I think something would definitely be useful. Something *short* that people will read and can actually follow. Something that tells them what we will ask first in trying to diagnose a problem. Something/somewhere that they will be likely to run across before posting a question.
Maybe right near the top of the solr faq or something? Along the lines of "If you're having a problem with X, ... post to solr-user with A B, C" We should keep the list small, or give different lists depending on the problem. We don't want people to have to fill out a 10 page form to ask for help :-) -Yonik http://www.lucidimagination.com On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Erick Erickson <erickerick...@gmail.com> wrote: > Sorry to put this on the dev list, but the folks who read this are also some > of the "heavy hitters" on the user list.... > > I'm seeing questions on the users list of the form "help, it doesn't work", > which then requires people to guess, ask for clarification, etc. I often > try to grab them long enough to ask for more information and take some of > the load off the folks who really know things, but I'm starting to get > frustrated with the number of really vague posts that require three > back-and-forths before anything useful comes of it. > > In, I admit, 2 minutes of looking I couldn't find anything on the SOLR site > about how to use the user's list. > > Would it be useful If I created a much gentler (and shorter) version of > http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html? If it'd be useful, is it > worth putting on the SOLR website? Or maybe Chris would be willing to put it > on his apache page so we could link to it easily. > > My goal here would be to have something welcoming (the above is pretty darn > off-putting, even if it accurately reflects my reactions sometime), but at > the same time conveying that there are things the poster can do to 1> get > answers much more quickly and 2> stop wasting everyone's time (OK, a little > frustration there). > > I know my first questions on the Lucene list sure could have used a bit of > etiquette guidance, but I'm not sure I'd have appreciated something in the > tone of the link above. That said, I'm tired of typing the same request for > more information over and over and over....... > > Or, someone could say "Do you mean this page <url here>" and I'll just blush > in the privacy of my study.... > > Whaddya think? > > Erick >
