changes to the moderation of this group

[Forrest Norvell]

Hello, everyone. If you don't know me, I'm a longtime Node.js developer and member of this group. I'm also a strong believer that this group hasn't been living up to its potential for a while now, and in an effort to improve its usefulness and the quality of the discussion here, I've agreed to take on the responsibility of moderating it.

For now, that implies one big change, which is that every message to the group will be reviewed by an actual person before being posted to the group. The moderation policy is pretty simple (it's included below), and things shouldn't change much. My current plan is to continue this policy until the end of July and then revisit how people feel about the state of the list. (As an aside, if you're interested in helping me moderate the list, get in touch off-list and we can talk. With conference season starting to heat up again, I'm likely to be away from the internet a few times between now and the end of July, and having someone to help me cover moderation duties would be great.)

If your message gets rejected, you may not get a whole lot of feedback as to why it didn't get passed through. I apologize for this, but Google Groups's interface for rejecting messages is kind of terrible and doesn't allow me to easily include a personalized message.

As part of more actively moderating the group, I'm also open to your suggestions on what we can do to shape this into a more useful forum. If you go to the gist where I put the draft of the moderation policy, you can see that there are already a couple suggestions. Feedback on those suggestions is welcome, as is feedback on the moderation policy itself. My main goal here is to improve the tenor of discussion here to the point that it's a comfortable place for both newcomers and experienced Node developers. One of Node's greatest strengths is its community, and I'd love to see this group become a more significant clearinghouse for the community as a whole.

Here's the moderation policy itself:

The Node.js group is a tool to announce cool things you've built, discuss interesting projects you're working on, and get help with things that are confusing you. It is a great forum for swapping knowledge. It is part of Node's large, loose network of resources. But it's not the only one – there are other resources that might be a better place to seek help or ask questions:

• Stack Overflow is a great place to get help with specific technical questions about Node! If you post a question there, please wait a few days before crossposting it to the list, as many of the people who answer questions about Node on SO are also here. Also, crosspost with a link rather than the whole text of the question, to keep things tidy and to keep discussion of the issue in one place.
• The development of Node itself is largely handled through Github. If you think you've encountered a bug in Node itself, it's best to file an issue there.
• Likewise, the development of npm is handled by the npm team, also on Github, and npm bugs should be filed there.
• For a more conversational approach to figuring things out, #node.js and #libuv on freenode IRC are great realtime resources for help with Node.

That said, here are the rules governing the list:

1. No personal attacks or harassment. This group is governed by the Conference Code of Conduct, and violating its rules will get you barred from the list permanently, at the moderators' discretion.
2. No spam. Self-promotion is fine, and major updates of projects to which you've contributed merit a mention, but this is a technical forum, not a marketplace.
3. Large chunks of source will work much better if posted to a requirebin, jsbin, gist, or generic pastebin of some kind.

In addition, there are some more informal guidelines that, if followed, will make everyone's lives more pleasant:

• There are certain arguments that recur with monotonous regularity. Bikeshedding is a major part of hacker culture, but there is no one true solution to any of the problems that are regularly brought up on the list (promises vs callbacks vs coroutines vs generators vs CPS transforms vs ∞, JavaScript vs CoffeeScript, etc). What works best for you may not work well for somebody else.
• Not everybody comes to Node with the same background. One of Node's touted advantages is that it unifies server-side and front-end developers. Sometimes people need a little help crossing the gap. Be charitable.
• Even though Google Groups makes it easy, it's a little weird to revive a message thread that's more than a few months old. Start a new thread that summarizes the old one if you want to revisit a dead thread.

These rules and guidelines will be enforced at the moderators' discretion. We will do what we can to ensure they are applied consistently and fairly, but having a useful forum trumps arguing over precise observance of the rules. The final say about moderation decisions sits with Node's maintainers, but TJ is busy, so be reasonable.

I'll continue to post this policy every two weeks until the end of the July. Thanks for reading this, and get in touch if you have comments or complaints. My hope is that very little will change, and what changes there are will be for the better!

Forrest L Norvell, group moderator 

[// ravi]

On May 3, 2014, at 9:07 PM, Forrest Norvell <othi...@gmail.com> wrote:

As part of more actively moderating the group, I'm also open to your suggestions on what we can do to shape this into a more useful forum. If you go to the gist where I put the draft of the moderation policy, you can see that there are already a couple suggestions. Feedback on those suggestions is welcome, as is feedback on the moderation policy itself.

Hello Forrest,

I’d suggest or bring up two thoughts in response to the call above:

1) Consider not forking discussions into Gists. I understand they are editable and a useful way to form consensus, but the negatives (forking the discussion, formation of independent consensus and implicit tiering, etc) outweigh that positive, IMHO.

2) In the informal guidelines I notice there is no mention of discussion related to NodeJS itself. Is that because (a) that is considered a closed/private matter not up for democratic debate (not being facetious), or (b) there is a node-core or equivalent list where such discussion occurs?

Regards, and good luck with your effort. You can add me to your list of volunteers should the need arise for assistance in moderation tasks.

—ravi

[Forrest Norvell]

Hey Ravi, thanks for the comments. Replies inline:

On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 6:56 PM, // ravi <ravi-...@g8o.net> wrote:

On May 3, 2014, at 9:07 PM, Forrest Norvell <othi...@gmail.com> wrote:

As part of more actively moderating the group, I'm also open to your suggestions on what we can do to shape this into a more useful forum. If you go to the gist where I put the draft of the moderation policy, you can see that there are already a couple suggestions. Feedback on those suggestions is welcome, as is feedback on the moderation policy itself.

Hello Forrest,

I’d suggest or bring up two thoughts in response to the call above:

1) Consider not forking discussions into Gists. I understand they are editable and a useful way to form consensus, but the negatives (forking the discussion, formation of independent consensus and implicit tiering, etc) outweigh that positive, IMHO.

It makes sense to keep the discussion on a thing to a single place, and I apologize if I left the impression that this was an all-or-nothing thing. To me, it makes sense to put discussion on the moderation policy at the place where it lives (as opposed to individual posts of the policy), but if people want to discuss it here, that's fine as well.

 

2) In the informal guidelines I notice there is no mention of discussion related to NodeJS itself. Is that because (a) that is considered a closed/private matter not up for democratic debate (not being facetious), or

The converse, actually: I think it's completely appropriate for people to discuss Node – both as a platform and a product – here, and while moderators (by which I mean me, for now) won't hesitate to get involved if things get heated, people should feel free to bring up whatever. As a community, we'll be better off the more the community feels like there aren't cliques or backchannels where important decisions are being made out of public view. That said, it's TJ Fontaine's responsibility to decide how to manage Node's development, and he's very busy right now. I don't think armchair quarterbacking of the dev process will be very useful until 0.12 is out the door.

 

(b) there is a node-core or equivalent list where such discussion occurs?

There is an IRC channel for the Node core dev team (to which I do not belong), but this group and the issues on the Github repo are the only fora of record for discussing Node itself. Most of the useful discussion about Node core's development really does happen either on Github issues or in #libuv on IRC.

 

Regards, and good luck with your effort. You can add me to your list of volunteers should the need arise for assistance in moderation tasks.

Thank you! I've made a note of it.

F

[Rick Waldron]

+1, * applause*

Rick

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[Behrad Zari]

+1

[Tiago Pontes]

+1

[Luiz Filipe]

+1

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[Angel Java Lopez]

Ummm... about

"this group hasn't been living up to its potential for a while now"

It's not clear to me the final meaning of such assertion. In any case, I don't think moderation is the solution, except for spam, or personal attacks. I prefer to learn reading this group, than exploring Stack Overflow. Any question, doubt, comment related to Node.js should be welcome.

But it's only my personal opinion. 

Angel "Java" Lopez

@ajlopez

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[Kushal Likhi]

+1 Great initiative. :) 

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[Forrest Norvell]

Replies inline.

On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 5:01 AM, Angel Java Lopez <ajlop...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ummm... about

"this group hasn't been living up to its potential for a while now"

It's not clear to me the final meaning of such assertion.

Some examples of how the list has been getting cluttered:

• job postings (which are in clear contravention of the old posting guidelines)
• lots of posts on the same topic, frequently as follow-ups to messages that hadn’t seen any replies in years (if at all)
• promotional posts that crossed the line from friendly self-promotion into outright spam
• posts that have nothing to do with Node.js

In any case, I don't think moderation is the solution, except for spam, or personal attacks. I prefer to learn reading this group, than exploring Stack Overflow. Any question, doubt, comment related to Node.js should be welcome.

Absolutely, and nothing has changed in this regard. As the new moderation rules say, other forums may make more sense for certain kinds of posts, but the goal in mentioning them is to raise awareness, not discourage people from posting here. Again, it would be great if this group moved back to being more of a clearinghouse for the Node community. Right now, it’s mostly just a help channel for newbies (which is useful, but not what the group used to be). I know from conversations and Twitter that a lot of the longtime members of the Node community who used to be on this list gave up on it long ago. Maybe that can’t be reversed, but I’d like to give it a shot.

But it's only my personal opinion. 

I appreciate the feedback!

F

[Francesco Mari]

Just out of curiosity, where the longtime members of the Node community bring their discussions to the table nowadays?

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[Forrest Norvell]

On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 9:13 AM, Francesco Mari <mari.fr...@gmail.com> wrote:

Just out of curiosity, where the longtime members of the Node community bring their discussions to the table nowadays?

As far as I can tell, more or less random channels: face to face conversations (especially in Northern California, where a lot of the longest-running users and developers of Node live), conferences like Node Summit, JSConf, and NodeConf, IRC channels (#libuv, #stackvm, #npm, #cascadiajs, and #pdxnode, among many others), and Twitter (which is a particularly bad place for meaningful conversation). There's not really a forum beyond this group that catches a broad spectrum of the community, which is a problem when people see the group as broken or irrelevant.

F

[Francesco Mari]

Then it makes a lot of sense to me to aggregate the community effort in one shared place. This fragmentation is a bad thing for everyone.

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[Aria Stewart]

On May 4, 2014, at 1:01 PM, Forrest Norvell <othi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 9:13 AM, Francesco Mari <mari.fr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Just out of curiosity, where the longtime members of the Node community bring their discussions to the table nowadays?
>

> [snip]... IRC channels [snip]

Indeed, I can second IRC!

Aria

[Francesco Mari]

The main drawback of IRC, as far as I know, is that it's not archived. Important conversations or solutions to problems are better reported in a mailing list or in an issue management system.

[Forrest Norvell]

On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 11:33 AM, Francesco Mari <mari.fr...@gmail.com> wrote:

The main drawback of IRC, as far as I know, is that it's not archived. Important conversations or solutions to problems are better reported in a mailing list or in an issue management system.

Many of the popular IRC channels are archived at http://logs.nodejs.org/channels (and a lot of good IRC information for Node users is available at http://nodeirc.info/, unsurprisingly enough), but I agree that chat logs aren't the most user-friendly tool for finding solutions to problems.

F

[Aria Stewart]

I quite agree — though I’d also argue that neither are mailing list archives. Both are more timely forms of communication.

I suspect that nobody knows if or whether there are problems we’re solving, so this gets into generalities quickly.

I like the mailing list. It’s one of the three entry points new users find most easily. (StackOverflow and IRC are the others).

Both, however, suffer from a plethora of new users and an inconsistent mix of more experienced ones. So does the list — or at least people who don’t give much context for who they are and how they arrive at their answers. All of computing has this problem, I think. It’s a hard one to solve! That whole Dunning-Kruger effect — those who don’t know often don’t know how much they don’t know, and those that do aren’t sure they have the right answers.

I, for one, welcome the moderation — the spam and the specific problems being fought are pretty simple for a human to deal with and I trust the gatekeepers for that as it were. The rest of our culture is up to us.

What do we want it to be?