[Zope] A new list needed?
Danny William Adair
danny@adair.net
Mon, 22 Oct 2001 12:19:12 +1300
Hi!
I think this discussion should be split in two threads :-)
a) What sort of technology do we need?
b) What sort of content do we need?
If I'm in the desperate need of an answer to a very serious question, and
you'd be the person to answer it, I would seriously have no problem text
messaging you on your mobile phone. :-)
IMHO, these two things shouldn't be mixed up. I don't want to communicate
with people who find NNTP, usenet, or a mailing list the most appropriate
method of communication. I want to communicate with people who talk about the
same subjects that I do, in the same language that I do. Yes, language also
as in "level of qualification, experience and sophistication". Of course that
border gets blurry.
Personally, I'm fine with mailing lists. On the other side, I'm fine with a
lot of things. Whatever you'll do, there will be advantages and disadvantages
you get with the chosen method of communication. But that was not Andrew's
point. He was talking about the different levels of interest and knowledge
that the different people have that are currently communicating _all_ on the
same list. He could have made the same point with _all_ of us in the same
newsgroup, couldn't he? There are _messages_ about certain _subjects_, and my
computer is still not smart enough to do my work and read the _subject_ lines
in order to find out whether reading the whole message might be worth the
time. Yes, I let my email client sort the messages into folders (I don't have
zope@zope.org in my inbox, I would have gone nuts by now). Yes, if I have a
very specific question I search the mailing list archives first (at NIP btw).
But that's not the point.
I totally support a "spin-off" of this mailing lists for more in-depth
discussions. zope-dev is something else. zope-dev has become a mailinglist
mostly for people who comunicate with each other about the development of
Zope _itself_. After being on zope@zope.org for, I dont' know, two years?
now, I find myself downloading approx. 80 messages a day, strolling through
them every two days, and the number of mails that I find interesting has
shrunk down to about three per day. While as a newbie I just couldn't get
enough, and everything was new, interesting and exciting, I would now like to
make my communication a little more efficient. Two years ago, Zope was pretty
new to most of the people on the list. By today, some have advanced faster,
some slower (for reasons whatsoever), and a lot of new people have joined.
When I started it was mostly people who (now) work for Zope Corp that gave
answers, just three or four others, who were really into it. I see a lot of
questions on this list that can be answered by reading either "the Zope
Book", Dieter's famous "Chapter 3" :-) or simply by searching the list
archives for a single word. 99% of the newbie questions have been asked, and
another 99% of these questions have been answered sufficiently. Most of them
more than once, lots of them more than twice. Still, I understand that Zope's
learning curve remains rather steep, even if the Management interface looks a
little bit like "Windows Explorer", at first sight. There should always be a
mailing list for rtfm questions, and honestly, I take time and answer very
easy questions, remembering what a f***ing mess it was when I had to find out
myself. Everything is simple once you know how to do it, right?
But as much as I appreciated the support of that time, and as much as I try
to help people to get started, I claim to have that same right to express my
need for a mailing list for more experienced Zope developers.
Yes, you become a very good chess player if you play against people who are
better than you, and yes, if everyone thought that way and consequently only
played better players, nobody would be playing a single game. But you can
also become a better player by reading some good books, and good players
sometimes enjoy playing _each other_. Calling this elitism is just being
paranoid, imho.
I think Andrew has a very good point when he says that there have evolved
different levels of experience and knowledge, and I find this in no way
insulting. I fully support another mailing list, hoping that if not the
number then maybe the percentage of emails I find interesting might get back
to the level it was when I started on zope@zope.org. If I give a two pages
long explanation to someone who just needed a one-liner solution because he
doesn't care "why", just "how" and "when", and I can't expect much help from
that person when I am in need, then at some point the benefits of this
communication go in one direction _only_. I don't see in how far it can be
called elitism if someone says he's not a "manual with two legs", and
expresses _his_ needs. Andrew was asking for a platform, not a hide-away. I
myself would remain subscribed on both lists, write a message and _then_ ask
myself which group of people I should address it to. Everyone could do it
that way. (I mean, who wants to be called a "newbie" for the rest of his
life? :-))
If there are people who feel offended, please let me throw this in:
Andrew doesn't want to separate the people, just the postings.
Same with me.
If there was a mailing list just like zope@zope.org, with the difference of
having the "what's acquisition?", "how do I access an object in a subfolder?"
and "why do I get an error message when trying to create a folder object as
superuser?" questions stripped off, and the Zope-"related" posts like "I
don't want to publish my product under ZPL/GPL/whatever" remained on
zope@zope.org, then that new list would have let's say 15-25 posts day,
instead of 80. And the percentage of emails that are interesting for Andrew
and others in a similar position might rise back to 50% or so, making it more
fun and more efficient. I don't see any problem with that.
Thank you very much for reading,
Cheers from New Zealand,
Danny
On Monday 22 October 2001 10:04, Paul Winkler wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 21, 2001 at 05:03:19PM +0400, Oleg Broytmann wrote:
> > On Sat, Oct 20, 2001 at 05:07:50PM -0400, Paul Winkler wrote:
> > > On Sat, Oct 20, 2001 at 09:39:29AM -0700, Michael R. Bernstein wrote:
> > > > Personally, I'd prefer newsgroups to mailing lists. A news.zope.org
> > > > NNTP server along with a heirarchy of groups would do wonders, IMO.
> > >
> > > YES PLEASE!!!!!!!
> >
> > NO PLEASE!!!!! We have enough spam already, we don't need more spam in
> > a newsgroups.
>
> You'd rather have 200+ messages a day dumped into your inbox when you
> only care about a few of them? Yuck. If there were newsgroups I'd
> unsub from this list in a minute.
>
> --
>
> paul winkler
> home: http://www.slinkp.com
> music: http://www.reacharms.com
> calendars: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
>
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