Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Thomas de Grenier de Latour <degrenier@easyconnect.fr>]

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.
-- 
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