Re: Dealing with list volume

[Joe Doss <joe@solidadmin.com>]

Hi Jason,

On 12/07/2017 08:33 PM, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
> That's what IRC is for, I think. #wireguard is where people should go
> to chat usually.
>
> Thanks for your offer to host something, but I've got more than enough
> stable infrastructure for hosting new gadgets, as they occur to us.
> I'm also very hesitant toward introducing a new platform, when IRC
> should cut it.

Right, it should cut it but it's becoming obvious that it's not. Here 
are a few points.

* I have seen comments in IRC that are trying to help new users wishing 
the new user with problem X would just stick around in the chat so they 
can get the help.

* There are no methods to search or to keep record of chat from IRC, so 
we are seeing the same questions over and over again. That a lot of 
wasted cycles.

* IRC is a barrier for some users. They didn't grow up with it, they 
don't understand how to use it. This turns them to the mailing list. 
Everyone uses Email. Some people use IRC.

* Email is search-able on the list but you are pushing users to IRC 
because the volume is too great. Even then it's not the easiest UI to 
find answers to your questions or to build a user community.

* Large FOSS projects like Fedora have every support channel avail. IRC 
(https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/IRC), Mailing Lists 
(https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/), GitHub Clone 
(https://pagure.io/), Forums (https://fedoraforum.org/), Ask Fedora 
(https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/questions/) and they don't say well X 
should be good enough. They let the user pick the channel that works 
best for them to find help.

I get that for you IRC should fit the bill for supporting the user base 
and it's the support work flow that works for _you_ the best. I am the 
same. I RTFM, read online documentation, sludge through the mailing list 
a bit and then I hit up IRC when all else fails. That is the support 
work flow that works for _me_, but not everyone is like that. If we give 
the users a painless way to get the answers they need, and and a 
painless way to communicate with other users, most will self-help 
themselves and each other.

Email or IRC are great for small projects but as you can see now, we are 
having some growing pains with the influx of new users. At some point, 
the project is going to get too big and you won't be able to firefight 
every support case that comes in. Are were at that point yet? Well this 
thread got created so you must feel we are close.

Discourse helps fix most of the problems above. It is the _best_ forum 
software I have used to date and I highly urge you to consider using it 
to help us create a community for every type of user, technical to 
layman. Here are some very successful projects using it:

https://discuss.elastic.co/
https://forum.sublimetext.com/
https://forums.meteor.com
https://talk.jekyllrb.com
https://discuss.gohugo.io
https://forum.ionicframework.com
https://discuss.kotlinlang.org
https://forum.golangbridge.org
https://users.rust-lang.org
https://internals.rust-lang.org

WireGuard is a stupid easy VPN solution to setup compared to the 
competition. It's support channels and user community center should be 
stupid easy too.

Joe




--
Joe Doss
joe@solidadmin.com