[eclipse-dev] RE: Forums vs. mailing lists

[Chris McLaren <Chris_McLaren@xxxxxxxxxx>]

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.