Re: [TSVN] RTFM questions on the list (Re: TortoiseSVN looses comments when commit fails.)

Stuart Celarier wrote:
> [Stuart] The best time to plant a tree was 40 years ago. The second best
> time to plant a tree is right now.

Wise words ;)

> All mailing lists were new once, many of them thrive today. Rather than
> second guessing how people will react, why not try it and see? I am
> betting that this hypothesis is wrong, and, moreover, it would only ever
> be a short term effect. User questions on the dev list would be gently
> guided to the new user list, that might last perhaps a month or so. I
> don't even see the need to seed the user list with questions, just make
> a few weekly announcements that the new list exists and show that it has
> value.
>
> The potential benefits are huge. Developers will not be burdened with
> standard user questions. Users won't get whiplash from overworked
> developers being, er, "snappy" (other words come to mind.) Users will
> step forward to answer other users, making them all better users.

Well, in an ideal world, a users list really could take off burden from
the developers. But I've lived too long to not know that this world is
as far away from ideal as you can't even begin to imagine.
What I see what would happen is that I have to read not one but two
mailing lists and answer even more questions. I've tried some times to
just not answer mails because I knew other people watching the list
would know the answer too. Some times this even worked, but most of the
times those users came back very angry that no one has answered their
question right away.

> I am curious, what is the cost of creating a user list? How does that
> stack up to the potential benefits?

We could do that with a few mouseclicks. It's easy to do.

Stefan

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