On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 08:33:07 -0500, "Stephen J Baker" <sjbaker@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > Sven Neumann wrote: > > Perhaps we should ask ourselves then why the same questions are asked > > over and over again. [... good points snipped ...] > This is ALWAYS going to happen and no amount of additional documentation > is going to make a significant dent in that. > > The problem is in how people react to those kinds of requests. Yes, I agree. We can try to change the "others" by providing better documentation, FAQs, clear roadmaps, etc. But maybe we should first check if we can change ourselves. > On most of the lists that I participate in, people groan, roll their > eyes and then answer the question politely. If you know the answer, > it takes about the same amount of typing to answer a simple question > as it does to flame the user and tell him to RTFM. It doesn't really > increase your workload, it makes the user happier, it keeps the list > as a friendly, helpful place and life is good. > > On this list, the reaction is invariably hostile. We should all try to make some efforts to follow a policy such as: "if you cannot reply to someone in a polite way, then don't reply at all". This means that some questions may be ignored and this list may be rather silent from time to time, but I think that it would be better to do that than to scare potential contributors. We are all used to the strong language and very direct communication used on this list. Most of us can handle it. But for someone who joins this list for the first time, this place does not look very friendly. This is not the first time that some people say that they do not like the gimp-developer list. By the way, we had a very similar discussion at GIMPCon2003. We can improve our image to the "outside" by providing better documentation, list archives, and generally better communication towards GIMP users and potential developers... But we should also think a bit more about how we discuss things on this list. Even when we are in a bad mood. ;-) > > So IMO the things we need to consider are: > > - how can we make gimp development more transparent? > > - how can we publish short and long term plans and roadmaps? > > - why is there no maintained user FAQ? > > - why is the mailing-list archive not working? > > I don't think any of those things are the issue. There is no such thing as _the_ issue. All of these are important factors, and we should try to improve them. But I agree that we should not forget about our own behavior on this list, which may make any of the improvements cited above irrelevant because people run away after reading a few messages. > - how can we be more friendly/tolerant on this list? > - why do so many threads descend so rapidly into hostility? Yes, there are definitely some things that we can improve... -Raphaël
