Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

[Colin Maudry <co...@maudry.com>]

Dear Jena developers,

Upon Andy Seaborne\u2019s suggestion, I would like to share with you a
concern we have with certain posts shared on users@jena.apache.org.
In the last couple months, we have seen certain users repeatedly sending
questions that are either:

  * hardly related to Jena and Fuseki
  * very basic questions about RDF or SPARQL
  * betraying the lack of common knowledge in Java programming and
    coding good practice in general

What\u2019s worse, these users, in spite of repeated remarks, keep on being
very vague in their questions, requiring the most patient subscribers to
ask many questions just to obtain a decent understanding of the problem.
A problem that is, again, often not much related to Jena or Fuseki.

As a subscriber, I\u2019m tired of their consistent failure to propose clear
and concise questions and I wish the patient people who answer them
spend their mailing time on more interesting threads. I also fear it
makes certain subscribers silently go away because of this \u201cnoise\u201d.

I first thought of publicly complaining to these users, but I thought
that the managers of the Jena lists should discuss it and take the
appropriate measures.

My suggestion is to:

  * inform the subscribers of an upcoming enforcement of the publishing
    rules (relevance, clearness, completeness, etc.)
  * stop answering the vague/off-topic/badly presented questions
  * if they insist, remind them the topic of the list and good practices
    in problem reporting, and warn them of a possible ban.

Thanks for your attention,

Colin Maudry
https://twitter.com/CMaudry

\u200b

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

["A. Soroka" <aj...@virginia.edu>]

Andy has pointed to 

https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve

and I think it's a great starting place. On an additional note, there is a clear pattern in the posts described very well by Colin Maudry-- the posters are students doing school assignments. I have at least once suggested to at least one of them that it would be appropriate for them to ask their teacher to contact this project directly to make proper arrangements for what support the project can provide, but without result. 

If no one objects, I'll make such a suggestion one last time, and very directly to those concerned in the following way:

> Please tell your teacher that you have been directly informed that this list is not for answering basic questions about Java programming and is moving to require a reasonable attempt at independent work. The people who are patiently answering your questions on this list are all volunteers who have many other things to be doing with their time. You are taking advantage of us by asking unfocused or simplistic questions and you are irritating people who are trying to make proper use of the list. Please stop. Please tell your teacher to contact us and we can try to work out some better means of support. We want people to learn and to use Jena, but you are going about that task in an inappropriate way.


---
A. Soroka
The University of Virginia Library

> On Oct 23, 2016, at 8:39 AM, Claude Warren <cl...@xenei.com> wrote:
> 
> I must admit I find a number of the posts aggravating.  So much so that I
> stopped reading them long ago.  I would support any effort to clean up the
> questions and clearly mark messages that are not going to be answered.
> Perhaps we should put together a page that clearly explains exactly what
> data is necessary in a question and when one is submitted without proper
> background repond with a "won't answer" type message that points to the
> specific data  that are missing.  This will hopefully cut down on the noise
> as well as give people who are trying a way to get the info they need,
> perhaps by rephrasing their question.
> 
> Claude
> 
> On Sun, Oct 23, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Colin Maudry <co...@maudry.com> wrote:
> 
>> Dear Jena developers,
>> 
>> Upon Andy Seaborne’s suggestion, I would like to share with you a
>> concern we have with certain posts shared on users@jena.apache.org.
>> In the last couple months, we have seen certain users repeatedly sending
>> questions that are either:
>> 
>>  * hardly related to Jena and Fuseki
>>  * very basic questions about RDF or SPARQL
>>  * betraying the lack of common knowledge in Java programming and
>>    coding good practice in general
>> 
>> What’s worse, these users, in spite of repeated remarks, keep on being
>> very vague in their questions, requiring the most patient subscribers to
>> ask many questions just to obtain a decent understanding of the problem.
>> A problem that is, again, often not much related to Jena or Fuseki.
>> 
>> As a subscriber, I’m tired of their consistent failure to propose clear
>> and concise questions and I wish the patient people who answer them
>> spend their mailing time on more interesting threads. I also fear it
>> makes certain subscribers silently go away because of this “noise”.
>> 
>> I first thought of publicly complaining to these users, but I thought
>> that the managers of the Jena lists should discuss it and take the
>> appropriate measures.
>> 
>> My suggestion is to:
>> 
>>  * inform the subscribers of an upcoming enforcement of the publishing
>>    rules (relevance, clearness, completeness, etc.)
>>  * stop answering the vague/off-topic/badly presented questions
>>  * if they insist, remind them the topic of the list and good practices
>>    in problem reporting, and warn them of a possible ban.
>> 
>> Thanks for your attention,
>> 
>> Colin Maudry
>> https://twitter.com/CMaudry
>> 
>> ​
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> I like: Like Like - The likeliest place on the web
> <http://like-like.xenei.com>
> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/claudewarren

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

[Claude Warren <cl...@xenei.com>]

I must admit I find a number of the posts aggravating.  So much so that I
stopped reading them long ago.  I would support any effort to clean up the
questions and clearly mark messages that are not going to be answered.
Perhaps we should put together a page that clearly explains exactly what
data is necessary in a question and when one is submitted without proper
background repond with a "won't answer" type message that points to the
specific data  that are missing.  This will hopefully cut down on the noise
as well as give people who are trying a way to get the info they need,
perhaps by rephrasing their question.

Claude

On Sun, Oct 23, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Colin Maudry <co...@maudry.com> wrote:

> Dear Jena developers,
>
> Upon Andy Seaborne’s suggestion, I would like to share with you a
> concern we have with certain posts shared on users@jena.apache.org.
> In the last couple months, we have seen certain users repeatedly sending
> questions that are either:
>
>   * hardly related to Jena and Fuseki
>   * very basic questions about RDF or SPARQL
>   * betraying the lack of common knowledge in Java programming and
>     coding good practice in general
>
> What’s worse, these users, in spite of repeated remarks, keep on being
> very vague in their questions, requiring the most patient subscribers to
> ask many questions just to obtain a decent understanding of the problem.
> A problem that is, again, often not much related to Jena or Fuseki.
>
> As a subscriber, I’m tired of their consistent failure to propose clear
> and concise questions and I wish the patient people who answer them
> spend their mailing time on more interesting threads. I also fear it
> makes certain subscribers silently go away because of this “noise”.
>
> I first thought of publicly complaining to these users, but I thought
> that the managers of the Jena lists should discuss it and take the
> appropriate measures.
>
> My suggestion is to:
>
>   * inform the subscribers of an upcoming enforcement of the publishing
>     rules (relevance, clearness, completeness, etc.)
>   * stop answering the vague/off-topic/badly presented questions
>   * if they insist, remind them the topic of the list and good practices
>     in problem reporting, and warn them of a possible ban.
>
> Thanks for your attention,
>
> Colin Maudry
> https://twitter.com/CMaudry
>
> ​
>



-- 
I like: Like Like - The likeliest place on the web
<http://like-like.xenei.com>
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/claudewarren

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

["A. Soroka" <aj...@virginia.edu>]

I think these are excellent ideas, and I would love to help pursue them.

The current documentation does have tutorial-style sections, but there are lots of other media at our disposal, e.g. as you say, video. A standard intro webinar that could be arranged on a request basis would be pretty spectacular.

---
A. Soroka
The University of Virginia Library

> On Oct 23, 2016, at 6:06 PM, Stian Soiland-Reyes <st...@apache.org> wrote:
> 
> OK, I think that is a good idea to get in touch with the teachers; perhaps
> so they can give us an advance notice and we can understand what their
> course is meant to teach. So a more friendly request for the teachers to
> get in touch (or we ask directly the name/email of their teacher), but
> without the "so you stop irritating us" bit :-). Presumably the teachers
> dont want us to do the assignment for their students!
> 
> There could even be opportunities to do like a webinar or video with a
> short Jena intro, there are is probably some material from Elixir's Bring
> Your Own Data training events and similar that we could link to; if the
> teachers have better background materials and tutorials it can hopefully
> reduce our email load.
> 
> On 23 Oct 2016 10:43 pm, "A. Soroka" <aj...@virginia.edu> wrote:
> 
>>> Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem to ask us the
>> actual assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair for us to dodge
>> those, but perhaps in a less hostile way.
>> 
>> It seems to me that this is the entire question: there aren't really the
>> kinds of problems Colin Maudry raised _except_ with these examples. And the
>> messages that worry me are not the initial questions that amount to "please
>> do my assignment" but the fact that helpful voices on the list give in
>> response to such questions good advice and next steps which are repeatedly
>> ignored.
>> 
>>> I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too helpful!), but I wouldn't
>> go to a "go away and talk to your teacher" route, but rather in general
>> respond with what is expected of a good question and what the poster should
>> try first.
>> 
>> I'm not sure if this particular remark is in response to my suggestion,
>> but just in case, I will clarify: I don't want to tell the students to go
>> away, I want to tell them to ask their teacher(s) to contact Jena directly
>> (instead of inadvertently and indirectly by giving assignments that show up
>> immediately as questions on the user list), hopefully to help create a more
>> appropriate kind of engagement for their students with the Jena community.
>> 
>> ---
>> A. Soroka
>> The University of Virginia Library
>> 
>>> On Oct 23, 2016, at 5:24 PM, Stian Soiland-Reyes <st...@apache.org>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Agree to not go too aggressive in general, it could also strike down
>> users
>>> who like Jena as a tool (remember we have command lines and servers!) or
>>> have been recommended Jena, but who have not before used Java as
>>> programming language before. Here, tutorials and examples is what we
>> should
>>> point to.
>>> 
>>> Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem to ask us the
>> actual
>>> assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair for us to dodge those,
>>> but perhaps in a less hostile way. Many students and researchers I have
>>> interviewed in the Big Data community say they struggle to post their
>>> questions on mailing lists for the tools they use, as they get hammered
>>> down for basically not being geeky enough. Consequently they don't come
>>> back when their skill sets have improved and they could potentially have
>>> contributed back.
>>> 
>>> Also remember that students have perhaps never before used a public
>> mailing
>>> list and already struggle to separate what is RDF, what is OWL, what is
>>> Java, what is Jena, what is just a bug in their own code.
>>> 
>>> I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too helpful!), but I wouldn't
>> go
>>> to a "go away and talk to your teacher" route, but rather in general
>>> respond with what is expected of a good question and what the poster
>> should
>>> try first. Point to gist.github.com or similar as a way to paste code
>>> rather than getting it in the abstract ("I tried setting the literal")
>>> helps a lot.
>>> 
>>> Also I think we can reply shorter (but friendly) as a bounce, rather
>> than a
>>> complete reply to help them with the more obvious assignment side. We can
>>> point to tutorials for coding as well; Software Carpentry has many great
>>> starting points.
>>> 
>>> On 23 Oct 2016 7:43 pm, "Paul Houle" <pa...@ontology2.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I find this thread disturbing.  Many people in the RDF community have
>>>> worked a long time and it's just recently that the uptake has broadened
>>>> (people are looking at JSON-LD and starting to understand what it means,
>>>> not what any particular authority says that it means,  but what it
>>>> actually means.)
>>>> 
>>>> I do believe that problems should be made reproducable and as a group we
>>>> could industrialize that.  For instance,  a test project that can be
>>>> forked in github would be a great place to put in a query,  put in a
>>>> graph,  and then put in some rules at which point  they could ask good
>>>> questions.
>>>> 
>>>> I carefully read the answers to the bad questions because I am intensely
>>>> curious about strange details in Jena that trip people up.
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> Paul Houle
>>>> paul.houle@ontology2.com
>>>> 
>>>> On Sun, Oct 23, 2016, at 06:07 AM, Colin Maudry wrote:
>>>>> Dear Jena developers,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Upon Andy Seaborne’s suggestion, I would like to share with you a
>>>>> concern we have with certain posts shared on users@jena.apache.org.
>>>>> In the last couple months, we have seen certain users repeatedly
>> sending
>>>>> questions that are either:
>>>>> 
>>>>> * hardly related to Jena and Fuseki
>>>>> * very basic questions about RDF or SPARQL
>>>>> * betraying the lack of common knowledge in Java programming and
>>>>>   coding good practice in general
>>>>> 
>>>>> What’s worse, these users, in spite of repeated remarks, keep on being
>>>>> very vague in their questions, requiring the most patient subscribers
>> to
>>>>> ask many questions just to obtain a decent understanding of the
>> problem.
>>>>> A problem that is, again, often not much related to Jena or Fuseki.
>>>>> 
>>>>> As a subscriber, I’m tired of their consistent failure to propose clear
>>>>> and concise questions and I wish the patient people who answer them
>>>>> spend their mailing time on more interesting threads. I also fear it
>>>>> makes certain subscribers silently go away because of this “noise”.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I first thought of publicly complaining to these users, but I thought
>>>>> that the managers of the Jena lists should discuss it and take the
>>>>> appropriate measures.
>>>>> 
>>>>> My suggestion is to:
>>>>> 
>>>>> * inform the subscribers of an upcoming enforcement of the publishing
>>>>>   rules (relevance, clearness, completeness, etc.)
>>>>> * stop answering the vague/off-topic/badly presented questions
>>>>> * if they insist, remind them the topic of the list and good practices
>>>>>   in problem reporting, and warn them of a possible ban.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks for your attention,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Colin Maudry
>>>>> https://twitter.com/CMaudry
>>>>> 
>>>>> ​
>>>> 
>> 
>> 

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

[Dave Reynolds <da...@gmail.com>]

On 24/10/16 15:52, A. Soroka wrote:
>> I take the first bullet to mean some "enforcement" is proposed and the last bullet to suggest that a "ban" is "possible".
>
> Sorry, I missed that last phrase-- I wouldn't support a ban for that kind of reason. I take "enforcement" simply to mean that after the same question is asked several times with good answers ignored, the question can legitimately be ignored. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Indeed, I'm happy with that, which I see as the norm.

>> I was not pointing out that projects go through phases.
>> I was pointing out that Jena has been in mature use, including by students on course projects, for many years. We get phases where we get naive and poorly asked questions from students. Those phases are more related to course lifecycles than to Jena lifecycles.
>
> I'm sorry I misunderstood you.
>
>> Patient responses, as have been given here, generally work. If they don't then continued such poor questions can simply go unanswered. I really don't think there's enough volume of such traffic here as to be a problem.
>>
>> Dave
>
> I don't think disagreeing on how problematic the kind of traffic about which we are writing is should stop us from trying new kinds of engagement. In other words, creating more resources for beginners is good for Jena no matter whether you think this mailing list question is serious or not.

+0

[I mean that in the Apache sense :) I definitely agree that more 
beginner resources would be good. However, I've no available time to 
help so +1 would be a misleading response!]

Dave

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

[Andy Seaborne <an...@apache.org>]

On 24/10/16 16:09, Paul Houle wrote:


> One reason why people have challenges communicating on mailing lists is
> that English is not their first language.

I don't think English or not is that much of a factor so as much as 
simply not reading the emails from the receivers point of view.  It's 
the "we can't see your screen" effect.

     Andy

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

["A. Soroka" <aj...@virginia.edu>]

I haven't seen anyone engaging in this discussion communicate any form of racism.

The specific problem to which Colin Maudry referred is when questioners ignore the responses to their questions. Language barriers are certainly a problem in globally distributed work (having Jena documentation available in more than one language would be a fantastic accomplishment!), but that does not seem to me to be the issue here.

---
A. Soroka
The University of Virginia Library

> On Oct 24, 2016, at 11:09 AM, Paul Houle <pa...@ontology2.com> wrote:
> 
> These arguments have a way of blending into racism.
> 
> One reason why people have challenges communicating on mailing lists is
> that English is not their first language.
> 
> -- 
>  Paul Houle
>  paul.houle@ontology2.com
> 
> On Mon, Oct 24, 2016, at 10:52 AM, A. Soroka wrote:
>>> I take the first bullet to mean some "enforcement" is proposed and the last bullet to suggest that a "ban" is "possible".
>> 
>> Sorry, I missed that last phrase-- I wouldn't support a ban for that kind
>> of reason. I take "enforcement" simply to mean that after the same
>> question is asked several times with good answers ignored, the question
>> can legitimately be ignored. I don't see anything wrong with that.
>> 
>>> I was not pointing out that projects go through phases.
>>> I was pointing out that Jena has been in mature use, including by students on course projects, for many years. We get phases where we get naive and poorly asked questions from students. Those phases are more related to course lifecycles than to Jena lifecycles.
>> 
>> I'm sorry I misunderstood you.
>> 
>>> Patient responses, as have been given here, generally work. If they don't then continued such poor questions can simply go unanswered. I really don't think there's enough volume of such traffic here as to be a problem.
>>> 
>>> Dave
>> 
>> I don't think disagreeing on how problematic the kind of traffic about
>> which we are writing is should stop us from trying new kinds of
>> engagement. In other words, creating more resources for beginners is good
>> for Jena no matter whether you think this mailing list question is
>> serious or not.
>> 
>> ---
>> A. Soroka
>> The University of Virginia Library
>> 

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

[Paul Houle <pa...@ontology2.com>]

These arguments have a way of blending into racism.

One reason why people have challenges communicating on mailing lists is
that English is not their first language.

-- 
  Paul Houle
  paul.houle@ontology2.com

On Mon, Oct 24, 2016, at 10:52 AM, A. Soroka wrote:
> > I take the first bullet to mean some "enforcement" is proposed and the last bullet to suggest that a "ban" is "possible".
> 
> Sorry, I missed that last phrase-- I wouldn't support a ban for that kind
> of reason. I take "enforcement" simply to mean that after the same
> question is asked several times with good answers ignored, the question
> can legitimately be ignored. I don't see anything wrong with that.
> 
> > I was not pointing out that projects go through phases.
> > I was pointing out that Jena has been in mature use, including by students on course projects, for many years. We get phases where we get naive and poorly asked questions from students. Those phases are more related to course lifecycles than to Jena lifecycles.
> 
> I'm sorry I misunderstood you.
> 
> > Patient responses, as have been given here, generally work. If they don't then continued such poor questions can simply go unanswered. I really don't think there's enough volume of such traffic here as to be a problem.
> > 
> > Dave
> 
> I don't think disagreeing on how problematic the kind of traffic about
> which we are writing is should stop us from trying new kinds of
> engagement. In other words, creating more resources for beginners is good
> for Jena no matter whether you think this mailing list question is
> serious or not.
> 
> ---
> A. Soroka
> The University of Virginia Library
> 

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

["A. Soroka" <aj...@virginia.edu>]

> The users@ list is about individuals and students are on the list as individuals, not as class participants. I fear discussion with the teachers could lead to serious problems - it would only take one large class, or even not so large class, pointed at users@ to take things to a whole different level.

This is surely true. My suggestion was meant to open up the possibility of some avenue of communication _outside_ users@ if that was deemed appropriate after discussion. For example, I could imagine a teacher inviting a Jena committer or expert user to join a class discussion list to help out. (With, of course, the possibility of forwarding questions to users@ as needed.)

Generally, my hope would be not to throttle or spam the current venues for support but to open up new ones.

---
A. Soroka
The University of Virginia Library

> On Oct 24, 2016, at 11:49 AM, Andy Seaborne <an...@apache.org> wrote:
> 
> From general reference
> Apache has a code of conduct:
> https://www.apache.org/foundation/policies/conduct
> 
> 
> 
> Just a couple of points to add to the discussion:
> 
> It would be a problem if we believe it is off putting for other people. I don't think we are at that point but it is something to keep in mind.
> 
> On teachers:
> 
> The users@ list is about individuals and students are on the list as individuals, not as class participants. I fear discussion with the teachers could lead to serious problems - it would only take one large class, or even not so large class, pointed at users@ to take things to a whole different level.
> 
> At that point, it could become off putting for other people.
> 
> 
> Some principles I use:
> 
> 1/ There is no obligation to answer - we do it because we're being helpful.
> 
> 2/ We do not do assignments - we can help with understanding semweb and using Jena.
> 
> 3/ Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example - or at least some attempt to get to one. "It does not work" is not a MCVE.
> 
> 4/ People need to make an effort, such as respond to requests for better examples, to attempt to apply suggestions.
> 
> Replying with "does not work" 10 minutes after a reply does not show effort.
> 
> 
> 	Andy
> 
> 
> On 24/10/16 15:52, A. Soroka wrote:
>>> I take the first bullet to mean some "enforcement" is proposed and the last bullet to suggest that a "ban" is "possible".
>> 
>> Sorry, I missed that last phrase-- I wouldn't support a ban for that kind of reason. I take "enforcement" simply to mean that after the same question is asked several times with good answers ignored, the question can legitimately be ignored. I don't see anything wrong with that.
>> 
>>> I was not pointing out that projects go through phases.
>>> I was pointing out that Jena has been in mature use, including by students on course projects, for many years. We get phases where we get naive and poorly asked questions from students. Those phases are more related to course lifecycles than to Jena lifecycles.
>> 
>> I'm sorry I misunderstood you.
>> 
>>> Patient responses, as have been given here, generally work. If they don't then continued such poor questions can simply go unanswered. I really don't think there's enough volume of such traffic here as to be a problem.
>>> 
>>> Dave
>> 
>> I don't think disagreeing on how problematic the kind of traffic about which we are writing is should stop us from trying new kinds of engagement. In other words, creating more resources for beginners is good for Jena no matter whether you think this mailing list question is serious or not.
>> 
>> ---
>> A. Soroka
>> The University of Virginia Library
>> 

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

[Andy Seaborne <an...@apache.org>]

 From general reference
Apache has a code of conduct:
https://www.apache.org/foundation/policies/conduct



Just a couple of points to add to the discussion:

It would be a problem if we believe it is off putting for other people. 
I don't think we are at that point but it is something to keep in mind.

On teachers:

The users@ list is about individuals and students are on the list as 
individuals, not as class participants. I fear discussion with the 
teachers could lead to serious problems - it would only take one large 
class, or even not so large class, pointed at users@ to take things to a 
whole different level.

At that point, it could become off putting for other people.


Some principles I use:

1/ There is no obligation to answer - we do it because we're being helpful.

2/ We do not do assignments - we can help with understanding semweb and 
using Jena.

3/ Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example - or at least some attempt 
to get to one. "It does not work" is not a MCVE.

4/ People need to make an effort, such as respond to requests for better 
examples, to attempt to apply suggestions.

Replying with "does not work" 10 minutes after a reply does not show effort.


	Andy


On 24/10/16 15:52, A. Soroka wrote:
>> I take the first bullet to mean some "enforcement" is proposed and the last bullet to suggest that a "ban" is "possible".
>
> Sorry, I missed that last phrase-- I wouldn't support a ban for that kind of reason. I take "enforcement" simply to mean that after the same question is asked several times with good answers ignored, the question can legitimately be ignored. I don't see anything wrong with that.
>
>> I was not pointing out that projects go through phases.
>> I was pointing out that Jena has been in mature use, including by students on course projects, for many years. We get phases where we get naive and poorly asked questions from students. Those phases are more related to course lifecycles than to Jena lifecycles.
>
> I'm sorry I misunderstood you.
>
>> Patient responses, as have been given here, generally work. If they don't then continued such poor questions can simply go unanswered. I really don't think there's enough volume of such traffic here as to be a problem.
>>
>> Dave
>
> I don't think disagreeing on how problematic the kind of traffic about which we are writing is should stop us from trying new kinds of engagement. In other words, creating more resources for beginners is good for Jena no matter whether you think this mailing list question is serious or not.
>
> ---
> A. Soroka
> The University of Virginia Library
>

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

["A. Soroka" <aj...@virginia.edu>]

> I take the first bullet to mean some "enforcement" is proposed and the last bullet to suggest that a "ban" is "possible".

Sorry, I missed that last phrase-- I wouldn't support a ban for that kind of reason. I take "enforcement" simply to mean that after the same question is asked several times with good answers ignored, the question can legitimately be ignored. I don't see anything wrong with that.

> I was not pointing out that projects go through phases.
> I was pointing out that Jena has been in mature use, including by students on course projects, for many years. We get phases where we get naive and poorly asked questions from students. Those phases are more related to course lifecycles than to Jena lifecycles.

I'm sorry I misunderstood you.

> Patient responses, as have been given here, generally work. If they don't then continued such poor questions can simply go unanswered. I really don't think there's enough volume of such traffic here as to be a problem.
> 
> Dave

I don't think disagreeing on how problematic the kind of traffic about which we are writing is should stop us from trying new kinds of engagement. In other words, creating more resources for beginners is good for Jena no matter whether you think this mailing list question is serious or not.

---
A. Soroka
The University of Virginia Library

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

[Dave Reynolds <da...@gmail.com>]

On 24/10/16 14:48, A. Soroka wrote:
> I'm a bit confused by some of the last few messages in this thread. I haven't heard anyone suggesting that anyone be excluded from anything.

The title of this thread is "raising the bar".

The root post says:

"""
   * inform the subscribers of an upcoming enforcement of the publishing
     rules (relevance, clearness, completeness, etc.)
   * stop answering the vague/off-topic/badly presented questions
   * if they insist, remind them the topic of the list and good practices
     in problem reporting, and warn them of a possible ban.

"""

I take the first bullet to mean some "enforcement" is proposed and the 
last bullet to suggest that a "ban" is "possible".

> Dave and Rob are right to point out that projects go through phases. What's more, the kind of communication appropriate to one phase may not be as useful at another. I have no reason to suppose that Jena's community is growing wildly (great though that would be!) but I'm confident that it is growing. From my experience with open source work, the kinds of communication that are useful for a project that involves (say) a few researchers at one or two universities is not appropriate for a project in production at hundreds of sites, and all along the spectrum in between styles and means of communication need to adapt.

I was not pointing out that projects go through phases.

I was pointing out that Jena has been in mature use, including by 
students on course projects, for many years. We get phases where we get 
naive and poorly asked questions from students. Those phases are more 
related to course lifecycles than to Jena lifecycles.

Patient responses, as have been given here, generally work. If they 
don't then continued such poor questions can simply go unanswered. I 
really don't think there's enough volume of such traffic here as to be a 
problem.

Dave


> That's what I think is being pointed out here: far from pushing people away, we need to be developing new ways to be welcoming. In that wise, Stian's ideas are really on-point, I think.
>
> I have been involved with a few communities that have set up (with varying success) "beginner in the community" email lists. Those are lists wherein it is explicitly understood that no question is bad and no assumptions should be made about questioner's backgrounds. It's a good way to "factor out work" and a way to encourage folks who may not feel that they have enough deep knowledge to answer difficult questions to still participate answering simpler questions and thereby grow their own skills. That might or might not be appropriate for Jena, but it's meant as an example of communications that might only become appropriate as a community grows.
>
> ---
> A. Soroka
> The University of Virginia Library
>
>> On Oct 24, 2016, at 5:29 AM, Rob Vesse <rv...@dotnetrdf.org> wrote:
>>
>> Totally agree with Dave here
>>
>> We always get phases of this kind of traffic. And whatever project you are talking about there will always be users who try to run before they can walk. This problem is not unique to our community, nor to the Apache foundation as a whole. You will encounter this whether you are running a small open source project or maintaining a large commercial project.
>>
>> Yes we can probably be a little more robust in reminding people about how to ask the questions. Note that we already have guidelines on asking good questions on our website:
>>
>> http://jena.apache.org/help_and_support/index.html
>>
>> Some people are never going to read these, some people will never read the manual either however much you refer them to it. That is unfortunately life.
>>
>> This is supposed to be an inclusive community, we shouldn\u2019t be excluding people just because they don\u2019t have years of experience of a software engineer and the concept of MVCE drilled into them yet such that they know how to ask a good question first time every time. Yes we should encourage them to seek help in more appropriate ways and direct them to resources that help them to ask better questions. But we shouldn\u2019t turn them away because they don\u2019t meet some ideal about the level of discourse.
>>
>> When you were a student would you have asked any better questions?
>>
>> Please bear in mind that many of us benefited from western education systems with relatively small class sizes and good access to one-to-one tuition/assistance. Often these kinds of questions are coming from students in education systems with huge class sizes and very little access to one-to-one tuition/assistance. Nobody learns to ask good questions without first asking bad questions, and some people take longer than others to get how to ask good questions.
>>
>> No one is forcing any others to read through these kinds of questions yet many others continue to do so because we care about this project and encouraging the community around it. People are free to filter and consume this list as they want, if there are particular uses whose questions frustrates you no one is stopping you from filtering those emails in your chosen email client.
>>
>> Rob
>>
>> On 24/10/2016 09:10, "Dave Reynolds" <da...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>    There have been student questions on the jena users list since long
>>    before Jena moved into Apache. While there's a burst at the moment I
>>    don't see it as particularly worse than historic levels.
>>
>>    In the past sometimes teachers have stepped in and stopped it, sometimes
>>    not.
>>
>>    I'm not convinced that the number of such questions at the moment is so
>>    great as to be a problem for other subscribers.
>>
>>    It is fine for the list to simply ignore the really poor/off-topic
>>    questions, especially from serial offenders. I would not be keen any
>>    more active steps such as "publishing rules" unless the problem were
>>    more acute than it seems to be.
>>
>>    Dave
>>
>>    On 23/10/16 23:06, Stian Soiland-Reyes wrote:
>>> OK, I think that is a good idea to get in touch with the teachers; perhaps
>>> so they can give us an advance notice and we can understand what their
>>> course is meant to teach. So a more friendly request for the teachers to
>>> get in touch (or we ask directly the name/email of their teacher), but
>>> without the "so you stop irritating us" bit :-). Presumably the teachers
>>> dont want us to do the assignment for their students!
>>>
>>> There could even be opportunities to do like a webinar or video with a
>>> short Jena intro, there are is probably some material from Elixir's Bring
>>> Your Own Data training events and similar that we could link to; if the
>>> teachers have better background materials and tutorials it can hopefully
>>> reduce our email load.
>>>
>>> On 23 Oct 2016 10:43 pm, "A. Soroka" <aj...@virginia.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem to ask us the
>>>> actual assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair for us to dodge
>>>> those, but perhaps in a less hostile way.
>>>>
>>>> It seems to me that this is the entire question: there aren't really the
>>>> kinds of problems Colin Maudry raised _except_ with these examples. And the
>>>> messages that worry me are not the initial questions that amount to "please
>>>> do my assignment" but the fact that helpful voices on the list give in
>>>> response to such questions good advice and next steps which are repeatedly
>>>> ignored.
>>>>
>>>>> I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too helpful!), but I wouldn't
>>>> go to a "go away and talk to your teacher" route, but rather in general
>>>> respond with what is expected of a good question and what the poster should
>>>> try first.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not sure if this particular remark is in response to my suggestion,
>>>> but just in case, I will clarify: I don't want to tell the students to go
>>>> away, I want to tell them to ask their teacher(s) to contact Jena directly
>>>> (instead of inadvertently and indirectly by giving assignments that show up
>>>> immediately as questions on the user list), hopefully to help create a more
>>>> appropriate kind of engagement for their students with the Jena community.
>>>>
>>>> ---
>>>> A. Soroka
>>>> The University of Virginia Library
>>>>
>>>>> On Oct 23, 2016, at 5:24 PM, Stian Soiland-Reyes <st...@apache.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Agree to not go too aggressive in general, it could also strike down
>>>> users
>>>>> who like Jena as a tool (remember we have command lines and servers!) or
>>>>> have been recommended Jena, but who have not before used Java as
>>>>> programming language before. Here, tutorials and examples is what we
>>>> should
>>>>> point to.
>>>>>
>>>>> Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem to ask us the
>>>> actual
>>>>> assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair for us to dodge those,
>>>>> but perhaps in a less hostile way. Many students and researchers I have
>>>>> interviewed in the Big Data community say they struggle to post their
>>>>> questions on mailing lists for the tools they use, as they get hammered
>>>>> down for basically not being geeky enough. Consequently they don't come
>>>>> back when their skill sets have improved and they could potentially have
>>>>> contributed back.
>>>>>
>>>>> Also remember that students have perhaps never before used a public
>>>> mailing
>>>>> list and already struggle to separate what is RDF, what is OWL, what is
>>>>> Java, what is Jena, what is just a bug in their own code.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too helpful!), but I wouldn't
>>>> go
>>>>> to a "go away and talk to your teacher" route, but rather in general
>>>>> respond with what is expected of a good question and what the poster
>>>> should
>>>>> try first. Point to gist.github.com or similar as a way to paste code
>>>>> rather than getting it in the abstract ("I tried setting the literal")
>>>>> helps a lot.
>>>>>
>>>>> Also I think we can reply shorter (but friendly) as a bounce, rather
>>>> than a
>>>>> complete reply to help them with the more obvious assignment side. We can
>>>>> point to tutorials for coding as well; Software Carpentry has many great
>>>>> starting points.
>>>>>
>>>>> On 23 Oct 2016 7:43 pm, "Paul Houle" <pa...@ontology2.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I find this thread disturbing.  Many people in the RDF community have
>>>>>> worked a long time and it's just recently that the uptake has broadened
>>>>>> (people are looking at JSON-LD and starting to understand what it means,
>>>>>> not what any particular authority says that it means,  but what it
>>>>>> actually means.)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I do believe that problems should be made reproducable and as a group we
>>>>>> could industrialize that.  For instance,  a test project that can be
>>>>>> forked in github would be a great place to put in a query,  put in a
>>>>>> graph,  and then put in some rules at which point  they could ask good
>>>>>> questions.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I carefully read the answers to the bad questions because I am intensely
>>>>>> curious about strange details in Jena that trip people up.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Paul Houle
>>>>>> paul.houle@ontology2.com
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sun, Oct 23, 2016, at 06:07 AM, Colin Maudry wrote:
>>>>>>> Dear Jena developers,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Upon Andy Seaborne\u2019s suggestion, I would like to share with you a
>>>>>>> concern we have with certain posts shared on users@jena.apache.org.
>>>>>>> In the last couple months, we have seen certain users repeatedly
>>>> sending
>>>>>>> questions that are either:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> * hardly related to Jena and Fuseki
>>>>>>> * very basic questions about RDF or SPARQL
>>>>>>> * betraying the lack of common knowledge in Java programming and
>>>>>>>   coding good practice in general
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> What\u2019s worse, these users, in spite of repeated remarks, keep on being
>>>>>>> very vague in their questions, requiring the most patient subscribers
>>>> to
>>>>>>> ask many questions just to obtain a decent understanding of the
>>>> problem.
>>>>>>> A problem that is, again, often not much related to Jena or Fuseki.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> As a subscriber, I\u2019m tired of their consistent failure to propose clear
>>>>>>> and concise questions and I wish the patient people who answer them
>>>>>>> spend their mailing time on more interesting threads. I also fear it
>>>>>>> makes certain subscribers silently go away because of this \u201cnoise\u201d.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I first thought of publicly complaining to these users, but I thought
>>>>>>> that the managers of the Jena lists should discuss it and take the
>>>>>>> appropriate measures.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> My suggestion is to:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> * inform the subscribers of an upcoming enforcement of the publishing
>>>>>>>   rules (relevance, clearness, completeness, etc.)
>>>>>>> * stop answering the vague/off-topic/badly presented questions
>>>>>>> * if they insist, remind them the topic of the list and good practices
>>>>>>>   in problem reporting, and warn them of a possible ban.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thanks for your attention,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Colin Maudry
>>>>>>> https://twitter.com/CMaudry
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> \u200b
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

["A. Soroka" <aj...@virginia.edu>]

I'm a bit confused by some of the last few messages in this thread. I haven't heard anyone suggesting that anyone be excluded from anything.

Dave and Rob are right to point out that projects go through phases. What's more, the kind of communication appropriate to one phase may not be as useful at another. I have no reason to suppose that Jena's community is growing wildly (great though that would be!) but I'm confident that it is growing. From my experience with open source work, the kinds of communication that are useful for a project that involves (say) a few researchers at one or two universities is not appropriate for a project in production at hundreds of sites, and all along the spectrum in between styles and means of communication need to adapt.

That's what I think is being pointed out here: far from pushing people away, we need to be developing new ways to be welcoming. In that wise, Stian's ideas are really on-point, I think.

I have been involved with a few communities that have set up (with varying success) "beginner in the community" email lists. Those are lists wherein it is explicitly understood that no question is bad and no assumptions should be made about questioner's backgrounds. It's a good way to "factor out work" and a way to encourage folks who may not feel that they have enough deep knowledge to answer difficult questions to still participate answering simpler questions and thereby grow their own skills. That might or might not be appropriate for Jena, but it's meant as an example of communications that might only become appropriate as a community grows.

---
A. Soroka
The University of Virginia Library

> On Oct 24, 2016, at 5:29 AM, Rob Vesse <rv...@dotnetrdf.org> wrote:
> 
> Totally agree with Dave here
> 
> We always get phases of this kind of traffic. And whatever project you are talking about there will always be users who try to run before they can walk. This problem is not unique to our community, nor to the Apache foundation as a whole. You will encounter this whether you are running a small open source project or maintaining a large commercial project.
> 
> Yes we can probably be a little more robust in reminding people about how to ask the questions. Note that we already have guidelines on asking good questions on our website:
> 
> http://jena.apache.org/help_and_support/index.html
> 
> Some people are never going to read these, some people will never read the manual either however much you refer them to it. That is unfortunately life.
> 
> This is supposed to be an inclusive community, we shouldn’t be excluding people just because they don’t have years of experience of a software engineer and the concept of MVCE drilled into them yet such that they know how to ask a good question first time every time. Yes we should encourage them to seek help in more appropriate ways and direct them to resources that help them to ask better questions. But we shouldn’t turn them away because they don’t meet some ideal about the level of discourse.
> 
> When you were a student would you have asked any better questions? 
> 
> Please bear in mind that many of us benefited from western education systems with relatively small class sizes and good access to one-to-one tuition/assistance. Often these kinds of questions are coming from students in education systems with huge class sizes and very little access to one-to-one tuition/assistance. Nobody learns to ask good questions without first asking bad questions, and some people take longer than others to get how to ask good questions.
> 
> No one is forcing any others to read through these kinds of questions yet many others continue to do so because we care about this project and encouraging the community around it. People are free to filter and consume this list as they want, if there are particular uses whose questions frustrates you no one is stopping you from filtering those emails in your chosen email client.
> 
> Rob
> 
> On 24/10/2016 09:10, "Dave Reynolds" <da...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>    There have been student questions on the jena users list since long 
>    before Jena moved into Apache. While there's a burst at the moment I 
>    don't see it as particularly worse than historic levels.
> 
>    In the past sometimes teachers have stepped in and stopped it, sometimes 
>    not.
> 
>    I'm not convinced that the number of such questions at the moment is so 
>    great as to be a problem for other subscribers.
> 
>    It is fine for the list to simply ignore the really poor/off-topic 
>    questions, especially from serial offenders. I would not be keen any 
>    more active steps such as "publishing rules" unless the problem were 
>    more acute than it seems to be.
> 
>    Dave
> 
>    On 23/10/16 23:06, Stian Soiland-Reyes wrote:
>> OK, I think that is a good idea to get in touch with the teachers; perhaps
>> so they can give us an advance notice and we can understand what their
>> course is meant to teach. So a more friendly request for the teachers to
>> get in touch (or we ask directly the name/email of their teacher), but
>> without the "so you stop irritating us" bit :-). Presumably the teachers
>> dont want us to do the assignment for their students!
>> 
>> There could even be opportunities to do like a webinar or video with a
>> short Jena intro, there are is probably some material from Elixir's Bring
>> Your Own Data training events and similar that we could link to; if the
>> teachers have better background materials and tutorials it can hopefully
>> reduce our email load.
>> 
>> On 23 Oct 2016 10:43 pm, "A. Soroka" <aj...@virginia.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>>> Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem to ask us the
>>> actual assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair for us to dodge
>>> those, but perhaps in a less hostile way.
>>> 
>>> It seems to me that this is the entire question: there aren't really the
>>> kinds of problems Colin Maudry raised _except_ with these examples. And the
>>> messages that worry me are not the initial questions that amount to "please
>>> do my assignment" but the fact that helpful voices on the list give in
>>> response to such questions good advice and next steps which are repeatedly
>>> ignored.
>>> 
>>>> I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too helpful!), but I wouldn't
>>> go to a "go away and talk to your teacher" route, but rather in general
>>> respond with what is expected of a good question and what the poster should
>>> try first.
>>> 
>>> I'm not sure if this particular remark is in response to my suggestion,
>>> but just in case, I will clarify: I don't want to tell the students to go
>>> away, I want to tell them to ask their teacher(s) to contact Jena directly
>>> (instead of inadvertently and indirectly by giving assignments that show up
>>> immediately as questions on the user list), hopefully to help create a more
>>> appropriate kind of engagement for their students with the Jena community.
>>> 
>>> ---
>>> A. Soroka
>>> The University of Virginia Library
>>> 
>>>> On Oct 23, 2016, at 5:24 PM, Stian Soiland-Reyes <st...@apache.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Agree to not go too aggressive in general, it could also strike down
>>> users
>>>> who like Jena as a tool (remember we have command lines and servers!) or
>>>> have been recommended Jena, but who have not before used Java as
>>>> programming language before. Here, tutorials and examples is what we
>>> should
>>>> point to.
>>>> 
>>>> Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem to ask us the
>>> actual
>>>> assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair for us to dodge those,
>>>> but perhaps in a less hostile way. Many students and researchers I have
>>>> interviewed in the Big Data community say they struggle to post their
>>>> questions on mailing lists for the tools they use, as they get hammered
>>>> down for basically not being geeky enough. Consequently they don't come
>>>> back when their skill sets have improved and they could potentially have
>>>> contributed back.
>>>> 
>>>> Also remember that students have perhaps never before used a public
>>> mailing
>>>> list and already struggle to separate what is RDF, what is OWL, what is
>>>> Java, what is Jena, what is just a bug in their own code.
>>>> 
>>>> I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too helpful!), but I wouldn't
>>> go
>>>> to a "go away and talk to your teacher" route, but rather in general
>>>> respond with what is expected of a good question and what the poster
>>> should
>>>> try first. Point to gist.github.com or similar as a way to paste code
>>>> rather than getting it in the abstract ("I tried setting the literal")
>>>> helps a lot.
>>>> 
>>>> Also I think we can reply shorter (but friendly) as a bounce, rather
>>> than a
>>>> complete reply to help them with the more obvious assignment side. We can
>>>> point to tutorials for coding as well; Software Carpentry has many great
>>>> starting points.
>>>> 
>>>> On 23 Oct 2016 7:43 pm, "Paul Houle" <pa...@ontology2.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> I find this thread disturbing.  Many people in the RDF community have
>>>>> worked a long time and it's just recently that the uptake has broadened
>>>>> (people are looking at JSON-LD and starting to understand what it means,
>>>>> not what any particular authority says that it means,  but what it
>>>>> actually means.)
>>>>> 
>>>>> I do believe that problems should be made reproducable and as a group we
>>>>> could industrialize that.  For instance,  a test project that can be
>>>>> forked in github would be a great place to put in a query,  put in a
>>>>> graph,  and then put in some rules at which point  they could ask good
>>>>> questions.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I carefully read the answers to the bad questions because I am intensely
>>>>> curious about strange details in Jena that trip people up.
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> Paul Houle
>>>>> paul.houle@ontology2.com
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Sun, Oct 23, 2016, at 06:07 AM, Colin Maudry wrote:
>>>>>> Dear Jena developers,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Upon Andy Seaborne’s suggestion, I would like to share with you a
>>>>>> concern we have with certain posts shared on users@jena.apache.org.
>>>>>> In the last couple months, we have seen certain users repeatedly
>>> sending
>>>>>> questions that are either:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> * hardly related to Jena and Fuseki
>>>>>> * very basic questions about RDF or SPARQL
>>>>>> * betraying the lack of common knowledge in Java programming and
>>>>>>   coding good practice in general
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> What’s worse, these users, in spite of repeated remarks, keep on being
>>>>>> very vague in their questions, requiring the most patient subscribers
>>> to
>>>>>> ask many questions just to obtain a decent understanding of the
>>> problem.
>>>>>> A problem that is, again, often not much related to Jena or Fuseki.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> As a subscriber, I’m tired of their consistent failure to propose clear
>>>>>> and concise questions and I wish the patient people who answer them
>>>>>> spend their mailing time on more interesting threads. I also fear it
>>>>>> makes certain subscribers silently go away because of this “noise”.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I first thought of publicly complaining to these users, but I thought
>>>>>> that the managers of the Jena lists should discuss it and take the
>>>>>> appropriate measures.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> My suggestion is to:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> * inform the subscribers of an upcoming enforcement of the publishing
>>>>>>   rules (relevance, clearness, completeness, etc.)
>>>>>> * stop answering the vague/off-topic/badly presented questions
>>>>>> * if they insist, remind them the topic of the list and good practices
>>>>>>   in problem reporting, and warn them of a possible ban.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Thanks for your attention,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Colin Maudry
>>>>>> https://twitter.com/CMaudry
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> ​
>>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

[Rob Vesse <rv...@dotnetrdf.org>]

Totally agree with Dave here

We always get phases of this kind of traffic. And whatever project you are talking about there will always be users who try to run before they can walk. This problem is not unique to our community, nor to the Apache foundation as a whole. You will encounter this whether you are running a small open source project or maintaining a large commercial project.

Yes we can probably be a little more robust in reminding people about how to ask the questions. Note that we already have guidelines on asking good questions on our website:

http://jena.apache.org/help_and_support/index.html

Some people are never going to read these, some people will never read the manual either however much you refer them to it. That is unfortunately life.

This is supposed to be an inclusive community, we shouldn’t be excluding people just because they don’t have years of experience of a software engineer and the concept of MVCE drilled into them yet such that they know how to ask a good question first time every time. Yes we should encourage them to seek help in more appropriate ways and direct them to resources that help them to ask better questions. But we shouldn’t turn them away because they don’t meet some ideal about the level of discourse.

When you were a student would you have asked any better questions? 

Please bear in mind that many of us benefited from western education systems with relatively small class sizes and good access to one-to-one tuition/assistance. Often these kinds of questions are coming from students in education systems with huge class sizes and very little access to one-to-one tuition/assistance. Nobody learns to ask good questions without first asking bad questions, and some people take longer than others to get how to ask good questions.

No one is forcing any others to read through these kinds of questions yet many others continue to do so because we care about this project and encouraging the community around it. People are free to filter and consume this list as they want, if there are particular uses whose questions frustrates you no one is stopping you from filtering those emails in your chosen email client.

Rob

On 24/10/2016 09:10, "Dave Reynolds" <da...@gmail.com> wrote:

    There have been student questions on the jena users list since long 
    before Jena moved into Apache. While there's a burst at the moment I 
    don't see it as particularly worse than historic levels.
    
    In the past sometimes teachers have stepped in and stopped it, sometimes 
    not.
    
    I'm not convinced that the number of such questions at the moment is so 
    great as to be a problem for other subscribers.
    
    It is fine for the list to simply ignore the really poor/off-topic 
    questions, especially from serial offenders. I would not be keen any 
    more active steps such as "publishing rules" unless the problem were 
    more acute than it seems to be.
    
    Dave
    
    On 23/10/16 23:06, Stian Soiland-Reyes wrote:
    > OK, I think that is a good idea to get in touch with the teachers; perhaps
    > so they can give us an advance notice and we can understand what their
    > course is meant to teach. So a more friendly request for the teachers to
    > get in touch (or we ask directly the name/email of their teacher), but
    > without the "so you stop irritating us" bit :-). Presumably the teachers
    > dont want us to do the assignment for their students!
    >
    > There could even be opportunities to do like a webinar or video with a
    > short Jena intro, there are is probably some material from Elixir's Bring
    > Your Own Data training events and similar that we could link to; if the
    > teachers have better background materials and tutorials it can hopefully
    > reduce our email load.
    >
    > On 23 Oct 2016 10:43 pm, "A. Soroka" <aj...@virginia.edu> wrote:
    >
    >>> Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem to ask us the
    >> actual assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair for us to dodge
    >> those, but perhaps in a less hostile way.
    >>
    >> It seems to me that this is the entire question: there aren't really the
    >> kinds of problems Colin Maudry raised _except_ with these examples. And the
    >> messages that worry me are not the initial questions that amount to "please
    >> do my assignment" but the fact that helpful voices on the list give in
    >> response to such questions good advice and next steps which are repeatedly
    >> ignored.
    >>
    >>> I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too helpful!), but I wouldn't
    >> go to a "go away and talk to your teacher" route, but rather in general
    >> respond with what is expected of a good question and what the poster should
    >> try first.
    >>
    >> I'm not sure if this particular remark is in response to my suggestion,
    >> but just in case, I will clarify: I don't want to tell the students to go
    >> away, I want to tell them to ask their teacher(s) to contact Jena directly
    >> (instead of inadvertently and indirectly by giving assignments that show up
    >> immediately as questions on the user list), hopefully to help create a more
    >> appropriate kind of engagement for their students with the Jena community.
    >>
    >> ---
    >> A. Soroka
    >> The University of Virginia Library
    >>
    >>> On Oct 23, 2016, at 5:24 PM, Stian Soiland-Reyes <st...@apache.org>
    >> wrote:
    >>>
    >>> Agree to not go too aggressive in general, it could also strike down
    >> users
    >>> who like Jena as a tool (remember we have command lines and servers!) or
    >>> have been recommended Jena, but who have not before used Java as
    >>> programming language before. Here, tutorials and examples is what we
    >> should
    >>> point to.
    >>>
    >>> Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem to ask us the
    >> actual
    >>> assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair for us to dodge those,
    >>> but perhaps in a less hostile way. Many students and researchers I have
    >>> interviewed in the Big Data community say they struggle to post their
    >>> questions on mailing lists for the tools they use, as they get hammered
    >>> down for basically not being geeky enough. Consequently they don't come
    >>> back when their skill sets have improved and they could potentially have
    >>> contributed back.
    >>>
    >>> Also remember that students have perhaps never before used a public
    >> mailing
    >>> list and already struggle to separate what is RDF, what is OWL, what is
    >>> Java, what is Jena, what is just a bug in their own code.
    >>>
    >>> I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too helpful!), but I wouldn't
    >> go
    >>> to a "go away and talk to your teacher" route, but rather in general
    >>> respond with what is expected of a good question and what the poster
    >> should
    >>> try first. Point to gist.github.com or similar as a way to paste code
    >>> rather than getting it in the abstract ("I tried setting the literal")
    >>> helps a lot.
    >>>
    >>> Also I think we can reply shorter (but friendly) as a bounce, rather
    >> than a
    >>> complete reply to help them with the more obvious assignment side. We can
    >>> point to tutorials for coding as well; Software Carpentry has many great
    >>> starting points.
    >>>
    >>> On 23 Oct 2016 7:43 pm, "Paul Houle" <pa...@ontology2.com> wrote:
    >>>
    >>>> I find this thread disturbing.  Many people in the RDF community have
    >>>> worked a long time and it's just recently that the uptake has broadened
    >>>> (people are looking at JSON-LD and starting to understand what it means,
    >>>> not what any particular authority says that it means,  but what it
    >>>> actually means.)
    >>>>
    >>>> I do believe that problems should be made reproducable and as a group we
    >>>> could industrialize that.  For instance,  a test project that can be
    >>>> forked in github would be a great place to put in a query,  put in a
    >>>> graph,  and then put in some rules at which point  they could ask good
    >>>> questions.
    >>>>
    >>>> I carefully read the answers to the bad questions because I am intensely
    >>>> curious about strange details in Jena that trip people up.
    >>>>
    >>>> --
    >>>>  Paul Houle
    >>>>  paul.houle@ontology2.com
    >>>>
    >>>> On Sun, Oct 23, 2016, at 06:07 AM, Colin Maudry wrote:
    >>>>> Dear Jena developers,
    >>>>>
    >>>>> Upon Andy Seaborne’s suggestion, I would like to share with you a
    >>>>> concern we have with certain posts shared on users@jena.apache.org.
    >>>>> In the last couple months, we have seen certain users repeatedly
    >> sending
    >>>>> questions that are either:
    >>>>>
    >>>>>  * hardly related to Jena and Fuseki
    >>>>>  * very basic questions about RDF or SPARQL
    >>>>>  * betraying the lack of common knowledge in Java programming and
    >>>>>    coding good practice in general
    >>>>>
    >>>>> What’s worse, these users, in spite of repeated remarks, keep on being
    >>>>> very vague in their questions, requiring the most patient subscribers
    >> to
    >>>>> ask many questions just to obtain a decent understanding of the
    >> problem.
    >>>>> A problem that is, again, often not much related to Jena or Fuseki.
    >>>>>
    >>>>> As a subscriber, I’m tired of their consistent failure to propose clear
    >>>>> and concise questions and I wish the patient people who answer them
    >>>>> spend their mailing time on more interesting threads. I also fear it
    >>>>> makes certain subscribers silently go away because of this “noise”.
    >>>>>
    >>>>> I first thought of publicly complaining to these users, but I thought
    >>>>> that the managers of the Jena lists should discuss it and take the
    >>>>> appropriate measures.
    >>>>>
    >>>>> My suggestion is to:
    >>>>>
    >>>>>  * inform the subscribers of an upcoming enforcement of the publishing
    >>>>>    rules (relevance, clearness, completeness, etc.)
    >>>>>  * stop answering the vague/off-topic/badly presented questions
    >>>>>  * if they insist, remind them the topic of the list and good practices
    >>>>>    in problem reporting, and warn them of a possible ban.
    >>>>>
    >>>>> Thanks for your attention,
    >>>>>
    >>>>> Colin Maudry
    >>>>> https://twitter.com/CMaudry
    >>>>>
    >>>>> ​
    >>>>
    >>
    >>
    >
    

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

[Dave Reynolds <da...@gmail.com>]

There have been student questions on the jena users list since long 
before Jena moved into Apache. While there's a burst at the moment I 
don't see it as particularly worse than historic levels.

In the past sometimes teachers have stepped in and stopped it, sometimes 
not.

I'm not convinced that the number of such questions at the moment is so 
great as to be a problem for other subscribers.

It is fine for the list to simply ignore the really poor/off-topic 
questions, especially from serial offenders. I would not be keen any 
more active steps such as "publishing rules" unless the problem were 
more acute than it seems to be.

Dave

On 23/10/16 23:06, Stian Soiland-Reyes wrote:
> OK, I think that is a good idea to get in touch with the teachers; perhaps
> so they can give us an advance notice and we can understand what their
> course is meant to teach. So a more friendly request for the teachers to
> get in touch (or we ask directly the name/email of their teacher), but
> without the "so you stop irritating us" bit :-). Presumably the teachers
> dont want us to do the assignment for their students!
>
> There could even be opportunities to do like a webinar or video with a
> short Jena intro, there are is probably some material from Elixir's Bring
> Your Own Data training events and similar that we could link to; if the
> teachers have better background materials and tutorials it can hopefully
> reduce our email load.
>
> On 23 Oct 2016 10:43 pm, "A. Soroka" <aj...@virginia.edu> wrote:
>
>>> Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem to ask us the
>> actual assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair for us to dodge
>> those, but perhaps in a less hostile way.
>>
>> It seems to me that this is the entire question: there aren't really the
>> kinds of problems Colin Maudry raised _except_ with these examples. And the
>> messages that worry me are not the initial questions that amount to "please
>> do my assignment" but the fact that helpful voices on the list give in
>> response to such questions good advice and next steps which are repeatedly
>> ignored.
>>
>>> I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too helpful!), but I wouldn't
>> go to a "go away and talk to your teacher" route, but rather in general
>> respond with what is expected of a good question and what the poster should
>> try first.
>>
>> I'm not sure if this particular remark is in response to my suggestion,
>> but just in case, I will clarify: I don't want to tell the students to go
>> away, I want to tell them to ask their teacher(s) to contact Jena directly
>> (instead of inadvertently and indirectly by giving assignments that show up
>> immediately as questions on the user list), hopefully to help create a more
>> appropriate kind of engagement for their students with the Jena community.
>>
>> ---
>> A. Soroka
>> The University of Virginia Library
>>
>>> On Oct 23, 2016, at 5:24 PM, Stian Soiland-Reyes <st...@apache.org>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Agree to not go too aggressive in general, it could also strike down
>> users
>>> who like Jena as a tool (remember we have command lines and servers!) or
>>> have been recommended Jena, but who have not before used Java as
>>> programming language before. Here, tutorials and examples is what we
>> should
>>> point to.
>>>
>>> Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem to ask us the
>> actual
>>> assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair for us to dodge those,
>>> but perhaps in a less hostile way. Many students and researchers I have
>>> interviewed in the Big Data community say they struggle to post their
>>> questions on mailing lists for the tools they use, as they get hammered
>>> down for basically not being geeky enough. Consequently they don't come
>>> back when their skill sets have improved and they could potentially have
>>> contributed back.
>>>
>>> Also remember that students have perhaps never before used a public
>> mailing
>>> list and already struggle to separate what is RDF, what is OWL, what is
>>> Java, what is Jena, what is just a bug in their own code.
>>>
>>> I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too helpful!), but I wouldn't
>> go
>>> to a "go away and talk to your teacher" route, but rather in general
>>> respond with what is expected of a good question and what the poster
>> should
>>> try first. Point to gist.github.com or similar as a way to paste code
>>> rather than getting it in the abstract ("I tried setting the literal")
>>> helps a lot.
>>>
>>> Also I think we can reply shorter (but friendly) as a bounce, rather
>> than a
>>> complete reply to help them with the more obvious assignment side. We can
>>> point to tutorials for coding as well; Software Carpentry has many great
>>> starting points.
>>>
>>> On 23 Oct 2016 7:43 pm, "Paul Houle" <pa...@ontology2.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I find this thread disturbing.  Many people in the RDF community have
>>>> worked a long time and it's just recently that the uptake has broadened
>>>> (people are looking at JSON-LD and starting to understand what it means,
>>>> not what any particular authority says that it means,  but what it
>>>> actually means.)
>>>>
>>>> I do believe that problems should be made reproducable and as a group we
>>>> could industrialize that.  For instance,  a test project that can be
>>>> forked in github would be a great place to put in a query,  put in a
>>>> graph,  and then put in some rules at which point  they could ask good
>>>> questions.
>>>>
>>>> I carefully read the answers to the bad questions because I am intensely
>>>> curious about strange details in Jena that trip people up.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>  Paul Houle
>>>>  paul.houle@ontology2.com
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Oct 23, 2016, at 06:07 AM, Colin Maudry wrote:
>>>>> Dear Jena developers,
>>>>>
>>>>> Upon Andy Seaborne\u2019s suggestion, I would like to share with you a
>>>>> concern we have with certain posts shared on users@jena.apache.org.
>>>>> In the last couple months, we have seen certain users repeatedly
>> sending
>>>>> questions that are either:
>>>>>
>>>>>  * hardly related to Jena and Fuseki
>>>>>  * very basic questions about RDF or SPARQL
>>>>>  * betraying the lack of common knowledge in Java programming and
>>>>>    coding good practice in general
>>>>>
>>>>> What\u2019s worse, these users, in spite of repeated remarks, keep on being
>>>>> very vague in their questions, requiring the most patient subscribers
>> to
>>>>> ask many questions just to obtain a decent understanding of the
>> problem.
>>>>> A problem that is, again, often not much related to Jena or Fuseki.
>>>>>
>>>>> As a subscriber, I\u2019m tired of their consistent failure to propose clear
>>>>> and concise questions and I wish the patient people who answer them
>>>>> spend their mailing time on more interesting threads. I also fear it
>>>>> makes certain subscribers silently go away because of this \u201cnoise\u201d.
>>>>>
>>>>> I first thought of publicly complaining to these users, but I thought
>>>>> that the managers of the Jena lists should discuss it and take the
>>>>> appropriate measures.
>>>>>
>>>>> My suggestion is to:
>>>>>
>>>>>  * inform the subscribers of an upcoming enforcement of the publishing
>>>>>    rules (relevance, clearness, completeness, etc.)
>>>>>  * stop answering the vague/off-topic/badly presented questions
>>>>>  * if they insist, remind them the topic of the list and good practices
>>>>>    in problem reporting, and warn them of a possible ban.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for your attention,
>>>>>
>>>>> Colin Maudry
>>>>> https://twitter.com/CMaudry
>>>>>
>>>>> \u200b
>>>>
>>
>>
>

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

[Stian Soiland-Reyes <st...@apache.org>]

OK, I think that is a good idea to get in touch with the teachers; perhaps
so they can give us an advance notice and we can understand what their
course is meant to teach. So a more friendly request for the teachers to
get in touch (or we ask directly the name/email of their teacher), but
without the "so you stop irritating us" bit :-). Presumably the teachers
dont want us to do the assignment for their students!

There could even be opportunities to do like a webinar or video with a
short Jena intro, there are is probably some material from Elixir's Bring
Your Own Data training events and similar that we could link to; if the
teachers have better background materials and tutorials it can hopefully
reduce our email load.

On 23 Oct 2016 10:43 pm, "A. Soroka" <aj...@virginia.edu> wrote:

> > Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem to ask us the
> actual assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair for us to dodge
> those, but perhaps in a less hostile way.
>
> It seems to me that this is the entire question: there aren't really the
> kinds of problems Colin Maudry raised _except_ with these examples. And the
> messages that worry me are not the initial questions that amount to "please
> do my assignment" but the fact that helpful voices on the list give in
> response to such questions good advice and next steps which are repeatedly
> ignored.
>
> > I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too helpful!), but I wouldn't
> go to a "go away and talk to your teacher" route, but rather in general
> respond with what is expected of a good question and what the poster should
> try first.
>
> I'm not sure if this particular remark is in response to my suggestion,
> but just in case, I will clarify: I don't want to tell the students to go
> away, I want to tell them to ask their teacher(s) to contact Jena directly
> (instead of inadvertently and indirectly by giving assignments that show up
> immediately as questions on the user list), hopefully to help create a more
> appropriate kind of engagement for their students with the Jena community.
>
> ---
> A. Soroka
> The University of Virginia Library
>
> > On Oct 23, 2016, at 5:24 PM, Stian Soiland-Reyes <st...@apache.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > Agree to not go too aggressive in general, it could also strike down
> users
> > who like Jena as a tool (remember we have command lines and servers!) or
> > have been recommended Jena, but who have not before used Java as
> > programming language before. Here, tutorials and examples is what we
> should
> > point to.
> >
> > Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem to ask us the
> actual
> > assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair for us to dodge those,
> > but perhaps in a less hostile way. Many students and researchers I have
> > interviewed in the Big Data community say they struggle to post their
> > questions on mailing lists for the tools they use, as they get hammered
> > down for basically not being geeky enough. Consequently they don't come
> > back when their skill sets have improved and they could potentially have
> > contributed back.
> >
> > Also remember that students have perhaps never before used a public
> mailing
> > list and already struggle to separate what is RDF, what is OWL, what is
> > Java, what is Jena, what is just a bug in their own code.
> >
> > I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too helpful!), but I wouldn't
> go
> > to a "go away and talk to your teacher" route, but rather in general
> > respond with what is expected of a good question and what the poster
> should
> > try first. Point to gist.github.com or similar as a way to paste code
> > rather than getting it in the abstract ("I tried setting the literal")
> > helps a lot.
> >
> > Also I think we can reply shorter (but friendly) as a bounce, rather
> than a
> > complete reply to help them with the more obvious assignment side. We can
> > point to tutorials for coding as well; Software Carpentry has many great
> > starting points.
> >
> > On 23 Oct 2016 7:43 pm, "Paul Houle" <pa...@ontology2.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I find this thread disturbing.  Many people in the RDF community have
> >> worked a long time and it's just recently that the uptake has broadened
> >> (people are looking at JSON-LD and starting to understand what it means,
> >> not what any particular authority says that it means,  but what it
> >> actually means.)
> >>
> >> I do believe that problems should be made reproducable and as a group we
> >> could industrialize that.  For instance,  a test project that can be
> >> forked in github would be a great place to put in a query,  put in a
> >> graph,  and then put in some rules at which point  they could ask good
> >> questions.
> >>
> >> I carefully read the answers to the bad questions because I am intensely
> >> curious about strange details in Jena that trip people up.
> >>
> >> --
> >>  Paul Houle
> >>  paul.houle@ontology2.com
> >>
> >> On Sun, Oct 23, 2016, at 06:07 AM, Colin Maudry wrote:
> >>> Dear Jena developers,
> >>>
> >>> Upon Andy Seaborne’s suggestion, I would like to share with you a
> >>> concern we have with certain posts shared on users@jena.apache.org.
> >>> In the last couple months, we have seen certain users repeatedly
> sending
> >>> questions that are either:
> >>>
> >>>  * hardly related to Jena and Fuseki
> >>>  * very basic questions about RDF or SPARQL
> >>>  * betraying the lack of common knowledge in Java programming and
> >>>    coding good practice in general
> >>>
> >>> What’s worse, these users, in spite of repeated remarks, keep on being
> >>> very vague in their questions, requiring the most patient subscribers
> to
> >>> ask many questions just to obtain a decent understanding of the
> problem.
> >>> A problem that is, again, often not much related to Jena or Fuseki.
> >>>
> >>> As a subscriber, I’m tired of their consistent failure to propose clear
> >>> and concise questions and I wish the patient people who answer them
> >>> spend their mailing time on more interesting threads. I also fear it
> >>> makes certain subscribers silently go away because of this “noise”.
> >>>
> >>> I first thought of publicly complaining to these users, but I thought
> >>> that the managers of the Jena lists should discuss it and take the
> >>> appropriate measures.
> >>>
> >>> My suggestion is to:
> >>>
> >>>  * inform the subscribers of an upcoming enforcement of the publishing
> >>>    rules (relevance, clearness, completeness, etc.)
> >>>  * stop answering the vague/off-topic/badly presented questions
> >>>  * if they insist, remind them the topic of the list and good practices
> >>>    in problem reporting, and warn them of a possible ban.
> >>>
> >>> Thanks for your attention,
> >>>
> >>> Colin Maudry
> >>> https://twitter.com/CMaudry
> >>>
> >>> ​
> >>
>
>

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

["A. Soroka" <aj...@virginia.edu>]

> Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem to ask us the actual assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair for us to dodge those, but perhaps in a less hostile way. 

It seems to me that this is the entire question: there aren't really the kinds of problems Colin Maudry raised _except_ with these examples. And the messages that worry me are not the initial questions that amount to "please do my assignment" but the fact that helpful voices on the list give in response to such questions good advice and next steps which are repeatedly ignored. 

> I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too helpful!), but I wouldn't go to a "go away and talk to your teacher" route, but rather in general respond with what is expected of a good question and what the poster should try first. 

I'm not sure if this particular remark is in response to my suggestion, but just in case, I will clarify: I don't want to tell the students to go away, I want to tell them to ask their teacher(s) to contact Jena directly (instead of inadvertently and indirectly by giving assignments that show up immediately as questions on the user list), hopefully to help create a more appropriate kind of engagement for their students with the Jena community. 

---
A. Soroka
The University of Virginia Library

> On Oct 23, 2016, at 5:24 PM, Stian Soiland-Reyes <st...@apache.org> wrote:
> 
> Agree to not go too aggressive in general, it could also strike down users
> who like Jena as a tool (remember we have command lines and servers!) or
> have been recommended Jena, but who have not before used Java as
> programming language before. Here, tutorials and examples is what we should
> point to.
> 
> Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem to ask us the actual
> assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair for us to dodge those,
> but perhaps in a less hostile way. Many students and researchers I have
> interviewed in the Big Data community say they struggle to post their
> questions on mailing lists for the tools they use, as they get hammered
> down for basically not being geeky enough. Consequently they don't come
> back when their skill sets have improved and they could potentially have
> contributed back.
> 
> Also remember that students have perhaps never before used a public mailing
> list and already struggle to separate what is RDF, what is OWL, what is
> Java, what is Jena, what is just a bug in their own code.
> 
> I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too helpful!), but I wouldn't go
> to a "go away and talk to your teacher" route, but rather in general
> respond with what is expected of a good question and what the poster should
> try first. Point to gist.github.com or similar as a way to paste code
> rather than getting it in the abstract ("I tried setting the literal")
> helps a lot.
> 
> Also I think we can reply shorter (but friendly) as a bounce, rather than a
> complete reply to help them with the more obvious assignment side. We can
> point to tutorials for coding as well; Software Carpentry has many great
> starting points.
> 
> On 23 Oct 2016 7:43 pm, "Paul Houle" <pa...@ontology2.com> wrote:
> 
>> I find this thread disturbing.  Many people in the RDF community have
>> worked a long time and it's just recently that the uptake has broadened
>> (people are looking at JSON-LD and starting to understand what it means,
>> not what any particular authority says that it means,  but what it
>> actually means.)
>> 
>> I do believe that problems should be made reproducable and as a group we
>> could industrialize that.  For instance,  a test project that can be
>> forked in github would be a great place to put in a query,  put in a
>> graph,  and then put in some rules at which point  they could ask good
>> questions.
>> 
>> I carefully read the answers to the bad questions because I am intensely
>> curious about strange details in Jena that trip people up.
>> 
>> --
>>  Paul Houle
>>  paul.houle@ontology2.com
>> 
>> On Sun, Oct 23, 2016, at 06:07 AM, Colin Maudry wrote:
>>> Dear Jena developers,
>>> 
>>> Upon Andy Seaborne’s suggestion, I would like to share with you a
>>> concern we have with certain posts shared on users@jena.apache.org.
>>> In the last couple months, we have seen certain users repeatedly sending
>>> questions that are either:
>>> 
>>>  * hardly related to Jena and Fuseki
>>>  * very basic questions about RDF or SPARQL
>>>  * betraying the lack of common knowledge in Java programming and
>>>    coding good practice in general
>>> 
>>> What’s worse, these users, in spite of repeated remarks, keep on being
>>> very vague in their questions, requiring the most patient subscribers to
>>> ask many questions just to obtain a decent understanding of the problem.
>>> A problem that is, again, often not much related to Jena or Fuseki.
>>> 
>>> As a subscriber, I’m tired of their consistent failure to propose clear
>>> and concise questions and I wish the patient people who answer them
>>> spend their mailing time on more interesting threads. I also fear it
>>> makes certain subscribers silently go away because of this “noise”.
>>> 
>>> I first thought of publicly complaining to these users, but I thought
>>> that the managers of the Jena lists should discuss it and take the
>>> appropriate measures.
>>> 
>>> My suggestion is to:
>>> 
>>>  * inform the subscribers of an upcoming enforcement of the publishing
>>>    rules (relevance, clearness, completeness, etc.)
>>>  * stop answering the vague/off-topic/badly presented questions
>>>  * if they insist, remind them the topic of the list and good practices
>>>    in problem reporting, and warn them of a possible ban.
>>> 
>>> Thanks for your attention,
>>> 
>>> Colin Maudry
>>> https://twitter.com/CMaudry
>>> 
>>> ​
>> 

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

[Stian Soiland-Reyes <st...@apache.org>]

Agree to not go too aggressive in general, it could also strike down users
who like Jena as a tool (remember we have command lines and servers!) or
have been recommended Jena, but who have not before used Java as
programming language before. Here, tutorials and examples is what we should
point to.

Then there are the obvious school examples, which seem to ask us the actual
assignment rather than Jena questions. It is fair for us to dodge those,
but perhaps in a less hostile way. Many students and researchers I have
interviewed in the Big Data community say they struggle to post their
questions on mailing lists for the tools they use, as they get hammered
down for basically not being geeky enough. Consequently they don't come
back when their skill sets have improved and they could potentially have
contributed back.

Also remember that students have perhaps never before used a public mailing
list and already struggle to separate what is RDF, what is OWL, what is
Java, what is Jena, what is just a bug in their own code.

I think we are friendly (perhaps sometimes too helpful!), but I wouldn't go
to a "go away and talk to your teacher" route, but rather in general
respond with what is expected of a good question and what the poster should
try first. Point to gist.github.com or similar as a way to paste code
rather than getting it in the abstract ("I tried setting the literal")
helps a lot.

Also I think we can reply shorter (but friendly) as a bounce, rather than a
complete reply to help them with the more obvious assignment side. We can
point to tutorials for coding as well; Software Carpentry has many great
starting points.

On 23 Oct 2016 7:43 pm, "Paul Houle" <pa...@ontology2.com> wrote:

> I find this thread disturbing.  Many people in the RDF community have
> worked a long time and it's just recently that the uptake has broadened
> (people are looking at JSON-LD and starting to understand what it means,
>  not what any particular authority says that it means,  but what it
> actually means.)
>
> I do believe that problems should be made reproducable and as a group we
> could industrialize that.  For instance,  a test project that can be
> forked in github would be a great place to put in a query,  put in a
> graph,  and then put in some rules at which point  they could ask good
> questions.
>
> I carefully read the answers to the bad questions because I am intensely
> curious about strange details in Jena that trip people up.
>
> --
>   Paul Houle
>   paul.houle@ontology2.com
>
> On Sun, Oct 23, 2016, at 06:07 AM, Colin Maudry wrote:
> > Dear Jena developers,
> >
> > Upon Andy Seaborne’s suggestion, I would like to share with you a
> > concern we have with certain posts shared on users@jena.apache.org.
> > In the last couple months, we have seen certain users repeatedly sending
> > questions that are either:
> >
> >   * hardly related to Jena and Fuseki
> >   * very basic questions about RDF or SPARQL
> >   * betraying the lack of common knowledge in Java programming and
> >     coding good practice in general
> >
> > What’s worse, these users, in spite of repeated remarks, keep on being
> > very vague in their questions, requiring the most patient subscribers to
> > ask many questions just to obtain a decent understanding of the problem.
> > A problem that is, again, often not much related to Jena or Fuseki.
> >
> > As a subscriber, I’m tired of their consistent failure to propose clear
> > and concise questions and I wish the patient people who answer them
> > spend their mailing time on more interesting threads. I also fear it
> > makes certain subscribers silently go away because of this “noise”.
> >
> > I first thought of publicly complaining to these users, but I thought
> > that the managers of the Jena lists should discuss it and take the
> > appropriate measures.
> >
> > My suggestion is to:
> >
> >   * inform the subscribers of an upcoming enforcement of the publishing
> >     rules (relevance, clearness, completeness, etc.)
> >   * stop answering the vague/off-topic/badly presented questions
> >   * if they insist, remind them the topic of the list and good practices
> >     in problem reporting, and warn them of a possible ban.
> >
> > Thanks for your attention,
> >
> > Colin Maudry
> > https://twitter.com/CMaudry
> >
> > ​
>

Re: Rising the bar on users@jena.apache.org

[Paul Houle <pa...@ontology2.com>]

I find this thread disturbing.  Many people in the RDF community have
worked a long time and it's just recently that the uptake has broadened
(people are looking at JSON-LD and starting to understand what it means,
 not what any particular authority says that it means,  but what it
actually means.)

I do believe that problems should be made reproducable and as a group we
could industrialize that.  For instance,  a test project that can be
forked in github would be a great place to put in a query,  put in a
graph,  and then put in some rules at which point  they could ask good
questions.

I carefully read the answers to the bad questions because I am intensely
curious about strange details in Jena that trip people up.

-- 
  Paul Houle
  paul.houle@ontology2.com

On Sun, Oct 23, 2016, at 06:07 AM, Colin Maudry wrote:
> Dear Jena developers,
> 
> Upon Andy Seaborne’s suggestion, I would like to share with you a
> concern we have with certain posts shared on users@jena.apache.org.
> In the last couple months, we have seen certain users repeatedly sending
> questions that are either:
> 
>   * hardly related to Jena and Fuseki
>   * very basic questions about RDF or SPARQL
>   * betraying the lack of common knowledge in Java programming and
>     coding good practice in general
> 
> What’s worse, these users, in spite of repeated remarks, keep on being
> very vague in their questions, requiring the most patient subscribers to
> ask many questions just to obtain a decent understanding of the problem.
> A problem that is, again, often not much related to Jena or Fuseki.
> 
> As a subscriber, I’m tired of their consistent failure to propose clear
> and concise questions and I wish the patient people who answer them
> spend their mailing time on more interesting threads. I also fear it
> makes certain subscribers silently go away because of this “noise”.
> 
> I first thought of publicly complaining to these users, but I thought
> that the managers of the Jena lists should discuss it and take the
> appropriate measures.
> 
> My suggestion is to:
> 
>   * inform the subscribers of an upcoming enforcement of the publishing
>     rules (relevance, clearness, completeness, etc.)
>   * stop answering the vague/off-topic/badly presented questions
>   * if they insist, remind them the topic of the list and good practices
>     in problem reporting, and warn them of a possible ban.
> 
> Thanks for your attention,
> 
> Colin Maudry
> https://twitter.com/CMaudry
> 
> ​