! jeffrey http://www.jeffrey-greenberg.com
