Bowen, I agree with your observations regarding a chat group with 10k members!
I'm not very familiar with how the tech scene in the Chinese-speaking world works. Ideally, we find a way to help the community grow AND follow good apache practices. If most other projects and communities are doing user support via Chat groups, then it would probably be difficult to move people away from that, or in the worst case, it would slow down adoption of Flink in China. Do you think that people are generally okay with using mailing lists, or will it hinder adoption? 2. We did guide users to use mailing list to ask questions, but people > still prefer DingTalk. > - We can continue to remind users to use mailing list frequently. Do we know why that's the case? Do we need to educate people more on mailing lists? 4. The apache archive [1] for user-zh doesn't support searching. > - We can provide a nabble service for user-zh which supports searching > itself. Great idea! Do you want to set it up? 5. The messages from the mailing list are not showing up on Baidu. > - I don't have much experience how to improve this. IMO, Baidu is not > good at searching for technology-related information. What is the primary search engine for technology-related information? Or asking more broadly, how are people in China finding help when they run into problems with a system? Best, Robert On Fri, Jun 14, 2019 at 5:49 AM Jark Wu <imj...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks Bowen and Robert, > > Here're my observations and thoughts. > > 1. Most questions and discussions happen in the DingTalk. > 2. We did guide users to use mailing list to ask questions, but people > still prefer DingTalk. > - We can continue to remind users to use mailing list frequently. > 3. All the questions in mailing list have replies, although in hours. > - It means users can get problems solved by using mailing list. > 4. The apache archive [1] for user-zh doesn't support searching. > - We can provide a nabble service for user-zh which supports searching > itself. > 5. The messages from the mailing list are not showing up on Baidu. > - I don't have much experience how to improve this. IMO, Baidu is not > good at searching for technology-related information. > > > > Regards, > Jark > > > > > [1]. > https://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/flink-user-zh/201906.mbox/browser > > > On Fri, 14 Jun 2019 at 05:38, Bowen Li <bowenl...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > I resonate with your concerns Robert. It's because most questions are > > asked in the DingTalk group which has close to 10,000 people now. Here're > > my observations and thoughts. > > > > Group chat is great for marketing, announce news and updates, broadcast > > live streams/events, and is just TERRIBLE for ask-answer questions and > > discussions (may be ok for 3-5 :) surely not 10,000...) We probably all > > experienced the problems - content not really searchable, topics lost > fast, > > too much noise, people post questions without evening doing any homework > > first, etc. I personally have muted that group chat and haven't really > look > > at it for a long time, and I do feel the heat in the group is also going > > down because of the problems. > > > > Mailing list is indeed old school, but it still exists nowadays for its > > own reasons - searchable, async communication, topic focused, etc. And I > > believe all technical discussions and ask-answer should happen in the > > mailing list, not in that group. > > > > IMO, the root cause is that we haven't clarified what that DingTalk group > > should be really used for, and how it should work together with our > user-zh > > mailing list. We created that group chat and kind of just let it drive to > > its own directions. This is a good time to reflect on how we should > > position that group and mailing list. > > > > As mentioned above, I believe the group chat should only be used for > > marketing/interacting, announcing news and updates, broadcasting live > > streams/events, etc, and all technical discussions should be diverted to > > user-zh mailing list. > > > > I cc-ed a few organizers and drivers of the DingTalk group so that they > > can share their thoughts. > > > > Bowen > > > > On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 2:19 AM Robert Metzger <rmetz...@apache.org> > > wrote: > > > >> Hey all, > >> > >> the user...@flink.apache.org is now a few months old and I wanted to > hear > >> how things are going. > >> > >> From the number of people in the DingTalk group (5000 ?), I would have > >> expected more people to use the mailing list. But I also understand that > >> mailing lists are an outdated technology from the last century. > >> > >> These are the numbers of messages per month: > >> Feb: 72 > >> Mar: 170 > >> Apr: 119 > >> May: 62 > >> Jun: 10 > >> > >> Is there anything we can do from our side to help adoption of that > mailing > >> list? > >> For example: Are messages from the mailing list showing up on Baidu when > >> looking for common problems with Flink? If not, does it makes sense to > >> have > >> a mailing list archive on a server/domain in China? > >> > >> Best, > >> Robert > >> > >> > >> > >> On Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 11:42 AM YuZhao Chan <yuzhao....@gmail.com> > >> wrote: > >> > >> > That's great. > >> > > >> > > >
