Well I think the idea is that a mailing list, and by extension, the whole open source project, isn't a one way street. Most people who use open source software contribute in one way or another, whether it's through supporting new users, hacking on the source code, or offering helpful, informed suggestions about the project.
Not to be a Negative Nancy® here, but the problem is that "You're Doing It Wrong." If you're just wanting to get your questions answered without any sort of input to the project, I think perhaps you're missing the spirit.
That's all to say, it's fine for you to do that, but don't expect for it to be a frictionless process. The idea is that you don't do things that way. And most people who aren't (like me) really like the mailing list concept; it's easy, it integrates with something I already use all the time, and it exposes me to things and conversations that are going on really easily.
Not to be a Negative Nancy® here, but the problem is that "You're Doing It Wrong." If you're just wanting to get your questions answered without any sort of input to the project, I think perhaps you're missing the spirit.
Theres more reasons to want to get support for something then your own selfish needs. Maybe you want to start hacking on the project but don't want to step on someone else's toes? Or how about if you're interested in learning about the project to see if it fits your needs (to avoid wasting your and other peoples time later on forcing a square peg into a round hole)?
And asking questions is giving input to the project. If a question keeps coming up, it should be sending you a signal that goes "Hey, this needs some work so that people don't have to spend so much time asking us how it works". I would argue that you're "missing the spirit" if you're arguing that its wrong to only want to ask questions.
but don't expect for it to be a frictionless process. The idea is that you don't do things that way.
Why shouldn't the process be frictionless? Why do you want to make it difficult for people to start using or get help using your software?
Theres more reasons to want to get support for something then your own selfish needs. Maybe you want to start hacking on the project but don't want to step on someone else's toes?
Then join the mailing list and participate in the discussion.
Why shouldn't the process be frictionless?
There's very little software that supports both fly-by questions on the web, and proper discussion via e-mail, so we optimize for ourselves, not users.
Web forums aren't frictionless. In fact, they're totally shit for the purpose of carrying on detailed conversations over the course of days without requiring constant attention from all the participants.
There's a reason why most forums will e-mail you when your watched threads are updated. Why not just have the e-mail be the thread?
Why do you want to make it difficult for people to start using or get help using your software?
Users don't pay the bills, and questions are usually incredibly repetitive and dull, no matter how easy-to-use or well documented the project is.
I'd rather the users that are unwilling to invest in the mailing list self-segregate by posting their one-offs to sites like StackOverflow.
It may just be me, but it seems like you're contradicting yourself with:
There's very little software that supports both fly-by questions on the web, and proper discussion via e-mail, so we optimize for ourselves, not users.
and
Users don't pay the bills, and questions are usually incredibly repetitive and dull, no matter how easy-to-use or well documented the project is.
While there's absolutely nothing wrong with coding for yourself, it doesn't usually pay the bills either. And (sadly), its rarer then it should be for someone to be able to print money for themselves by making things for themselves.
I reiterate: If different users are asking the same question repeatedly, perhaps its an indicator that there's something wrong with your software, not your users?
Oh, and, incase you don't know, not all software needs to expand until they can read mail. Multitasking has (sans the iPhone, if you want), been around for decades. People are more than capable of having one program open at a time. There's nothing wrong with this.
Web forums aren't frictionless. In fact, they're totally shit for the purpose of carrying on detailed conversations over the course of days without requiring constant attention from all the participants.
There's a reason why most forums will e-mail you when your watched threads are updated. Why not just have the e-mail be the thread?
Nowhere did I say that forums are better than email. They're both equally bad. My personal preference for this sort of thing is IRC. Of course, I'm biased, since one of the projects I spend the most time working on is an IRC client.
Also, forums are easier for end users to figure out then mailing lists. You could argue thats because mailing list software tends to suck, but, thats ignoring the issue.
I'd rather the users that are unwilling to invest in the mailing list self-segregate by posting their one-offs to sites like StackOverflow.
Not all open source projects are programming languages or libraries, which is SO's target area currently seems to be.
While there's absolutely nothing wrong with coding for yourself, it doesn't usually pay the bills either. And (sadly), its rarer then it should be for someone to be able to print money for themselves by making things for themselves.
Feel free to treat "pay the bills" metaphorically. That was my intention.
I reiterate: If different users are asking the same question repeatedly, perhaps its an indicator that there's something wrong with your software, not your users?
Perhaps. But more often than not it's an inherent complexity in the problem space itself.
Oh, and, incase you don't know, not all software needs to expand until they can read mail. Multitasking has (sans the iPhone, if you want), been around for decades. People are more than capable of having one program open at a time. There's nothing wrong with this.
I don't follow your meaning ...
My personal preference for this sort of thing is IRC.
IRC is real-time and ephemeral, which makes it considerably more difficult to engage in conversations with contributors in other time zones, and refer back to design discussions that occurred 5-20 years ago.
Also, forums are easier for end users to figure out then mailing lists.
I thought we already established that project communication channels are primarily optimized for the project contributors who use them daily, not for once-off questions from end users.
Perhaps. But more often than not it's an inherent complexity in the problem space itself.
That isn't to say there is only ever one way of performing an action or that it is impossible to make it clearer how to perform a task. And if you make it difficult for users to give you their opinion, it will be that much harder to know what needs to be improved.
IRC is real-time and ephemeral, which makes it considerably more difficult to engage in conversations with contributors in other time zones, and refer back to design discussions that occurred 5-20 years ago.
There's not very many projects that date back 20 years ago that also have the complexity that you're talking about. X11 and the Linux kernel are the only two I can think of off the top of my head. And I would hope that a 5-20 year old project that's continuously under development would have more documentation than posts from a mailing list about its design.
I thought we already established that project communication channels are primarily optimized for the project contributors who use them daily, not for once-off questions from end users.
I would be interested in seeing how many projects — open source in this case — have > 1 or 2 contributors.
I may be off base, but I'd guess that you're optimizing towards large, highly visible projects and not the small, norm of an open source project.
> That isn't to say there is only ever one way of performing an action or that it is impossible to make it clearer how to perform a task. And if you make it difficult for users to give you their opinion, it will be that much harder to know what needs to be improved.
Not to berate users, but sometimes when people run into an issue they want a solution yesterday. So they hop on to the mailinglist/irc and demand to have their problem fixed... Only for more informed people to point them at the FAQ which probably results for the first Google search on problem.
I'm not saying that the software could't have flaws. I'm saying that if people are armed with the answer to their issue, then they are more equipped to make suggestions at the future direction of the software. When they still don't have an answer they are still in, "FIX THIS NOW!" mode.
> IRC is real-time and ephemeral, which makes it considerably more difficult to engage in conversations with contributors in other time zones, and refer back to design discussions that occurred 5-20 years ago.
Lots of places log IRC and host the logs. That might not be your cup of tea, but it's far from hard. And I think that the reason that most design discussions (other than one-off decisions) still happen in email is that you can't really 'write up' something in IRC the way that you can compose an email.
> I thought we already established that project communication channels are primarily optimized for the project contributors who use them daily, not for once-off questions from end users.
Why not create a web forum/usenet/mailinglist gateway? Launchpad is semi-like this. I haven't pushed the bounds of it, but I can sign in through the bug page and post something. I can also subscribe to the bug and get an email for each post, which I can reply to (though it is limited in that there is no threading, but bug tracking is fairly topical) to post back to the bug page.
Lots of places log IRC and host the logs. That might not be your cup of tea, but it's far from hard.
In addition to privacy issues (many individuals don't approve of logging of what they perceive to be ephemeral 'hallway' conversations), there's the simple fact that these types of conversation don't lend themselves to well thought out messages -- as you noted with: "you can't really 'write up' something in IRC the way that you can compose an email."
Why not create a web forum/usenet/mailinglist gateway?
I'm sure nobody would object if you did -- Jive Forums (when the product still existed[1]) used to support both web-based and NNTP-based access.
[1] Jive Software was profitable[2] and engineering focused, and Jive Forums was a great product. They had both large and small customers, ranging from Amazon, Apple, and EA to numerous small businesses that required quality collaboration software -- jabber, forums, etc.
Then they took a massive, unnecessary $15 million investment from Sequoia Capital in 2007, hired a Chief Marketing Officer, completely fouled up their product line in "simplifying" it, and wound up having to raise another $12 million in series B funding in 2009 to keep the now-bloated machine running. They had to lay off a (reported) third of their staff in 2008 (but kept the 'CMO' position).
Waste of a good company with a solid set of collaboration products and a solid engineering team. Trimming down their product lines and raising their prices has left them out of reach of SMBs, and the "one size fits all" product completely ignores this straight-forward e-mail/forums/web problem space.
It also leaves a large market opportunity for someone to write a forums system that doesn't suck -- a surprising number of large corporations are still slaved to Jive Software's increasingly hefty licensing fees.
Since the beginning, we have had a vision of open collaboration and how it can fundamentally transform the way a company works. Now the market is starting to agree with that vision and is seeing the benefits. We're proud of how we have grown this business over the last six years. We've been profitable since inception and have put good money in the bank. We have made our share of mistakes and missteps, but we haven't sacrificed our values and ultimately those mistakes made us stronger and smarter. This year we struck a mighty vein with Clearspace when we launched in February. Now the growth is in high gear and bringing on a funding partner is a step towards becoming the provider of choice in the market.
> I reiterate: If different users are asking the same question repeatedly, perhaps its an indicator that there's something wrong with your software, not your users?
Sometimes the issue is that people have different assumptions about how something should work. Sometimes there's not always an intuitive way to make something easy for every person on the planet to immediately grasp. But this is all a little too abstract without solid examples.
Not to be a Negative Nancy® here, but the problem is that "You're Doing It Wrong." If you're just wanting to get your questions answered without any sort of input to the project, I think perhaps you're missing the spirit.
That's all to say, it's fine for you to do that, but don't expect for it to be a frictionless process. The idea is that you don't do things that way. And most people who aren't (like me) really like the mailing list concept; it's easy, it integrates with something I already use all the time, and it exposes me to things and conversations that are going on really easily.