Re: [boost] Reference to SF tracker is important

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-07-14 09:48:07

Andrey Melnikov <melnikov_at_[hidden]> writes:

> Aleksey Gurtovoy wrote:
>> David Abrahams writes:
>> 
>>>>It isn't referenced on the home page. 
>>>
>>>Sure it is.  "Request Support" in the left-hand column.  It probably
>>>could be more prominent, and more routes to the tracker should be
>>>better emphasized, e.g. through the "Report Bugs" and "Suggest
>>>Features"  links.  Those two pages tend to discourage using the
>>>tracker, but now that tracker entries get automatically sent to the
>>>lists, I'd say we should explicitly encourage it and discourage
>>>sending these reports to the lists.
>> 
>> 
>> I disagree. The fact that they are sent to the list doesn't mean that
>> the submitter follows the list, which in its turn means that if you
>> want to make sure that they see your reply, you and anybody else who
>> might have something to say should reply on the tracker itself, which
>> is a pain and greatly reduces chances of the submitter getting a
>> reply, in particular because people who are not library maintainers
>> but are on the list and might have something to say most definitely
>> won't go to the tracker to do that.
>> 
> This means that SF tracker doesn't work. People on the list don't read 
> tracker, 

That part is false, because all tracker changes go to the list.

> and people submitting to the tracker don't read the list.

That part is true.

> We could use the tracker only internally and tell people to post their 
> problems to the list.
>
> However with this approach we lose the ease of (anonymous) web forms and 
> replace it with a need to subscribe to the list in order to get a reply.
>
> Sending bugs and asking questions should be easy for users. Many people 
> even don't know what mail lists are. And asking them to subscribe to a 
> high-volume list just in order to get a pair of replies is a bad idea.
>
> One possible solution is to write a mail bot which will track threads 
> initiated from tracker and post replies from the list back to the tracker.

That could work.  I think other systems work that way, like GCC's
bugzilla system.

> Or we could ask people to write to community-support_at_boost.org. Their 
> messages will be forwarded to the list, and they will get replies only 
> from the thread they initiated.
>
> But these are rather complex things to implement. Are there any systems 
> that will help us out of the box?

See above?
-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com