On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 12:05:45PM +0900, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Emily Shaffer <emilyshaffer@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > +[[getting-help]] > > +=== Getting Help > > + > > +If you get stuck, you can seek help in the following places. > > Is this list meant to be an exhaustive list of authoritative > sources? To the best of my knowledge, as applicable, yeah. > IOW, are we reasonably sure that some of us would be > around and give useful help, and that we do not mind readers to > consider these places "officially endorsed by the project"? Right. That's my hope. I worry that sending newbies to non-endorsed places for help will lead to them getting incorrect or conflicting help. > > Or is this meant to be a list of reasonably well-known places, but > may include places where the project does not want to be associated > with the quality of answers given there? No. > I am (implicitly) assuming that it is the former, but I think it is > better to clarify what this "list of places" is meant to be. I'll try to fudge the language so that it implies these are official channels for getting help. > I notice that stack overflow is missing in this list. Intended? > Not that I visit there at all nor I would recommend it, but I recall > seeing questions asked by more than a few people after getting bad > pieces of advice there. Hm. SO for getting help contributing to a specific project? That doesn't sound like a likely avenue or a good idea to me, since my understanding is that we don't consider it an "official presence" (some projects do, I guess). I suppose the kinds of questions I expect to see on StackOverflow include "How do I write a mutex lock in C" or "How do I generate patches with a cover letter", not "I'm stuck on this Git tutorial" or "Would the Git project welcome X change". To me, this doesn't seem like the place to bring it up one way or another. > > > +==== https://public-inbox.org/git[git@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] > > + > > +This is the main Git project mailing list where code reviews, version > > +announcements, design discussions, and more take place. If you fail to receive > > +help via the channels above, you can ask your question here. The Git list > > +requires plain-text-only emails and prefers inline and bottom-posting when > > +replying to mail; you will be CC'd in all replies to you. Optionally, you can > > +subscribe to the list by sending an email to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx with > > +"subscribe git" in the body. > > Sounds good; I agree with Denton, especially with the mention of > "you must join" on the other mailing list, that it is a good idea to > explicitly say that subscription is optional in this entry. > > You can ask questions even if you haven't tried other avenues and > failed, but this entry makes it sound as if an earlier failure > elsewhere is a prerequisite for asking for help here. I envision an exchange sort of like this: Newbie to git@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx: "I'm having trouble compiling Git and I want to write a patch, I'm getting X error" Veteran to Newbie, cc git-mentoring, bcc git@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx: "Please build with blah flag and paste console output, plus let us know system information blah blah blah" I don't mind the idea of pushing folks to ask on the mentoring list first. It's pretty well attended already - just now I count 16 list members, a pretty significant majority of which are project veterans. I have no problem suggesting newbies ask their questions, which others probably had and solved before them, in a space separate from the main mailing list. Of course if you want to encourage newbies to ask in any of these three venues, weighted equally, I can change the language. But suggesting the main list as a last resort was intentional. - Emily
