At 10:56 AM 6/24/2005, Nathan Maves wrote:
Rahul,
Like many other open source solutions that I use, this site has it
correct. They ask new users to search for their problem in both the
Wiki and the mail archives. Of course it would be nice it they read
the manual first. If they can not find a solution they are more then
welcome to ask it on the alias.
Most of the support people only have time to respond to email. If we
find that it is a common problem and we have a solution we will post
it to the Wiki.
There is actually a third, and perhaps more useful place for users to
search for information regarding problems they having with an open source
project. Most of the open source projects that I have been involved with
(mostly just as a user of the technology) have bug/issue tracking systems
such as Bugzilla or Jira. The advantage of searching such a system is that
those that have taken on the responsibility for actually fixing issues do
monitor the issue tracking system and may actually receive email if an
issue is logged on a component for which they're responsible. The better
issue tracking systems allow the "assignee" or reporter of a problem to
include comments, attach a patch file, and at the very least describe the
resolution. In some cases this might include a comment such as "fixed in
version 1.3.2", which would be quite useful for someone that encountered a
problem when using version 1.3.1.
