Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer <christel@gentoo.org>]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 11:42 -0400, Alec Warner wrote:
> Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
> > On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 10:21:54 +0100,
> > Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>* If we're looking to increase the flow of end users -> super users ->
> >>developers, perhaps we should focus more upon improving development
> >>tools or development documentation.
> > 
> > 
> > I would also suggest creation of a gentoo-dev-help@ mailing-list.
> > Something similar to what, i guess, the homonym IRC chan is, but for
> > people who don't like IRC.  Maybe i'm wrong and that's not the
> > intention, but after 4 years of reading on gentoo-dev@ (yeah, today is
> > anniversary of my subscription - yik, that's more than 36K emails in
> > this maildir) , my feeling is that it's not the right place for users
> > to ask technical questions about development/contributing (ebuilds
> > writing, etc.).  It's not that i fear this ML, but i see it mainly as a
> > place for dev-to-dev communication on general/important topics (gleps
> > discussion, common sense reminders, random flamewars, etc.), and thus i
> > see the occasional "How {c,sh}ould i do something?" messages about
> > small details as somehow off-topic, and i tend to avoid posting some.
> > 
> > Seeing how more numerous this kind of messages are on "Portage &
> > Programming" forums, or on gentoo-user*@ lists, i guess i'm not the
> > only user with such feeling.  But forums or users MLs are not really
> > satisfactory for non-obvious questions, because the devs/users rate
> > there is too low.
> > 
> > So, what i usualy do when i'm not sure about something, in an ebuild i
> > wrote for instance, is to post  it as-is on bugs.g.o, with the
> > questions left open in my report. But they will stay unanswered if
> > the bug falls in the "maintainer-wanted@" oubliettes, or if the
> > assignee is too short in time to explain me why he choosed one solution
> > rather than an other. And even if i get my answer, it will be from a
> > single dev, whereas others might have had a different views on the
> > topic.
> > 
> > Finally, i think such a mainling list could give good hints on what to
> > improve in the documentation. Some legitimate questions may point to
> > real lacks in the documentation, and some answers could be starting
> > point for new chunks to add to the official or unofficial handbooks.
> > 
> > --
> > TGL.
> 
> +1, plus the ML is archived unlike IRC, and users can search archives
> and we could more easily compile a FAQ about ebuild writing and such.

What Alec said, however, this would require that we have interested
developers who would subscribe and be active when they can, to avoid it
becoming another -user. 

But yes, I like that idea too! Thank you.


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list