3 ms·

Please don't put support questions in issues!

by your-nanny 7y ago

GordonS 7y ago
Please have an alternative then!
- your-nanny 7y ago
  If I post code to a GitHub, I'm happy for you to use it, and I'm happy to learn about bugs in the code. But what obligates me to facilitate support, or respond to support requests? People should grow up.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    Plainly you're not obligated to, but if you want to actually grow the userbase it makes sense. If you really don't want to help with (reasonable) support requests, then an alternative is to make that abundantly clear in your README. > People should grow up Not sure what this childish quip adds to your otherwise sensible comment?
    - Lord_Zero 7y ago
      I personally will pass on any project/lib that has a bunch of unanswered issues, or a bunch of auto closed stale issues. Unless the project is big enough to have an active SO or Gitter community.
    - your-nanny 7y ago
      this assumes that posting it to GitHub is actually intended to facilitate its use by other people.
owaislone 7y ago
Issues aren't used as people generally use SO. Questions like "how do X". Most people use issues to report bugs, request features and most prominently contact the authors when things either don't work as expected or the software lacks documentation about how certain things are supposed to work. I as a user and maintainer of OSS packages prefer such questions in issues than on some random site like SO which I won't be monitoring. Issues is a great place to consolidate all the knowledge around a package. Also, most of such questions can be considered as bugs, feature requests or just plain lack of documentation.
- your-nanny 7y ago
  sure ...except that a lot of support questions can be completely irrelevant to your project, because the users aren't competent programmers. it's a big time suck, and people happily demand help, and then not even bother to thank you for the hour of your time you spent solving their problem--which was ultimately due to them not paying attention, or having basic donain knowledge. I'm all for giving. I happily write tutorial blog posts, but I don't feel obligated to give more help than I already gave.
  - owaislone 7y ago
    I see what you mean but questions like these are not what I was really referring to. I do get them from time to time on my repos and I point them to where they can get help which usually is some mailing list, docs or some other related project. Also, my quality of life as a maintainer has dramatically improved since I stopped caring about maintaining clean list of GH issues. I'm fine with people opening tons of them and a lot them being open for a long time. I'll get to them when I can as I don't feel obliged anymore to answer all those questions or implement new features.

Please don't put support questions in issues!

GordonS 7y ago

Please have an alternative then!

your-nanny 7y ago
If I post code to a GitHub, I'm happy for you to use it, and I'm happy to learn about bugs in the code. But what obligates me to facilitate support, or respond to support requests? People should grow up.
- GordonS 7y ago
  Plainly you're not obligated to, but if you want to actually grow the userbase it makes sense. If you really don't want to help with (reasonable) support requests, then an alternative is to make that abundantly clear in your README. > People should grow up Not sure what this childish quip adds to your otherwise sensible comment?
  - Lord_Zero 7y ago
    I personally will pass on any project/lib that has a bunch of unanswered issues, or a bunch of auto closed stale issues. Unless the project is big enough to have an active SO or Gitter community.
  - your-nanny 7y ago
    this assumes that posting it to GitHub is actually intended to facilitate its use by other people.

owaislone 7y ago

Issues aren't used as people generally use SO. Questions like "how do X". Most people use issues to report bugs, request features and most prominently contact the authors when things either don't work as expected or the software lacks documentation about how certain things are supposed to work. I as a user and maintainer of OSS packages prefer such questions in issues than on some random site like SO which I won't be monitoring. Issues is a great place to consolidate all the knowledge around a package. Also, most of such questions can be considered as bugs, feature requests or just plain lack of documentation.

your-nanny 7y ago
sure ...except that a lot of support questions can be completely irrelevant to your project, because the users aren't competent programmers. it's a big time suck, and people happily demand help, and then not even bother to thank you for the hour of your time you spent solving their problem--which was ultimately due to them not paying attention, or having basic donain knowledge. I'm all for giving. I happily write tutorial blog posts, but I don't feel obligated to give more help than I already gave.
- owaislone 7y ago
  I see what you mean but questions like these are not what I was really referring to. I do get them from time to time on my repos and I point them to where they can get help which usually is some mailing list, docs or some other related project. Also, my quality of life as a maintainer has dramatically improved since I stopped caring about maintaining clean list of GH issues. I'm fine with people opening tons of them and a lot them being open for a long time. I'll get to them when I can as I don't feel obliged anymore to answer all those questions or implement new features.