Asking questions in front of 600 people (even virtually) can be prohibitively hard for a lot of people. I'm with Ekaterina; flagging certain people in the channel as "available to mentor" so new contributors would know who they could reach out to 1:1 to get situated and potentially build some confidence would probably help.
That said, a new channel is low friction and a worthy experiment too. I'm +1 to trying it out. ~Josh On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 1:02 PM David Capwell <dcapw...@apple.com.invalid> wrote: > > Do newcomers feel confident enough to ask questions there? > > We get a few a quarter, guess the bigger question is “why do we not get > more”? I don’t have issues following another channel, glad to help where I > can. Another channel is low effort so I don’t have any issues trying to > see if it helps. > > > On Nov 8, 2021, at 9:12 AM, Benjamin Lerer <b.le...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > >> cassandra-dev has low enough volume that newbie questions can be > >> accommodated. > >> > > > > I agree that we could deal with newbie questions on the cassandra-dev > > channel. The question for me is more: Do newcomers feel confident enough > to > > ask questions there? > > > > Can we try anything different like people who volunteer as mentors to be > >> contacted with questions at the beginning before people start feeling > >> comfortable with channels? > >> > > > > The main problem that we have with mentors currently is that it can be > > difficult for newcomers to find people that can help them as mentors. We > > would need to find a way to communicate that clearly. In my mind the new > > channel could have been used also for that. > > > > I do not know if a channel would help. The idea makes sense to me but I > > would have loved to have some confirmation from people that are > interested > > in contributing or that are newcomers working on their first patches. > > > > Le lun. 8 nov. 2021 à 17:55, Ekaterina Dimitrova <e.dimitr...@gmail.com> > a > > écrit : > > > >> Can we try anything different like people who volunteer as mentors to be > >> contacted with questions at the beginning before people start feeling > >> comfortable with channels? > >> They can also be per specific area or something like that? > >> > >> I also feel that not many people will use another public channel, > >> especially someone shy in very early career. > >> > >> On Mon, 8 Nov 2021 at 11:39, Jeff Jirsa <jji...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> > >>> New developers or new users? I'd be afraid that a new developer-focused > >>> channel might not get many eyes (or, it'll get the same 600 eyes, and > >> it'll > >>> have the same problem). > >>> > >>> > >>> On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 8:29 AM Benjamin Lerer <ble...@apache.org> > wrote: > >>> > >>>> Hi everybody, > >>>> > >>>> Aleksei Zotov mentioned to me that it was a bit intimidating for > >>> newcomers > >>>> to ask beginner questions in the cassandra-dev channel as it has over > >> 600 > >>>> followers and that we should probably have a specific channel for > >>>> newcomers. > >>>> This proposal makes total sense to me. > >>>> > >>>> What is your opinion on this? Do you have any concerns about it? > >>>> > >>>> Benjamin > >>>> > >>> > >> > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@cassandra.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@cassandra.apache.org > >
