On 27 June 2011 10:10, Nicolas Wu wrote:

On 27 June 2011 08:38, Jasper Van der Jeugt wrote:

...

I think it would benefit the two types of readers if we could move Yesod-specific discussion to a separate mailing list.

I second this proposal and sentiment. I have nothing against Yesod, but I feel like I'm getting overwhelmed by emails that are too Yesod specific on this list.

I also have this problem. I posted a while ago that all I ever receive is yesod posts: http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/web-devel/2010/000647.html I actually didn't unsubscribe, I just set a GMail filter. Recently I unset that to open some discussions. I noticed that I was actually missing out on general web-dev developments. But if I search "web-devel" in GMail, 14 out of the 20 results are yesod-specific. I created a test filter to remove "web-devel + yesod", but then I miss out on general posts where people merely mention yesod. 577 of 1224 *subjects* in the archive contain yesod.

* I would actually prefer pulling in the Snap and Happstack mailing lists to web-devel: I think there is a lot of room for better discussions if we're all talking together by default. I'm already subscribed to both mailing lists, and I don't think it will be a problem to include that traffic here.

I'm pretty sure that would make the problem worse. Then we would have yesod, happstack and snap "how do I do X?" questions to filter out. But anyway it seems more attractive these days for me to properly unsubscribe and get interesting web developments via Planet Haskell and Reddit or something. If you chaps want to get my attention specifically please drop me a mail or something.

I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, This does often feel like the Yesod help mailing list, so I've considered unsubscribing a few times because there's not a lot here related to Haskell web stuff that I use. On the other hand, though, I'm with Michael in wondering whether reducing the amount of Yesod stuff would really make the list more helpful; or if it would just make it dead. So far, I've stayed subscribed but just delete the majority of the content and look for announcements or the occasional threads that don't look like Yesod support issues. I'm interested in other people's thoughts. -- Chris Smith

On Jun 27, 2011 9:58 AM, "Blake Rain" wrote:

I honestly don't see how Yesod - the same as Snap, Happstack, Hackyll and so on - should not be discussed on a mailing list related to web development in Haskell.

I hope this isn't coming across like that... it's just that the mailing list is very often used as a basic support channel for Yesod, and that's not the case for any other project. Definitely there's no need to exclude Yesod from the list, but there's a big difference between discussing web development topics including Yesod, and reporting Yesod bugs or asking detailed questions about technical topics like subsistence routing and such. I'm very interested in Haskell web development including Yesod, but surely there's a Yesod specific place for the latter kinds of questions which frankly aren't even being understood by non-Yesod developers on the mailing list. And of course the same thing would apply to Happstack, Snap, etc... except it isn't happening with them. -- Chris Smith

On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Michael Snoyman wrote:

Well, bug reports are simple: they belong in the issue tracker. That's where users are encouraged to report them. Let's look at a few other "categories" of emails that come in:

"How do I do X": I agree with Greg that we should encourage users to use Stack Overflow for this. We can update the Yesod site to make this clear, but as should be obvious, no one on the Yesod team can actually control where people send their questions.

You actually do control what mailing list the Yesod community goes to. Web-devel is listed as the first point of contact on your community pages, and I'm sure most Yesod users found it through your site. The list might have been appropriate for sharing ideas and getting feedback back when you started the project, but Yesod has grown and people are saying is that its community is starting to strain this one in terms of signal to noise ratio. I think Yesod is better off with a new mailing list for general support, and a lower traffic yesod-devel mailing list to increase/maintain it's mind-share. Those sharing your goals will sign up, while you avoid alienating the other web-devel users. Isak

To summarize this thread, many subscribers would like this mail list to have a "higher signal to noise ratio". One aspect of this is *very* Yesod specific development discussions. We have considered a yesod-contributors mail list. However, this would only take a few conversations off of web-devel and was mostly designed to replace the system of informal e-mails that occurs now. The only common definition of "higher signal to noise ratio" is to have fewer help messages. This is a very reasonable request, although as Jasper points out, it is not always clear when someone is asking for help if they will be exposing something that needs to have a discussion. But I suppose we could take such a conversation off of StackOverflow and post it to the mail list. I edited the page: http://www.yesodweb.com/page/community http://www.yesodweb.com/page/communityTo point to Stack Overflow. We will try out encouraging users to ask for help on Stack Overflow. I also added a mention of the #yesod IRC channel. The channel is currently not a good medium for help- if any Yesod users can go on IRC and answer basic questions (and otherwise point users to Stack Overflow) that would be very appreciated. Harmut, I appreciate your input. Please let us know how the new changes impact your experience and if you have suggestions for other approaches. To the rest of Yesod users, start trying out Stack Overflow if you feel it is appropriate, and let us know how it goes. Also try out IRC if you like. But we don't want anyone to feel intimidated in communicating with the community, so if you feel web-devel is best, please just post here. To those wanting "higher signal to noise", lets check back in and a month and see how things are doing. Thanks, Greg Weber On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 5:00 AM, Hartmut wrote:

I personally would prefer reading/writing in a mailing list (even my beginners questions), since this is pure, simple, and continuous. Stackoverflow is - at first sight - nice indeed, but for the long term, in my eyes, it is over-crowed regarding too many informations, that do not belong to the topic itself, it has too much colors, different fonts and graphics.

Hartmut

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On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 7:26 AM, Chris Smith wrote:

On Tue, 2011-06-28 at 07:05 -0700, Greg Weber wrote:

...

To summarize this thread, many subscribers would like this mail list to have a "higher signal to noise ratio". One aspect of this is *very* Yesod specific development discussions.

With emphasis on the "very specific", yes. It's great to have a place where general web development topics can be discussed, and those will obviously involve specific frameworks at some times. I'm not sure there's a rule we can make here that will make any sense; it really comes down to people taking a minute to consider whether they are talking about anything that makes sense outside of that very specific context; and if so, then great!

It's up to individuals on the list to: (a) make that decision, and (b) make sure the list is always presented as a general discussion forum for web development in Haskell, and not as a project-specific forum.

I think what all this comes down to is that web frameworks (and Yesod on particular -- I'm not saying that as a bad thing, there's just a lot MORE stuff in it) are at least an order of magnitude more complex than most Haskell libraries. That's why I can read a random thread on haskell-cafe and understand what it's saying, but my chances of even comprehending a random thread here are really rather low. And I don't think it's my intelligence or lack of general web development knowledge at fault there; just the nature of the stuff we're talking about.

I would much rather revisit this issue in a month or so than keep this thread alive, but I feel the need to defend the good name of Yesod. Yesod libraries are no more complex than other Haskell libraries. You could say that if you add them all up together that creates complexity, but most questions on web-devel are about one specific library, and perhaps how it is interacted with from Yesod. The issue is simply that a Yesod thread assumes you have developed a web application in Yesod. Or if it is about implementation, it may assume you have looked at a library's internals. As you said, it isn't about your lack of *general* web development knowledge. It is a lack of Yesod *specific* knowledge. On haskell-cafe users normally do a better job of presenting their problem without assuming you already have very specific knowledge. This is something we can do better at on web-devel. Greg Weber

-- Chris Smith

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On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Isak Hansen wrote:

On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Michael Snoyman wrote:

...

Well, bug reports are simple: they belong in the issue tracker. That's where users are encouraged to report them. Let's look at a few other "categories" of emails that come in:

"How do I do X": I agree with Greg that we should encourage users to use Stack Overflow for this. We can update the Yesod site to make this clear, but as should be obvious, no one on the Yesod team can actually control where people send their questions.

You actually do control what mailing list the Yesod community goes to. Web-devel is listed as the first point of contact on your community pages, and I'm sure most Yesod users found it through your site.

Let me reiterate: I can encourage users, not control their actions. Any belief to the contrary far overstates my telekinetic abilities.

The list might have been appropriate for sharing ideas and getting feedback back when you started the project, but Yesod has grown and people are saying is that its community is starting to strain this one in terms of signal to noise ratio.

What you state as a fact is exactly what this thread is discussing. Can you respond to the points myself and others made instead of simply continuing on the assumption that your initial hypothesis does not need backing?

I think Yesod is better off with a new mailing list for general support, and a lower traffic yesod-devel mailing list to increase/maintain it's mind-share. Those sharing your goals will sign up, while you avoid alienating the other web-devel users.

To give an example I just gave a few emails earlier, I think that many "Yesod-specific" discussions are of use to the whole community, such as the recent yesod-form discussion. Formlets, digestive-functors and yesod-form are all trying to solve similar problems, and are each taking slightly different approaches. Forcing us to a different list will simply force us all to our own echo chambers. Michael

I feel similarly to Jasper, but I actually don't think it is that hard to distinguish: I think that maybe instead of creating a "yesod" list, you should create a "yesod-help" list, that is specifically for the "how do I do X in yesod". Because I don't use yesod, and every time I get those messages I consider unsubscribing (because those questions are not relevant to haskell webdev in general). But I do think that the more theoretical / trying to solve problems types of discussions are something that is generally relevant, and could benefit from integration with happstack and snap. So I don't think this is a call to excise yesod from this list (that wouldnt benefit anyone), but more to move the yesod beginners questions somewhere else. Maybe a good pattern would be for people to put the framework in the subject if it is going to be a framework specific discussion, so that people can know that while this may be generally interesting, it is a discussion specific to one framework. Since there are plenty of those types of discussions, I don't think the list would die... and perhaps if the content wasn't so far skewed by beginner yesod questions, people would be more likely to bring up things that are more broadly applicable to web devel. Speaking personally, I've been doing a bit of stuff related to snap, but partly because of the nature of this list, I haven't asked about or presented any of the stuff I've been working on. Instead, I mainly frequent the snap IRC channel, which is active. For certain things IRC is certainly invaluable, but for announcements of stuff, it is a pretty poor way of getting the word out. If this list didn't feel like a Yesod list, I probably would have posted stuff here, and would in the future. As it is I barely read it because even threads that look like they are general (based on the subject) usually turn out be be asking a specific question about Yesod. (for the snap readers, or people who use heist, which again is framework agnostic but mostly used with snap, some things I'd been working on were: A. an ajax extension for heist, that allows, without any application specific javascript, asynchronous page parts replacement and form submission. Blog post: http://blog.dbpatterson.com/post/6330870102/building-ajax-sites-with-snap-im... ; code, slightly updated since post: https://github.com/dbp/heist-async B. very rough but functioning heist/snap bindings for digestive-functors, allowing you to write normal html forms in heist templates and have them validated by digestive functors C. using heist and some non-application specific javascript to add dynamic extensions to html: http://blog.dbpatterson.com/post/6736312764/turning-dynamic-web-programming-... . this is just a generalization of the stuff that makes heist-async work. ) On Jun 27, 2011, at 11:29 AM, Chris Smith wrote:

I have mixed feelings on this.

On the one hand, This does often feel like the Yesod help mailing list, so I've considered unsubscribing a few times because there's not a lot here related to Haskell web stuff that I use. On the other hand, though, I'm with Michael in wondering whether reducing the amount of Yesod stuff would really make the list more helpful; or if it would just make it dead.

So far, I've stayed subscribed but just delete the majority of the content and look for announcements or the occasional threads that don't look like Yesod support issues.

I'm interested in other people's thoughts.

-- Chris Smith

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As one of those people who are filling up web-devel with yesod help questions, I agree with Felipe, but I have a some of further comments. Why are their so many yesod help questions relative to other projects help? Is it because of the relative newness of yesod? or complexity cause by added type checking? Or something else? I think once it becomes more mature, I think some of this will go away. It also feels to me that their seems to be quite a bit of exchange within the various Haskell Frameworks, and it facilitated by this group e.g. Blaze, WAI. It would be more difficult for a newbie to track down which specific group will provide questions regarding yesod core component vs. shared component, blaze, hamlet, wai. I can get a better idea of other Haskell approaches, that I may not have heard of before if I was only following a yesod specific group. Most posters do appear to follow good etiquette by putting the name of the project in the subject, so that it can be easily searched or filtered. Eric

Hi all, I'm something of a lurker but it seems to me, both from my own impressions and from some of the messages in this thread, that it's not so much the /volume/ of Yesod-specific messages on this list as the /proportion/ that is the "problem". I know that I, for one, would spend much more attention on the messages in my haskell-web folder if the content were more varied. Perhaps the solution will be found not in trying to reduce the Yesod-specific traffic but in increasing the rest. If everyone who isn't a Yesod user were to post about what they /do/ use we might get a wider range of discussion that engages more of the community? Cheers, Thomas Sutton

In fact, I'd prefer if this list wasn't for help requests at all. At this point, it would make sense to direct those to either a framework-specific list, or even better, stackoverflow.

This makes a lot of sense to me. I would never prohibit anyone from posting on this mailing list, but perhaps we could try to redirect support questions to stackoverflow. I think it's a good place for support, as it's easier to search through and comment on problems that were already solved. But once again, there's a fine line between some support questions and more general questions, which could pose a problem. Cheers, Jasper

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I have multiple Gmail accounts and check them all via IMAP in Thunderbird. For me, it would be inconsequential to subscribe to another list. I have an account that is JUST for lists, which helps me keep stuff better organized. So I would just add another Gmail label, then another Gmail filter, and it gets turned into a folder in Thunderbird, and really does not inconvenience me at all. For me it is a matter of clicking an expander arrow in Thunderbird. I personally do not dislike the idea of a Yesod-specific list, it seems logical. Certainly any time you might a have Yesod user wanting to pick the brains of a Snap user, it wouldn't be a big deal to post to a generic list (web-devel?) or a Snap-specific list with the above setup. I don't think generating traffic for a generic list should really be a criterion, because it is easy to check multiple lists using IMAP on a local client. Would that harm the web-devel list? I don't know, but it's really not a logical criterion in my opinion. Maybe it might inspire people to send more non-Yesod content to the generic if they feel it has assumed a generic role and its traffic was declining. Regardless, I don't think separating things out is really being prejudiced against something or not, it's just a matter of clicking one folder versus another in your local email client. Here is a scenario: Maybe I like Yesod and Happstack and Snap, but this week I am overwhelmed in general and don't feel like perusing Happstack emails. Different lists is just another layer of an organizational tool for me, nothing more. The other emails will still be there for me to check next week when things lighten up. For that matter you could have Persistent and WAI lists too. Again, it's just a matter of opening another folder in certain email setups. (I'm not advocating for or against either of those examples.) There's no technical reason for it to create social or political or any other divisions. Just my two cents, for whatever it is worth. On 06/27/2011 04:53 AM, Christopher Done wrote:

On 27 June 2011 10:10, Nicolas Wu wrote:

...

On 27 June 2011 08:38, Jasper Van der Jeugt wrote:

...

I think it would benefit the two types of readers if we could move Yesod-specific discussion to a separate mailing list. I second this proposal and sentiment. I have nothing against Yesod, but I feel like I'm getting overwhelmed by emails that are too Yesod specific on this list. I also have this problem. I posted a while ago that all I ever receive is yesod posts: http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/web-devel/2010/000647.html

I actually didn't unsubscribe, I just set a GMail filter. Recently I unset that to open some discussions. I noticed that I was actually missing out on general web-dev developments.

But if I search "web-devel" in GMail, 14 out of the 20 results are yesod-specific. I created a test filter to remove "web-devel + yesod", but then I miss out on general posts where people merely mention yesod. 577 of 1224 *subjects* in the archive contain yesod.

...

* I would actually prefer pulling in the Snap and Happstack mailing lists to web-devel: I think there is a lot of room for better discussions if we're all talking together by default. I'm already subscribed to both mailing lists, and I don't think it will be a problem to include that traffic here. I'm pretty sure that would make the problem worse. Then we would have yesod, happstack and snap "how do I do X?" questions to filter out. But anyway it seems more attractive these days for me to properly unsubscribe and get interesting web developments via Planet Haskell and Reddit or something. If you chaps want to get my attention specifically please drop me a mail or something.

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