The greatest proposal yet: rename this damn group

[Robert Grant]

I am one of the happy few who read the line about what this group is for before I started posting.

However, that line, and the endless supply of people who think this is for Django developers (see also: Java developers are generally considered to be people* who develop in Java, not who develop Java), might be symptoms of the fact that this group has a funny name for something that is both developed and developed in.

Can we rename it? :) Some semi-serious suggestions (because I can't think of an obvious alternative) :

Django Masters
Django Private
Django Debate
Django Internals
Aymeric And Friends





* Yes, they're still people.

[Tom Christie]

Options?...

* Django core

* Django core development

For comparison the Rails folks have "Ruby on Rails: Talk" and "Ruby on Rails: Core"

 - Tom

[Wim Feijen]

Or Django contributors?

[Ola Sitarska]

I agree, I was confused about it for a long time too. I think "Django core development" is very clear. 

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[Piotr Bulinski]

+1
My proposition: django-contributors
That’s pretty self-explanatory, confusion-avoiding name.

Cheers,
Piotr

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[Robert Grant]

Yeah I like that one.

Or django-verlords.

[Sam Lai]

FYI, this comes up again and again here, but the core devs have shot
it down repeatedly. Here's one from last year -
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/django-developers/yJYkZEGUzVk/u5xiIzg_TtMJ

For the record though, I think renaming it to something less ambiguous
is a good idea.

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-developers/8e2ff58a-a2d0-412c-8d95-4930bd0783db%40googlegroups.com.

[Robert Grant]

Wow, watching the second Matrix movie wasn't a waste of time as I finally can use it in an analogy:

...something about the same choice happening again and again!

Anyway. I'm pretty sure that changing the name is extremely easy; only changing the email address is difficult (apparently easy if you have Groups for Business, which I assume Django doesn't). If you're subscribed to a list that's been renamed, I'm not sure what will change for you, other than every third email on the group will no longer have one reply saying that this is the wrong group.

So: keep the email address the same, as people don't see that so much if they use cool web clients and email notifications that they can just hit reply to, and change the name?

[Russell Keith-Magee]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the suggestion. 

You're not the first to make the suggestion - the same suggestion has been made many times in the past. You can search the archives if you want to see those discussions.

There are a number of problems with this proposal:

1) History. There are 10 years of archives and blog links that reference existing discussions. If we rename the group, all those links break. That would be a huge loss to the community.

2) More importantly, you can't solve a social problem with technology. At the end of the day, it's a name. It doesn't matter which name you pick - *someone* is going to interpret it incorrectly. To pick some of the suggestions that have been made:

 * "Django Masters" and "Django Private" both imply that newcomers aren't welcome to join and make suggestions, which is a social signal we don't want to send.

 * "Django Core" could be interpreted to mean that it's only for the core team - and, by the by, there *is* a "django-core" list for private core team discussions (there aren't many of these, but it sometimes necessary for security sensitive issues, etc)

 * "Django debate" doesn't make it clear who is discussing what.

Yes, I agree that the "you should be posting to Django-users" message isn't ideal, and some of the responses that are given don't have the best tone. If your first message to a Django group gets a response that sounds like "go away", that's not a good look for the community.

However, I *guarantee* that renaming the list won't make this problem go away.

Yours,

Russ Magee %-)

--

[Tim Graham]

Russ, I think the suggestion was merely to change the display name of the group. I don't see any downsides to trying something like "Django developers (core development)".

[Tom Christie]

>  If we rename the group, all those links break

Changing the group email would result in the group URL changing, so that's not an acceptable option.

Changing the group display name wouldn't change any links.

> At the end of the day, it's a name. It doesn't matter which name you pick - *someone* is going to interpret it incorrectly.

It is particularly liable to misinterpretation as it stands.

> I don't see any downsides to trying something like "Django developers (core development)

Something like that seems like a reasonable option as it would still be consistent with the email address, while being less ambiguous.

[Robert Grant]

Changing the group display name wouldn't change any links.

This is the main point, I think. In this thread, and the one linked to by Sam Lai, the main objection was link rot.  Despite how strongly this was asserted, this isn't an objection, as renaming a group doesn't change any URLs.

Russ's statement that "you can't fix a social problem with technology", while in itself obiviously highly debateable*, is not really relevant. This isn't an attempt to fix social problems, it's just doing something to help avoid confusion. And it's not really a technological solution, it's just renaming something.

If it were called The Carly Simon Fan Club we shouldn't be surprised that Carly Simon fan(s?) started posting, and we wouldn't then hesitate to rename it just because we can conceive that some people might still misinterpret the name we changed it to. This is not as extreme as that, but the same logic applies. Loads of people make the same mistake. Why don't we try changing the name for six months and see whether the confusion lessens?



* Social problem: people who've never met want to be able to communicate on the record to collaborate on a common project. Technological answer: Google Groups. My point: "social problem" is too vague a term for this. You can't fix every social problem, but you can name things less confusingly.

[Thomas Leo]

+1 for django-contributors 

django-contributors is clearer than django developers. When companies are hiring web developers, they will often title the position "django developer". Usually these companies are not looking for people who "contribute" to the framework, but use the framework to develop websites.

>> At the end of the day, it's a name. It doesn't matter which name you pick - *someone* is going to interpret it incorrectly. 

I disagree with this. Yes its inevitable that people will accidently write in the wrong mailing list, but a clearer name for that list will mitigate this problem.

"Django core" and "Django core development" are IMHO clearer than Django developers, however it could also potentially be confusing given the fact that the framework has a module called core. This might lead people to think that the mailing list is specific to development of django.core. 

[Aymeric Augustin]

2014-09-08 16:21 GMT+02:00 Thomas Leo <t...@tomleo.com>:

+1 for django-contributors 

That would be "Django Contributors" since we're talking about changing the display name of the group, not its email address.

It's a good proposal.

--
Aymeric.

[Carl Meyer]

On 09/08/2014 08:56 AM, Aymeric Augustin wrote:
> 2014-09-08 16:21 GMT+02:00 Thomas Leo <t...@tomleo.com

> <mailto:t...@tomleo.com>>:

>
> +1 for django-contributors
>
>
> That would be "Django Contributors" since we're talking about changing
> the display name of the group, not its email address.
>
> It's a good proposal.

I agree. I don't see any reason not to try this.

Who has access to the Google Groups admin?

Carl

[Atul Bhouraskar]

+1 for Django Contributors.

This also aligns with all the documentation on djangoproject.com where there is an entire section on 'Contribution'.

We even have a "Contributor Licence Agreement'.

Atul

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[Russell Keith-Magee]

I do. 

As a matter of formality, I'd like to put this through the technical board so that it isn't just a fiat decision by the handful of people motivated to participate in this discussion.

Russ %-)

 

[Daniele Procida]

On Tue, Sep 9, 2014, Russell Keith-Magee <rus...@keith-magee.com> wrote:

>As a matter of formality, I'd like to put this through the technical board
>so that it isn't just a fiat decision by the handful of people motivated to
>participate in this discussion.

By the way, there are three related pieces of information (in Manage > Information > General information):

Group name: Django developers

Group email address: django-developers (can't be changed)

Group description: Discussion group for Django developers. This group is used for discussion of developing Django itself, not user questions; Please use django-users for issues regarding using the framework, questions for the Django user community outreach, etc.


The description's the easy one, but I don't think it's going to make a huge amount of difference. I doubt it's what catches people's attention. I'd suggest something shorter like:

Discussion group for the development of Django and contribution to the
project. For questions about and help with Django, please use
django-users.

The group name is the problematic one. If it matches the email address; it's misleading; if it doesn't, it's confusing.

Daniele

[Robert Grant]

Totally agree Daniele. I don't know how other people experience the group, but I actually didn't see the email address, and didn't even look at the URL. If we can find where the email is exposed (say on a website) and change things to hide it as much as possible, e.g.:

Instead of : Email the Django Contributors group here: django-d...@googlegroups.com
Say : Email the Django Contributors group.

That might help. Maybe a note in the description to say that for historical reasons, if you want to email a new topic to the group the email address is django-d...@googlegroups.com?

[Wim Feijen]

Hi,

Good thing to change the group name. For the description, another wording could be:

Discussion group for contributing to the Django source code and documentation. Here we discuss new features and updates of the Django project. 

Wim

[Daniele Procida]

On Tue, Sep 9, 2014, Robert Grant <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Totally agree Daniele. I don't know how other people experience the group,
>but I actually didn't see the email address, and didn't even look at the
>URL.

I'm not sure how much effect any of this will have.

We get a few (I'd say about three or four) messages a week to django-developers that should have gone to django-users.

They are almost all from people whose first language is clearly not English, and in most cases one has the impression that successfully finding a place to ask a question and writing a message expressing their question about Django development is an achievement in itself for them.

As long as this email list is the first one that appears in a web serch for things like "django developer email list", it's going to be where their messages get sent.

It may actually have more effect to change the name and description of django-users, to "For developers working with Django" and "Discussion group for developers working with the Django web framework: djangoproject.com. New members and beginners are welcome".

Daniele

[Thomas Leo]

+1 for @Wim Feijen's rewording but...

I think the wording of the Group description isn't the issue, my guess is

that people who make the mistake of asking django-user's questions in the

django-developers mailing list didn't read the description to begin with.

> They are almost all from people whose first language is clearly not English,

I haven't been following this mailing list for a particularly long time, but I

can recall a number of cases where users were simply noobies looking for help,

and didn't reading the description of this mailing list before asking their

question.  Whether they are native English speakers or not, clearer wording

would mitigate the issue for everyone.

> and in most cases one has the impression that successfully finding a place to

> ask a question and writing a message expressing their question about Django

> development is an achievement in itself for them.

This seems rather condescending to new Django users.

[Daniele Procida]

On Tue, Sep 9, 2014, Thomas Leo <t...@tomleo.com> wrote:

>> and in most cases one has the impression that successfully finding a
>place to
>> ask a question and writing a message expressing their question about
>Django
>> development is an achievement in itself for them.
>
>This seems rather condescending to new Django users.

I wasn't referring to new Django users, but people for whom it is a significant extra effort to read and write in English.

Daniele

[Erik Romijn]

I think it would also be a great improvement if we all adopted a standard response for these kind of mails - because no matter what we do, some will still end up here.

Almost entirely based on Daniele's previous responses, how about we use:

> The best place to get answers to your questions is the django-users email list, <django-d...@googlegroups.com> - the web interface is <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/django-users>.
>
> The list you've posted to is django-developers, an email list is for the discussion of the development of Django itself.
>
> You might also find helpful the #django IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.
>
> I hope that helps,

This focuses first on helping them get to the right place, with easily readable language, and then explains their error in a friendly way. In the past, we've occasionally sent somewhat more harsh replies, focusing more on how they did something wrong. Although I'm sure such replies were absolutely sent with the best intentions, it's not a pleasant first experience.

Not sure what the best place is to keep this template easily accessible for anyone though. The wiki might be the most suitable.

Erik

[Daniel Pyrathon]

Hi,

I think that changing the name the community on google will create many broken links, this will be a huge loss.

What we can do instead, is create 2 domains (or subdomains) such as core-development.djangoproject.com and community.djangoproject.com that will serve as the official URLs to publicise on blogs, official sites and IRC. These ULRs will redirect to the related google forums.

Dan

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[Wim Feijen]

Hi Daniel,

An idea we spoke about earlier in this tread is to rename the group to Django Contributors, and the slug (and url) to remain django-developers in order to preserve links.

Wim

On Tuesday, 9 September 2014 22:04:30 UTC+2, Daniel Pyrathon wrote:

Hi,

I think that changing the name the community on google will create many broken links, this will be a huge loss.

What we can do instead, is create 2 domains (or subdomains) such as core-development.djangoproject.com and community.djangoproject.com that will serve as the official URLs to publicise on blogs, official sites and IRC. These ULRs will redirect to the related google forums.

Dan

On Tuesday, September 9, 2014, Erik Romijn <ero...@solidlinks.nl> wrote:

I think it would also be a great improvement if we all adopted a standard response for these kind of mails - because no matter what we do, some will still end up here.

Almost entirely based on Daniele's previous responses, how about we use:

> The best place to get answers to your questions is the django-users email list, <django-developers@googlegroups.com> - the web interface is <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/django-users>.

>
> The list you've posted to is django-developers, an email list is for the discussion of the development of Django itself.
>
> You might also find helpful the #django IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.
>
> I hope that helps,

This focuses first on helping them get to the right place, with easily readable language, and then explains their error in a friendly way. In the past, we've occasionally sent somewhat more harsh replies, focusing more on how they did something wrong. Although I'm sure such replies were absolutely sent with the best intentions, it's not a pleasant first experience.

Not sure what the best place is to keep this template easily accessible for anyone though. The wiki might be the most suitable.

Erik

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[Russell Keith-Magee]

On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 11:40 PM, Thomas Leo <t...@tomleo.com> wrote:

+1 for @Wim Feijen's rewording but...

I think the wording of the Group description isn't the issue, my guess is

that people who make the mistake of asking django-user's questions in the

django-developers mailing list didn't read the description to begin with.

> They are almost all from people whose first language is clearly not English,

I haven't been following this mailing list for a particularly long time, but I

can recall a number of cases where users were simply noobies looking for help,

and didn't reading the description of this mailing list before asking their

question.  Whether they are native English speakers or not, clearer wording

would mitigate the issue for everyone.

Let me dispel this illusion for you.

If you go to Django's new ticket page:

https://code.djangoproject.com/newticket

 

You are greeted with the following text:

    Please read this first:

    Please don't report security issues here! Contact secu...@djangoproject.com instead.

This text is in bold, and is a hyperlink to a page describing Django's security processes in detail.

And yet, every couple of months, we get someone opening a ticket that starts "I think I've found a security/DDOS issue in Django". The report will be written in reasonably good english, so it isn't a language barrier issue.

This is what I meant when I said you can't solve a social problem with technology. Yes, we might be able to improve the number of errors by improving the text, but at some level, it doesn't matter how large you make the "PLEASE DON'T PUSH THIS BUTTON" sign, someone is going to push the button. It is folly to believe that the problem is that we just haven't found the right descriptive text.

Yours,

Russ Magee %-)

[Wim Feijen]

Hi Russell,

Did you manage to speak to the technical board about renaming the group?

Wim

[Wim Feijen]

Hi Russell,

Is this an issue we should solve? 

Because I believe technology can help here. For example, by posing a question when a user is creating a ticket. Ask if it deals with security; then present two clear buttons: "Report a security issue" or "Report something else". (There might be better wordings). That will probably help a lot. 

Don'ts are probably not helpful, f.e. don't think of a yellow lemon.

Wim 

[Russell Keith-Magee]

Hi Wim,

My apologies, this slipped through the cracks in my "returning from DjangoCon US/annual post DjangoCon sickness" window. I've just mailed this to the group for a decision.

Yours,

Russ Magee %-)

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[Russell Keith-Magee]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 5:39 AM, Wim Feijen <w...@go2people.nl> wrote:

Hi Russell,

Is this an issue we should solve? 

Because I believe technology can help here. For example, by posing a question when a user is creating a ticket. Ask if it deals with security; then present two clear buttons: "Report a security issue" or "Report something else". (There might be better wordings). That will probably help a lot. 

Don'ts are probably not helpful, f.e. don't think of a yellow lemon.

Sure - we can fix it, as long as we rewrite the tool to take account of the social use case. The proposal you've made here is a reasonable suggestion; we might be able to come up with something even better if we gave it more thought.

However, this doesn't account for the fact that this feature doesn't (to the best of my knowledge) exist in Trac. So - we've either got to rewrite a portion of Trac, write our own bug tracker, put some sort of shim around the front of the ticket reporting process, or accept the limitations of the tools we have.

Bringing it back to mailing lists - we could fix this problem by providing a mechanism to migrate messages from one forum to another - but that isn't a feature Google provides, either. So, we can rewrite our own mailing list infrastructure, or make the most of the tools we have - accepting that the tools have limitations. And for me, part of accepting that the mailing list has limitations is accepting that it doesn't matter what you call it, *someone* will post the wrong thing in the wrong place. 

Humans, amirite? :-)

If someone is motivated to provide better solutions to either of these problems, they certainly have my blessing - but keep in mind that the Django project won't be migrating to a new bug tracker or mailing list tool until that tool is a battle proven and self-sustaining project. We have enough trouble getting enough volunteers to maintain development of Django itself without also needing to recruit volunteers to keep our bug tracker/mailing list running.

Russ %-)

[Russell Keith-Magee]

Hi all,

Ok - the technical board has discussed the matter, and settled on:

    Django Developers (Contributions to Django itself)

as a new title for the group.

The board rejected the idea of "Django X" (for any value of X) on the basis that asking someone to sign up to "Django X" by sending mail to "django-developers@" was asking for trouble.

I've just rolled out this change, along with Daniele's suggested tightening of the description text.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions and contributions.

Yours,

Russ Magee %-)