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Re: it's all up to you users (was: Please forget LM MG NR IR SL AU)


From: John Mandereau
Subject: Re: it's all up to you users (was: Please forget LM MG NR IR SL AU)
Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2008 18:42:38 +0200

2008/8/13 Graham Percival <address@hidden>:
>It's a waste because, 7 days from now, there will be precisely
> half a dozen people who are updating the documentation.  There's
> at least 50 people who can answer simple questions here.  To be
> efficient, those six people should spend their time updating the
> docs -- better docs help everybody in the future, whereas writing
> a detailed and polite email only helps one or two people right
> now.

Why not doing both?  I find it normal that doc writers answer
non-trivial questions and by the way digest the answers into our docs.
 This should be a part of the normal docs workflow: sollicitating
users for proofreading rewritten docs is certainly a good thing, but
on the opposite direction, interesting questions and comments from
users can raise issues doc writers wouldn't have thought of by
themselves.


>(no, nobody will read the messages in the archives.  That's
> pure wishful thinking)

Nobody... except doc writers, developers, advanced users, and I'm
quite sure this will not change, because it's difficult to search the
archives when you don't know the right keywords to use.


>  And who really cares how busy the programmers and doc
> writers are?  I mean, that's the whole point of open source,
> right?  The users get free software, documentation, and email
> support.
>
Exactly, but users don't get all the features and support they want
for free.  Some features nobody wants to add for free, or  dedicated
user support might be sponsored.


> As I said, I've tried polite recruitment.  Take a look at the email
> archives; probably about six, twelve, and eighteen months ago.  It
> seems to have worked for doc writers, but it hasn't worked for finding
> (and keeping) -user support people.
>
On the French list, we never had to recruit people to provide support,
users who recently discovered LilyPond help each other, developers and
advanced users reply only if necessary (I expect somebody is going to
shoot me for all unreplied messages there :-p).  It seems this works
on this list too, except that you feel concerned that developers and
advanced users reply to so-called simple questions: IMHO it's up to
everyone to judge how (s)he wants to spend its time.  FWIW I'm too
busy to read all emails on this list, but I follow a rule to try to be
efficient: when I read an email on this list (or bug-lilypond) and
nobody else has sent an appropriate reply, I reply in one of the
following cases:
a) I can write the reply in 2 minutes because I know the topic well,
b) if I can fix a bug or improve the docs myself, I investigate and
also take time to write a well-written reply.

Everyone certainly has his (maybe implicit) own rules to decide how to
spend time on the lists.


> I know that at least two people are going to be offended by this email,
> but I don't care -- if it results in just ONE person "taking ownership"
> of being a polite -user email responder and making an honest effort at
> replying to everything they can -- just **ONE** person who isn't already
> part of GDP -- then I'll accept any amount of hard feelings the rest of
> you throw my way.
>
The only feeling I'd like to finally throw your way is: have a rest
and some vacation after your thesis conference!  You certainly deserve
and need it.  I can't imagine how you could manage a huge emails load
for so long time.

Best,
John




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