8 ms·

Don’t email me

167 points by jonaslejon 13y ago

t0 13y ago
Loading really slow. Mirror http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fdaniel.haxx.se%2Fblog%2F2013%2F10%2F08%2Fdont-email-me%2F http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...
- angelortega 13y ago
  Email him.
  - cowls 13y ago
    Nice try. His time is far too important to deal with you lowly people
  - t0 13y ago
    You might be able to curl the page.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
dchichkov 13y ago
Perhaps a pre-cooked auto-reply could fix that? Hey, it can even be automated; a filter/answering bot for developers with public profiles ;) Showing only heartwarming and applifting fun-mail and stowing everything else into spam with an auto-reply suggesting a post to an appropriate mailing list.
- joosters 13y ago
  Exactly. Think how many polite one-liner 'please post this to the mailing list' replies he could have written in the time it took to create this document. But instead, he expects people to waste their own time reading his position piece. Narcissism.
  - MaulingMonkey 13y ago
    "Think how many polite one-liner 'please post this to the mailing list' replies he could have written in the time it took to create this document." The one liner isn't the expensive part. First you have to read the mail. Then play twenty questions long enough to figure out what they're actually asking about. Then suggest the proper mailing list because you don't know anything about the subject. Then follow up when they blithely ignore the suggestion, and the note that you don't know anything about the subject, and are suggesting those who know everything about the subject. Then follow up when they get upset when you in turn get insistent. And then you answer in good faith when they ask why you won't.... That's the expensive part. I've written my own rants. Shorter than the linked piece, granted, but the linked piece is still shorter than any of many single conversations I've had trying to explain my position to the more insistent in response to their questions. So many people are completely unfazed by my complete lack of knowledge about whatever they want help with. A linkable rant is more easily repeated to such people at much less expense of my time. The points don't change much and can be stated more precisely and concisely. Better yet: more obviously a waste of time when it is a waste. If they're not actually interested, then we both win: I won't repeat it, and they won't read it! Rants like this are useful tools to end those pointless discussions. "If you want my position, here it is. If you don't, then we won't have to waste both our times arguing under the false pretense that you really do."
pfortuny 13y ago
It is too long an explanation for the simple fact that: "private conversations with the owner of a public project are impolite." As a general rule, that tends to be true. I guess he has had some relief from writing that rant but it is unnecessary: nobody should expect a private answer from a developer of a public project. Even more: there is no expectation of an answer to an email.
- Sujan 13y ago
  It is not to long, but as long as the author thought it needed to be. The simple fact you mention, obviously is not thet known to people - that's why they write mails to him. And he wrote this post he can point them to now, so they learn too. And it also is obviously necessary, because people expect private answers. And the also expect answers to emails. And that's totally ok, because it is ok to be wrong. It only becomes a problem, if they don't accept the answer they get including the link to that article.
  - pfortuny 13y ago
    As long as he got some relief, I am happy that he wrote it. In any case: the fact that people may expect answers does not imply he is rude not giving them.
    - Sujan 13y ago
      I even think it is important, he wrote it. Not only as a release valve, but because a) we are talking about it and b) it can be part of educating the 'masses' on why some things are the way they are (or should be).
      - pfortuny 13y ago
        Anything which helps people learn something necessary is welcome. I cannot but support it. What I intended to say is: sometimes abstraction helps explaining things. I just tried to abstract what led him to say so many things. The problem with rants is that people usually do not realize they are the object of it. As someone told me time ago, if you want to say something to someone who is misbehaving, do not use a public medium: everybody else will get the message but he won't.
casca 13y ago
For some context, Daniel Stenberg is the lead developer in the widely used curl and libcurl OSS. He is extremely responsive on the mailing lists and will often provide detailed answers to difficult questions.
- sebcat 13y ago
  Also libssh2, which is really nice IMHO
blackdogie 13y ago
On the case of useful emails http://five.sentenc.es/ http://five.sentenc.es/ is quite a nice idea, polite and to the point. There is also the shorter version, http://two.sentenc.es/ http://two.sentenc.es/ if you are so inclined !
p4bl0 13y ago
I totally agree with the author. However I would argue that for his 6th point, trying IRC before subscribing to the mailing-list is in general a good idea.
- ameoba 13y ago
  Many people new to IRC feel the need to immediately take their questions to private message. Much of the same logic the blog makes about personal email apply to personal messages on IRC - don't do it unless you've got a really good reason to do so.
joosters 13y ago
Obviously, before emailing anyone, you should first search the web for any manifestos or policy statements that they've written on the subject of communication. Not doing so is terribly rude.
- reginaldjcooper 13y ago
  You're being sarcastic, but if their policy statement is on their webpage and you fail to find it or ignore it, yes you are being rude.
- dspillett 13y ago
  If there is a preferred contact method use it. If you don't know if there is a preferred contact method have a look in obvious places first then by all means go with what you find convenient if there is no other preference obviously indicated. This is particularly true for a project where the devs are volunteers or people who otherwise only work part time on that area. By emailing an individual directly when there is a proper support route setup you are basically shouting "Oi you, developer type, this is my priority and it should be your's to, I don't know what else you are doing, but you should look at this". You are a cold caller. You are the restaurant customer who snaps his fingers and loudly calls "Boy!" to get a waiter's attention. Yes, you are being rude. Don't expect me to be glad that you chose to grace me personally with your message. The easy way around this I find is to prioritise things that have come through the proper channels. I don't ignore direct emails, but they don't get looked at quickly (especially if they have the "urgent" flag set) and when I do respond I point out that they would probably have been dealt with yesterday (or last week) if they had used the preferred contact point. In a commercial setting our SLAs don't kick in until an issue is raised through the right channels, so it is in your interests to use the right contact method. The right answer to a phone call informing you that the email a user sent two hours ago is urgent? "Well then it is urgent that you raise the issue the right way, would you like reminding of the support portal's location?" (or for certain requests "would you like reminding of your project/account manager's phone number?"). Yes, this is why I'm generally not directly customer facing and a method I use in order to ensure that I remain not directly customer facing!
jaggederest 13y ago
It's funny, because from his point of view mailing lists are awesome. But from the point of view of everyone else they're pretty terrible - it's extremely rare I've had mailing lists deliver value. For most open source projects, the correct way has been to find the backchannel - the mailing list is only a source of frustration and bikesheds. You must either contact maintainers personally or find an IRC or other real time method.
- enneff 13y ago
  Those sound like dysfunctional projects, to me.
  - jaggederest 13y ago
    My typical experience is pick one or two of: A) Message gets ignored, no response B) Other people respond with the same problem, no solutions C) Unhelpful response detailing the solution to some superficially similar but unrelated problem D) Excoriating reply about how that is not really a problem because I am bad at life and/or not supposed to be using it for that. E) Discussion pace on the topic rapidly log-descent-curves into zero without anything really being resolved but lots of time being spent. F) Discussion on the mailing list is so high volume that trying to pay attention to it is akin to drinking from a firehose, and a solution is posted in an unobtrusive way 330 messages later. This is even true when attempting to make meaningful contributions of time and energy, money, or both.
- simias 13y ago
  I never understood why mailing lists prosper when newsgroups are mostly dead. Newsgroups are mailing lists done right (or rather, mailing lists are newsgroups done wrong).
  - pestaa 13y ago
    Care to elaborate? I tried to research why Usenet was superior to more recent communication channels, but my Google fu fails me every time.
Intermernet 13y ago
I've been involved in many areas of IT over the years, but, in the enterprise arena, there's a strongly upheld rule that I've always presumed OSS projects followed. The rule can be summarised as "Send a help-desk ticket." I have regularly advised team members to reply to personal requests for assistance with a polite "Send a help-desk ticket" (Obviously precluding the Directors / VIPs in the company) This centralises the information, allows reporting and transparency, and means that if some-one happens to be off sick, or away on holidays, someone else can look after the problem. Programmers like their instructions and data to be in orderly, prioritisable queues and I see no reason why support requests should be any different. </rant>
- enneff 13y ago
  On the Go project we frequently say "File an issue." That's because the issue tracker is the primary way we organize our work. If your issue isn't on the tracker, then it's not visible to us. A lot of people take that as "File an issue and STFU." I guess that's because when your problem goes from being an active discussion thread to an issue labelled as "Priority-Later" you feel like you're being ignored. But the reality is that there's a practically infinite amount of work to do and a very small number of people to do it. Now that I think about it, this seems to be the main reason people resent being redirected to the "proper channels." Because they know they're not going to get special treatment. They'll just have to wait until their problem reaches the top of the pile. (And maybe it never will.)
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago
    Pray, tell me more about this distinction between almost infinite and very finite!
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - Intermernet 13y ago
    Just a view from the other side of the fence; I've found the Go team tend to do a very good job of balancing core performance advances and addressing feature requests from the community. Obviously, not including "can we have feature x from language y" requests, most obvious issues (garbage collection performance, crypto, http and html libraries etc.) are being addressed in a logical and timely fashion. If I were wearing a hat, I'd take it off for you.
spindritf 13y ago
> you can say that subscribing to an email list can be daunting and flood you with hundreds or thousands of emails per month – that’s completely true I guess you could allow non-subscribers to post to the list. Though that comes with its own problems.
- nzp 13y ago
  On all mailing lists I'm on that allow non-subscribers to post (a few high-profile FOSS projects) the benefits far outweigh drawbacks. A few individuals periodically complain about reply-to policy and duplicate emails (which, if you're reasonable and take a few minutes to set things up, are non-issues)... Spam is, mostly, minimal.
daleharvey 13y ago
This is quite timely, in my general open source work I always do try to stick to public communication channels, they have huge advantages. But I am looking into making a project that helps first time open source contributors write their first patch, and having a direct private channel for the purpose of an introduction seems like it might help a lot. https://github.com/daleharvey/goodfirstpatch/issues/9 https://github.com/daleharvey/goodfirstpatch/issues/9
skore 13y ago
I don't get why he doesn't like Pull Requests on GitHub. It obviously depends on the kind of mailing list software you use, but most of them (like shudder GNU Mailman) strongly discourage the user to hunt for existing requests and make pretty much everything hard to follow except if you follow everything all the time. Of course, if you're a maintainer, it's your job to follow almost everything all the time. But casual contributors simply don't have that kind of time and energy available. With PRs on GitHub, a corresponding issue is usually filed and if people still email you, simply tell them to first search there and then post their own. That way, everybody can see and search the existing stack quickly. I recently tried to contribute to a project that maintains both a mailman mailing list (I offer a thousand internets to somebody who builds a general purpose and usable UI to that) and a GitHub tracker and it was an absolute nightmare to coordinate.
- TheSilentMan 13y ago
  Also, I'm pretty sure pull requests wind up as notifications for anyone who is watching the repo, not just people listed as contributors. Even if I'm wrong, comments on pull requests are certainly notifications for everyone who is watching the repo.
  - mietek 13y ago
    Notifications on GitHub are still too coarsely-grained to be useful.
  - bjeanes 13y ago
    That's why starring was released https://github.com/blog/1204-notifications-stars https://github.com/blog/1204-notifications-stars Watching is if you actually want to pay attention to activity as opposed to just bookmark something.
- durin42 13y ago
  Because they don't go to the mailing list. For a lot of OSS communities, if it didn't happen on the list, it didn't happen. That's certainly how it is in all the big projects I've interacted with. I'd LOVE for a way to cc a mailing list on all PRs to a project, but that's not possible AFAIK. Most PRs I reject with "this should be a patch sent to the list" simply because I'm not always the only one that should review something.
qwerta 13y ago
Had the same problem. I simply added statement to project readme, that I may forward question to public lists. I refuse to repeat myself and documentation for my project is not ready yet. For private conversation I usually require donation. Keeping information public is crucial for long-term success. You lose interest and someone alse may want to takeover. But it is nearly impossible without mailing list, unit tests, various prototypes and commit history.
Sami_Lehtinen 13y ago
So what if it's email? You can use DRY method and answer to it publicly. I hate personal inefficient communication. If documentation lacks thing being asked, update documentation. Don't answer the mail. Of course it would be more efficient to handle these tickets using community than just one developer. Answering queries publicly isn't as good method than updating documentation. Depending from situation fixing program and usability is still better option than updating documentation. I hate extensive documentation when updating program version, if it could be done efficiently by automated script / proram. I've been preaching about and utilizing this methodology last 15 years.
djim 13y ago
stupidest shit ive ever read. dont even care who you are, you aren't more important than anyone else. your time is not more valuable. emailing someone is a perfectly normal way to have 1:1 conversations. abusing mailing lists and excessive cc's just create noise.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  Emailing is a good way to have 1:1 conversations, but the whole point is that in many circumstances you aren't entitled to get a 1:1 conversation and personal attention of a busy stranger, so use the maillist or go away.
- otikik 13y ago
  No.
  - djim 13y ago
    Yes. Perhaps 1:1 emails aren't the answer, but the mailing list ovbiously isn't working in this case. How about a forum for mass communications? That allows for phyudo- 1:1 conversations while allowing the community to monitor the response. Mailing lists are noisy and contain a lot of useless information for most people subscribed to the list. So much that email providers like Google have added features into their mail clients that allow you to "mute" conversations that aren't specifically addressed to you. Like mailing lists.
mgkimsal 13y ago
This advice should/could be taken in to account for more internal/corporate teams as well. I've tried to fight an uphill battle for years with teams I've been on to get everyone to just use a couple internal mailing lists instead of manually emailing multiple people directly about a project. Having a searchable discussion archive about ideas/topics on a project is extremely useful for new people joining a team, but they rarely exist in corporate environments. Often there's an outdated wiki, and maybe sometimes a ticketing system, but the bulk of the discussion that happened electronically are locked in peoples' emailboxes. :/
001sky 13y ago
Sunlight is the best disinfectant For many things, and the in-box oo
exo_duz 13y ago
Efficient communication is key to this. I think that time is precious especially when you're doing a startup (e.g. me). The less distractions and more streamlined your process are, the more time you save to be able to do other work.
knodi 13y ago
I'll email you if I want. Just don't reply.

167 points by jonaslejon 13y ago

t0 13y ago

Loading really slow. Mirror http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fdaniel.haxx.se%2Fblog%2F2013%2F10%2F08%2Fdont-email-me%2F http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...

angelortega 13y ago
Email him.
- cowls 13y ago
  Nice try. His time is far too important to deal with you lowly people
- t0 13y ago
  You might be able to curl the page.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

dchichkov 13y ago

Perhaps a pre-cooked auto-reply could fix that? Hey, it can even be automated; a filter/answering bot for developers with public profiles ;) Showing only heartwarming and applifting fun-mail and stowing everything else into spam with an auto-reply suggesting a post to an appropriate mailing list.

joosters 13y ago
Exactly. Think how many polite one-liner 'please post this to the mailing list' replies he could have written in the time it took to create this document. But instead, he expects people to waste their own time reading his position piece. Narcissism.
- MaulingMonkey 13y ago
  "Think how many polite one-liner 'please post this to the mailing list' replies he could have written in the time it took to create this document." The one liner isn't the expensive part. First you have to read the mail. Then play twenty questions long enough to figure out what they're actually asking about. Then suggest the proper mailing list because you don't know anything about the subject. Then follow up when they blithely ignore the suggestion, and the note that you don't know anything about the subject, and are suggesting those who know everything about the subject. Then follow up when they get upset when you in turn get insistent. And then you answer in good faith when they ask why you won't.... That's the expensive part. I've written my own rants. Shorter than the linked piece, granted, but the linked piece is still shorter than any of many single conversations I've had trying to explain my position to the more insistent in response to their questions. So many people are completely unfazed by my complete lack of knowledge about whatever they want help with. A linkable rant is more easily repeated to such people at much less expense of my time. The points don't change much and can be stated more precisely and concisely. Better yet: more obviously a waste of time when it is a waste. If they're not actually interested, then we both win: I won't repeat it, and they won't read it! Rants like this are useful tools to end those pointless discussions. "If you want my position, here it is. If you don't, then we won't have to waste both our times arguing under the false pretense that you really do."

pfortuny 13y ago

It is too long an explanation for the simple fact that: "private conversations with the owner of a public project are impolite." As a general rule, that tends to be true. I guess he has had some relief from writing that rant but it is unnecessary: nobody should expect a private answer from a developer of a public project. Even more: there is no expectation of an answer to an email.

Sujan 13y ago
It is not to long, but as long as the author thought it needed to be. The simple fact you mention, obviously is not thet known to people - that's why they write mails to him. And he wrote this post he can point them to now, so they learn too. And it also is obviously necessary, because people expect private answers. And the also expect answers to emails. And that's totally ok, because it is ok to be wrong. It only becomes a problem, if they don't accept the answer they get including the link to that article.
- pfortuny 13y ago
  As long as he got some relief, I am happy that he wrote it. In any case: the fact that people may expect answers does not imply he is rude not giving them.
  - Sujan 13y ago
    I even think it is important, he wrote it. Not only as a release valve, but because a) we are talking about it and b) it can be part of educating the 'masses' on why some things are the way they are (or should be).
    - pfortuny 13y ago
      Anything which helps people learn something necessary is welcome. I cannot but support it. What I intended to say is: sometimes abstraction helps explaining things. I just tried to abstract what led him to say so many things. The problem with rants is that people usually do not realize they are the object of it. As someone told me time ago, if you want to say something to someone who is misbehaving, do not use a public medium: everybody else will get the message but he won't.

casca 13y ago

For some context, Daniel Stenberg is the lead developer in the widely used curl and libcurl OSS. He is extremely responsive on the mailing lists and will often provide detailed answers to difficult questions.

sebcat 13y ago
Also libssh2, which is really nice IMHO

blackdogie 13y ago

On the case of useful emails http://five.sentenc.es/ http://five.sentenc.es/ is quite a nice idea, polite and to the point. There is also the shorter version, http://two.sentenc.es/ http://two.sentenc.es/ if you are so inclined !

p4bl0 13y ago

I totally agree with the author. However I would argue that for his 6th point, trying IRC before subscribing to the mailing-list is in general a good idea.

ameoba 13y ago
Many people new to IRC feel the need to immediately take their questions to private message. Much of the same logic the blog makes about personal email apply to personal messages on IRC - don't do it unless you've got a really good reason to do so.

joosters 13y ago

Obviously, before emailing anyone, you should first search the web for any manifestos or policy statements that they've written on the subject of communication. Not doing so is terribly rude.

reginaldjcooper 13y ago
You're being sarcastic, but if their policy statement is on their webpage and you fail to find it or ignore it, yes you are being rude.
dspillett 13y ago
If there is a preferred contact method use it. If you don't know if there is a preferred contact method have a look in obvious places first then by all means go with what you find convenient if there is no other preference obviously indicated. This is particularly true for a project where the devs are volunteers or people who otherwise only work part time on that area. By emailing an individual directly when there is a proper support route setup you are basically shouting "Oi you, developer type, this is my priority and it should be your's to, I don't know what else you are doing, but you should look at this". You are a cold caller. You are the restaurant customer who snaps his fingers and loudly calls "Boy!" to get a waiter's attention. Yes, you are being rude. Don't expect me to be glad that you chose to grace me personally with your message. The easy way around this I find is to prioritise things that have come through the proper channels. I don't ignore direct emails, but they don't get looked at quickly (especially if they have the "urgent" flag set) and when I do respond I point out that they would probably have been dealt with yesterday (or last week) if they had used the preferred contact point. In a commercial setting our SLAs don't kick in until an issue is raised through the right channels, so it is in your interests to use the right contact method. The right answer to a phone call informing you that the email a user sent two hours ago is urgent? "Well then it is urgent that you raise the issue the right way, would you like reminding of the support portal's location?" (or for certain requests "would you like reminding of your project/account manager's phone number?"). Yes, this is why I'm generally not directly customer facing and a method I use in order to ensure that I remain not directly customer facing!

jaggederest 13y ago

It's funny, because from his point of view mailing lists are awesome. But from the point of view of everyone else they're pretty terrible - it's extremely rare I've had mailing lists deliver value. For most open source projects, the correct way has been to find the backchannel - the mailing list is only a source of frustration and bikesheds. You must either contact maintainers personally or find an IRC or other real time method.

enneff 13y ago
Those sound like dysfunctional projects, to me.
- jaggederest 13y ago
  My typical experience is pick one or two of: A) Message gets ignored, no response B) Other people respond with the same problem, no solutions C) Unhelpful response detailing the solution to some superficially similar but unrelated problem D) Excoriating reply about how that is not really a problem because I am bad at life and/or not supposed to be using it for that. E) Discussion pace on the topic rapidly log-descent-curves into zero without anything really being resolved but lots of time being spent. F) Discussion on the mailing list is so high volume that trying to pay attention to it is akin to drinking from a firehose, and a solution is posted in an unobtrusive way 330 messages later. This is even true when attempting to make meaningful contributions of time and energy, money, or both.
simias 13y ago
I never understood why mailing lists prosper when newsgroups are mostly dead. Newsgroups are mailing lists done right (or rather, mailing lists are newsgroups done wrong).
- pestaa 13y ago
  Care to elaborate? I tried to research why Usenet was superior to more recent communication channels, but my Google fu fails me every time.

Intermernet 13y ago

I've been involved in many areas of IT over the years, but, in the enterprise arena, there's a strongly upheld rule that I've always presumed OSS projects followed. The rule can be summarised as "Send a help-desk ticket." I have regularly advised team members to reply to personal requests for assistance with a polite "Send a help-desk ticket" (Obviously precluding the Directors / VIPs in the company) This centralises the information, allows reporting and transparency, and means that if some-one happens to be off sick, or away on holidays, someone else can look after the problem. Programmers like their instructions and data to be in orderly, prioritisable queues and I see no reason why support requests should be any different. </rant>

enneff 13y ago
On the Go project we frequently say "File an issue." That's because the issue tracker is the primary way we organize our work. If your issue isn't on the tracker, then it's not visible to us. A lot of people take that as "File an issue and STFU." I guess that's because when your problem goes from being an active discussion thread to an issue labelled as "Priority-Later" you feel like you're being ignored. But the reality is that there's a practically infinite amount of work to do and a very small number of people to do it. Now that I think about it, this seems to be the main reason people resent being redirected to the "proper channels." Because they know they're not going to get special treatment. They'll just have to wait until their problem reaches the top of the pile. (And maybe it never will.)
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  Pray, tell me more about this distinction between almost infinite and very finite!
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- Intermernet 13y ago
  Just a view from the other side of the fence; I've found the Go team tend to do a very good job of balancing core performance advances and addressing feature requests from the community. Obviously, not including "can we have feature x from language y" requests, most obvious issues (garbage collection performance, crypto, http and html libraries etc.) are being addressed in a logical and timely fashion. If I were wearing a hat, I'd take it off for you.

spindritf 13y ago

> you can say that subscribing to an email list can be daunting and flood you with hundreds or thousands of emails per month – that’s completely true I guess you could allow non-subscribers to post to the list. Though that comes with its own problems.

nzp 13y ago
On all mailing lists I'm on that allow non-subscribers to post (a few high-profile FOSS projects) the benefits far outweigh drawbacks. A few individuals periodically complain about reply-to policy and duplicate emails (which, if you're reasonable and take a few minutes to set things up, are non-issues)... Spam is, mostly, minimal.

daleharvey 13y ago

This is quite timely, in my general open source work I always do try to stick to public communication channels, they have huge advantages. But I am looking into making a project that helps first time open source contributors write their first patch, and having a direct private channel for the purpose of an introduction seems like it might help a lot. https://github.com/daleharvey/goodfirstpatch/issues/9 https://github.com/daleharvey/goodfirstpatch/issues/9

skore 13y ago

I don't get why he doesn't like Pull Requests on GitHub. It obviously depends on the kind of mailing list software you use, but most of them (like shudder GNU Mailman) strongly discourage the user to hunt for existing requests and make pretty much everything hard to follow except if you follow everything all the time. Of course, if you're a maintainer, it's your job to follow almost everything all the time. But casual contributors simply don't have that kind of time and energy available. With PRs on GitHub, a corresponding issue is usually filed and if people still email you, simply tell them to first search there and then post their own. That way, everybody can see and search the existing stack quickly. I recently tried to contribute to a project that maintains both a mailman mailing list (I offer a thousand internets to somebody who builds a general purpose and usable UI to that) and a GitHub tracker and it was an absolute nightmare to coordinate.

TheSilentMan 13y ago
Also, I'm pretty sure pull requests wind up as notifications for anyone who is watching the repo, not just people listed as contributors. Even if I'm wrong, comments on pull requests are certainly notifications for everyone who is watching the repo.
- mietek 13y ago
  Notifications on GitHub are still too coarsely-grained to be useful.
- bjeanes 13y ago
  That's why starring was released https://github.com/blog/1204-notifications-stars https://github.com/blog/1204-notifications-stars Watching is if you actually want to pay attention to activity as opposed to just bookmark something.
durin42 13y ago
Because they don't go to the mailing list. For a lot of OSS communities, if it didn't happen on the list, it didn't happen. That's certainly how it is in all the big projects I've interacted with. I'd LOVE for a way to cc a mailing list on all PRs to a project, but that's not possible AFAIK. Most PRs I reject with "this should be a patch sent to the list" simply because I'm not always the only one that should review something.

qwerta 13y ago

Had the same problem. I simply added statement to project readme, that I may forward question to public lists. I refuse to repeat myself and documentation for my project is not ready yet. For private conversation I usually require donation. Keeping information public is crucial for long-term success. You lose interest and someone alse may want to takeover. But it is nearly impossible without mailing list, unit tests, various prototypes and commit history.

Sami_Lehtinen 13y ago

So what if it's email? You can use DRY method and answer to it publicly. I hate personal inefficient communication. If documentation lacks thing being asked, update documentation. Don't answer the mail. Of course it would be more efficient to handle these tickets using community than just one developer. Answering queries publicly isn't as good method than updating documentation. Depending from situation fixing program and usability is still better option than updating documentation. I hate extensive documentation when updating program version, if it could be done efficiently by automated script / proram. I've been preaching about and utilizing this methodology last 15 years.

djim 13y ago

stupidest shit ive ever read. dont even care who you are, you aren't more important than anyone else. your time is not more valuable. emailing someone is a perfectly normal way to have 1:1 conversations. abusing mailing lists and excessive cc's just create noise.

PeterisP 13y ago
Emailing is a good way to have 1:1 conversations, but the whole point is that in many circumstances you aren't entitled to get a 1:1 conversation and personal attention of a busy stranger, so use the maillist or go away.
otikik 13y ago
No.
- djim 13y ago
  Yes. Perhaps 1:1 emails aren't the answer, but the mailing list ovbiously isn't working in this case. How about a forum for mass communications? That allows for phyudo- 1:1 conversations while allowing the community to monitor the response. Mailing lists are noisy and contain a lot of useless information for most people subscribed to the list. So much that email providers like Google have added features into their mail clients that allow you to "mute" conversations that aren't specifically addressed to you. Like mailing lists.

mgkimsal 13y ago

This advice should/could be taken in to account for more internal/corporate teams as well. I've tried to fight an uphill battle for years with teams I've been on to get everyone to just use a couple internal mailing lists instead of manually emailing multiple people directly about a project. Having a searchable discussion archive about ideas/topics on a project is extremely useful for new people joining a team, but they rarely exist in corporate environments. Often there's an outdated wiki, and maybe sometimes a ticketing system, but the bulk of the discussion that happened electronically are locked in peoples' emailboxes. :/

001sky 13y ago

Sunlight is the best disinfectant For many things, and the in-box oo

exo_duz 13y ago

Efficient communication is key to this. I think that time is precious especially when you're doing a startup (e.g. me). The less distractions and more streamlined your process are, the more time you save to be able to do other work.

knodi 13y ago

I'll email you if I want. Just don't reply.