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Re: [eclipse-dev] RE: Forums vs. mailing lists - suggestion for update to eclipse site



I'd like to make a suggestion (and maybe I'll open a defect for this as
well) that may help with this frequent misunderstanding of the newsgroups
and mailing lists.

I'd like to see the eclipse site changed to reflect the site's visitors.
Seems to me that the eclipse site has two classes of visitors; 'users' and
'developers'. The 'users' should only have access to release downloads of
eclipse and eclipse sub-projects, articles relating to using eclipse, the
newsgroups, bugzilla and user specific FAQ. The 'developers' should have
access to all of this information plus the mailing lists, CVS repository,
articles relating to developing for eclipse and daily and milestone builds.
In this way the eclipse site will be much more like eclipse in that users
only have access to tools and resources relevant to them. (I'm referring to
the ability to remove chunks of functionality in the eclipse 3.0 stream by
using preferences - so if you don't want to use JDT you can simply uncheck
it and all JDT functionality is removed from the workbench.)

The changes required for the eclipse site in order to accommodate this
change are not trivial. The eclipse site will need to be more dynamic and
allow sub-projects to determine what is relevant for 'users' and what is
relevant for 'developers'. This will also probably necessitate removing
some of the flexibility sub-projects have in creating their pages but will
allow for a more uniform feel across the sub-project pages.

The eclipse product itself has undergone some significant changes during
3.0 development, especially with the Rich Client Platform. Seems time to
upgrade the eclipse web site as well to focus on the new users that will be
visiting the site.

Lawrence Mandel



                                                                           
             Chris                                                         
             McLaren/Ottawa/IB                                             
             M@IBMCA                                                    To 
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             @eclipse.org                                                  
                                                                   Subject 
                                       [eclipse-dev] RE: Forums vs.        
             02/10/2004 04:42          mailing lists                       
             PM                                                            
                                                                           
                                                                           
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                eclipse-dev                                                
                                                                           
                                                                           








This request has been surfacing over and over again for at least a year,
but I don't recall seeing a response as to why we aren't changing the user
newsgroups over to user mailing lists (?). I know we've already had the
debates on the relative technical merits of newsgroups and mailing lists on
this list in the past, and considering we could also have a newsgroup
mirror of any mailing list, this should be something we could change at
this point.

Every single day the 'developer' mailing lists receive 'user' questions and
everyday there is the same reply from whatever developer happens to chime
in at the time: 'please ask this question on the newsgroup. this mailing
list is for 'developers' only.' Users often reply that they didn't even
realize the newsgroups existed. Why is that?

Although the mailing lists web page has been revised to stress that it is
for 'developers', it is still easy for a user to confuse the term if they
don't read the page carefully. After all, a user of Eclipse is himself a
'developer'. This is especially problematic for the countless users whose
first language is not English.

I expect most people go to the mailing lists first because that's what they
are naturally expecting to have to use. Then they look for the best list to
ask their question on. Perhaps if there were both 'users' and 'developers'
mailing lists, the mailing list web page might actually be clearer, and
traffic would be better directed.

Chris.

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