Thread

pg_last_xact_replay_timestamp() sometimes reports unlikely, very large delays

Toby Corkindale <toby.corkindale@strategicdata.com.au> — 2017-03-23T01:06:51Z

Hi all,
I wondered if any experts can help me out?

I currently monitor Postgresql's replication status by looking at two metrics.
First I check to see if the current slave xlog replay is equal to the master 
-- if so, it's up to date.
If it's not equal, then I look at pg_last_xact_replay_timestamp().

I can compare this with now() to get a duration, which I believe should 
indicate how far behind the slave is tracking.

Most of the time this works quite well -- the slave might fall behind by some 
seconds under heavy load, but that's fine.

However, occasionally this replay timestamp will report times many hours or 
days behind! This goes on for a few minutes, then suddenly recovers.


My best guess for what is going on is:
 - There has been no activity for hours or days, and so the oldest replayed 
transaction on the slave is genuinely quite old.
 - Something has happened on the master that causes its 
pg_current_xlog_location() to be updated, but not in a way that is sent to the 
slave until the end of a long-running transaction.


Could anyone suggest how to do this in a manner that avoids the problem?


It's annoying because when it happens, because for 5-10 minutes monitoring 
alerts get fired off about catastrophic amounts of lag on the read-only slave!

Cheers
Toby

Re: pg_last_xact_replay_timestamp() sometimes reports unlikely, very large delays

John DeSoi <desoi@pgedit.com> — 2017-03-24T03:01:59Z

> On Mar 22, 2017, at 8:06 PM, Toby Corkindale <toby.corkindale@strategicdata.com.au> wrote:
> 
> My best guess for what is going on is:
> - There has been no activity for hours or days, and so the oldest replayed 
> transaction on the slave is genuinely quite old.
> - Something has happened on the master that causes its 
> pg_current_xlog_location() to be updated, but not in a way that is sent to the 
> slave until the end of a long-running transaction.
> 
> 
> Could anyone suggest how to do this in a manner that avoids the problem?

Are you using streaming replication or only WAL archiving? If you are not streaming the archive command does not send the file until it is full (16MB, if I recall correctly). To address this, you can change the archive_timeout setting to ensure the WAL file is sent at some interval even if it is not full.

I use 'archive_timeout = 300' to send it every 5 minutes. If the lag is greater than 15 minutes, the alarm bells start going off.

John DeSoi, Ph.D.

Re: pg_last_xact_replay_timestamp() sometimes reports unlikely, very large delays

Toby Corkindale <toby.corkindale@strategicdata.com.au> — 2017-03-24T03:03:15Z

----- Original Message -----
> > On Mar 22, 2017, at 8:06 PM, Toby Corkindale
> > <toby.corkindale@strategicdata.com.au> wrote:
> > 
> > My best guess for what is going on is:
> > - There has been no activity for hours or days, and so the oldest replayed
> > transaction on the slave is genuinely quite old.
> > - Something has happened on the master that causes its
> > pg_current_xlog_location() to be updated, but not in a way that is sent to
> > the
> > slave until the end of a long-running transaction.
> > 
> > 
> > Could anyone suggest how to do this in a manner that avoids the problem?
> 
> Are you using streaming replication or only WAL archiving? If you are not
> streaming the archive command does not send the file until it is full (16MB,
> if I recall correctly). To address this, you can change the archive_timeout
> setting to ensure the WAL file is sent at some interval even if it is not
> full.

Apologies, I should have mentioned. We're using streaming replication.

browser interface to forums please?

Yuri Budilov <yuri.budilov@hotmail.com> — 2017-03-25T04:49:33Z

Hello everyone
Can these forums be moved to internet ?
All these emails is so 1990s.
So hard to follow, so hard to search for historical answers.
We really need to be able to post via browser.

best regards to everyone

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com> — 2017-03-25T04:57:01Z

Hi

2017-03-25 5:49 GMT+01:00 Yuri Budilov <yuri.budilov@hotmail.com>:

> Hello everyone
> Can these forums be moved to internet ?
>

It is on internet


> All these emails is so 1990s.
>

And it is working well - there is not spam and ballast


> So hard to follow, so hard to search for historical answers.
> We really need to be able to post via browser.
>

why?

there is a fulltexted archive

https://www.postgresql.org/list/group/2/
https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-general/

You can use http://stackoverflow.com/ too

Regards

Pavel




> best regards to everyone
>
>

Re: browser interface to forums please?

John R Pierce <pierce@hogranch.com> — 2017-03-25T06:27:47Z

On 3/24/2017 9:49 PM, Yuri Budilov wrote:
> Hello everyone
> Can these forums be moved to internet ?

go ahead and start a forum.   good luck.


-- 
john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz

Re: browser interface to forums please?

John R Pierce <pierce@hogranch.com> — 2017-03-25T06:33:16Z

On 3/24/2017 11:27 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
> On 3/24/2017 9:49 PM, Yuri Budilov wrote:
>> Hello everyone
>> Can these forums be moved to internet ?
>
> go ahead and start a forum.   good luck. 

sorry, that was a little terse.      I tried to move a couple thriving 
communities I'd created as email lists to forums.   the communities died.

-- 
john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> — 2017-03-25T06:45:01Z

John R Pierce <pierce@hogranch.com> writes:
> On 3/24/2017 9:49 PM, Yuri Budilov wrote:
>> Can these forums be moved to internet ?

> go ahead and start a forum.   good luck.

Think it's been done already, multiple times ... nabble and stackoverflow
already provide forums that are loosely linked to the PG mailing lists.
And probably some others that I'm not remembering at the moment.

They are uniformly unfriendly when viewed from this end of the
relationship.  nabble for instance reposts stuff into the mailing lists
that is missing critical portions.  stackoverflow doesn't seem to think
they have any responsibility to give back at all.

			regards, tom lane

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca> — 2017-03-25T13:26:06Z

On Sat, Mar 25, 2017 at 04:49:33AM +0000, Yuri Budilov wrote:
> Can these forums be moved to internet ?

Last I looked, SMTP generally works on the Internet.  You mean "the
web", which is a part of but not all of the Internet.

> So hard to follow, so hard to search for historical answers.

Why do you find it hard to follow?  The list is pretty well-ordered
and tends to thread nicely, so you can use any threaded mail reader
(or reader in threaded mode) and you should have some success.  I note
from the headers on your mail that you appear to be using both MS
Exchange and MS Outlook.  I haven't looked since the early 2000s, so
things might be better, but I recall Outlook having really bad
threading support at the time.  Maybe you need to switch to gmail for
reading the postgres lists.  It threads ok, and meets your stated
requirement of being in a browser.

As for historical answers, I'm not exactly sure what you want but you
will find at https://www.postgresql.org/list/ a "search archives"
function and an "advanced" search function at
https://www.postgresql.org/search/?m=1.   It's as good as most online
forum search tools I've ever used, though not as good as Google.
Which, I note, works well too.

> We really need to be able to post via browser.

Why?  What does "post via browser" get you that sending an email
doesn't?  I can think of somethign it does _not_ get you, however, and
that is the attention of some of the key contributors to Postgres, who
appear to work mostly in a mode where email makes things easy for them
and logging into a new forum tool makes things harder.

Best regards,

A
-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs@crankycanuck.ca

Re: browser interface to forums please?

David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> — 2017-03-25T16:25:08Z

On Friday, March 24, 2017, Yuri Budilov <yuri.budilov@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Hello everyone
> Can these forums be moved to internet ?
> All these emails is so 1990s.
> So hard to follow, so hard to search for historical answers.
> We really need to be able to post via browser.
>
>
One constraint is that the current email based flow cannot be disrupted.
Adding on a fully integrated forum-like GUI does have some demand.  I don't
see it being met if the it needs to be custom written.  Therefore, do you
have any suggestions and examples of communities using such a system?

As it stands we have a kind of read-only forum in our archives.  It would
be nice if there were a form at the bottom of the page that would let you
post - or even "send email to me so I can respond".

In short, there is always room for usability improvements.  You'll get a
better response if you focus on those since and explain why.

David J.

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Tim Clarke <tim.clarke@manifest.co.uk> — 2017-03-25T16:37:00Z

On 25/03/17 16:25, David G. Johnston wrote:
>
> One constraint is that the current email based flow cannot be
> disrupted.  Adding on a fully integrated forum-like GUI does have some
> demand.  I don't see it being met if the it needs to be custom
> written.  Therefore, do you have any suggestions and examples of
> communities using such a system?
>
> As it stands we have a kind of read-only forum in our archives.  It
> would be nice if there were a form at the bottom of the page that
> would let you post - or even "send email to me so I can respond".
>
> In short, there is always room for usability improvements.  You'll get
> a better response if you focus on those since and explain why.
>
> David J.

google groups would support both methods of access imho

I'm not suggesting its a good thing - perfectly happy with just email
myself and searching the list archives if need be.

Tim

Re: browser interface to forums please?

David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> — 2017-03-25T17:26:12Z

On Saturday, March 25, 2017, Tim Clarke <tim.clarke@manifest.co.uk> wrote:

> On 25/03/17 16:25, David G. Johnston wrote:
> >
> > One constraint is that the current email based flow cannot be
> > disrupted.  Adding on a fully integrated forum-like GUI does have some
> > demand.  I don't see it being met if the it needs to be custom
> > written.  Therefore, do you have any suggestions and examples of
> > communities using such a system?
> >
> > As it stands we have a kind of read-only forum in our archives.  It
> > would be nice if there were a form at the bottom of the page that
> > would let you post - or even "send email to me so I can respond".
> >
> > In short, there is always room for usability improvements.  You'll get
> > a better response if you focus on those since and explain why.
> >
> > David J.
>
> google groups would support both methods of access imho
>
> I'm not suggesting its a good thing - perfectly happy with just email
> myself and searching the list archives if need be.
>
>
Becomming reliant on a third-party host is a non-starter.  Nothing about
the present system is so deficient that status-quo would be a less
appealing option.

David J.

Re: browser interface to forums please?

George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> — 2017-03-26T05:31:33Z

On Sat, 25 Mar 2017 16:37:00 +0000, Tim Clarke
<tim.clarke@manifest.co.uk> wrote:

>On 25/03/17 16:25, David G. Johnston wrote:
>>
>> One constraint is that the current email based flow cannot be
>> disrupted.  Adding on a fully integrated forum-like GUI does have some
>> demand.  I don't see it being met if the it needs to be custom
>> written.  Therefore, do you have any suggestions and examples of
>> communities using such a system?
>>
>> As it stands we have a kind of read-only forum in our archives.  It
>> would be nice if there were a form at the bottom of the page that
>> would let you post - or even "send email to me so I can respond".
>>
>> In short, there is always room for usability improvements.  You'll get
>> a better response if you focus on those since and explain why.
>>
>> David J.
>
>google groups would support both methods of access imho
>
>I'm not suggesting its a good thing - perfectly happy with just email
>myself and searching the list archives if need be.

Google Groups rather routinely screws up message attribution so you
don't know to whom a GG user was responding.  Also [IME, anyway] GG
users tend to forget to expand and quote the material to which they
are responding because in the web UI they can just look back and see
it.  

Trying to follow a group through email, or by way of a list<>news
bridge, it is easy to lose the flow of a discussion when some of its
participants are on Google.

That said ...

I also dislike having my email full of list posts.  I prefer to follow
groups and lists through NNTP (net news) whenever possible.  Many
(all?) of the Postgresql lists are available via Gmane[*].  For
historical (hysterical?) reasons, I use Forte Agent as my reader on
Windows, but Thunderbird and SeaMonkey both work well for news and are
cross platform.

YMMV,
George

[*] Gmane is one of the list<>news bridges.  They currently are in the
midst of rehosting and changing maintainers.  The NNTP servers
(news.gmane.org) are working, but the web site (http://gmane.org/) is
offline.  
No account is necessary to use Gmane itself, but membership in a list
is needed to post messages.  Join with the same email address used by
your NN reader to access Gmane.

Re: browser interface to forums please?

John R Pierce <pierce@hogranch.com> — 2017-03-26T05:50:09Z

On 3/25/2017 10:31 PM, George Neuner wrote:
> I also dislike having my email full of list posts.

I have a 'postgres' folder in Thunderbird, and all posts "To:" or CC: 
pgsql-*@postgresql.org get moved there, that way they are together, and 
don't clutter my other email.    I have similar folders for the various 
other email lists I'm on.



-- 
john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Michael Paquier <michael.paquier@gmail.com> — 2017-03-27T02:31:02Z

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 2:50 PM, John R Pierce <pierce@hogranch.com> wrote:
> On 3/25/2017 10:31 PM, George Neuner wrote:
>>
>> I also dislike having my email full of list posts.
>
> I have a 'postgres' folder in Thunderbird, and all posts "To:" or CC:
> pgsql-*@postgresql.org get moved there, that way they are together, and
> don't clutter my other email.    I have similar folders for the various
> other email lists I'm on.

If you have subscribed to more mailing lists than -general, having one
subfolder per list can also help a lot, grouping as well some of those
having a low activity, for example:
- one folder for -hackers and -hackers-cluster.
- one folder for -general.
- one folder for -jdbc and -odbc.
- one for -bugs and -docs.
- one for -jobs and -announce, etc.
Something like that will make your hacking activity way easier to
handle. I would bet that a lot of people around here do that.
-- 
Michael

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com> — 2017-03-27T21:23:43Z

On Mon, 27 Mar 2017 11:31:02 +0900
Michael Paquier <michael.paquier@gmail.com> wrote:

> If you have subscribed to more mailing lists than -general, having one
> subfolder per list can also help a lot, grouping as well some of those
> having a low activity, for example:
> - one folder for -hackers and -hackers-cluster.
> - one folder for -general.
> - one folder for -jdbc and -odbc.
> - one for -bugs and -docs.
> - one for -jobs and -announce, etc.
> Something like that will make your hacking activity way easier to
> handle. I would bet that a lot of people around here do that.

I sure do. I have a heck of a lot of email in a heck of a lot of
folders, all stored in a nice, easy to drill down hierarchy. That
hierarchy is maintained by the Dovecot IMAP server that runs on my
desktop computer.

On every successful mailing list, somebody inevitably suggests
replacing it with "a forum" or "a facebook page" or some
proprietary website that acts as a middleman (Google, Meetup and
Linkedin are three of the usual suspects). Such suggestions usually go
nowhere, and when they're followed, communication usually ceases and
the the community becomes a ghost town. When it comes to having a
lively group discussion that focuses all minds into a supermind greater
than the sum of the parts, a mailing list is the best tool. Especially
if those who use it trim properly and make sure they're not being
ambiguous.

Another mailing list benefit: Most of these other types of "community
communicators" sooner or later disappear from the Internet, just like
mailing lists. But with mailing lists, individuals can keep their own
archives. I have archives from my first LUG, even though that LUG's
mailing list went defunct in 2002.

Because my email folder hierarchy was designed by me, I can usually
find emails of any age very quickly. Responding is as easy as replying
to an email.

One assertion in the original post was that email communication is "so
1990's". That's neither a compliment nor an insult, and has prompted me
to write an essay, for which I'll provide the URL when it's finished.

Bottom line though, don't mess with success.

SteveT

Steve Litt
March 2017 featured book: Troubleshooting: Why Bother?
http://www.troubleshooters.com/twb

Re: browser interface to forums please?

John McKown <john.archie.mckown@gmail.com> — 2017-03-27T23:52:19Z

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 4:23 PM, Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com>
wrote:

> On Mon, 27 Mar 2017 11:31:02 +0900

<snip>

> 
>
> On every successful mailing list, somebody inevitably suggests
> replacing it with "a forum" or "a facebook page" or some
> proprietary website that acts as a middleman (Google, Meetup and
> Linkedin are three of the usual suspects). Such suggestions usually go
> nowhere, and when they're followed, communication usually ceases and
> the the community becomes a ghost town. When it comes to having a
> lively group discussion that focuses all minds into a supermind greater
> than the sum of the parts, a mailing list is the best tool. Especially
> if those who use it trim properly and make sure they're not being
> ambiguous.
>

Very true. The main reason that I like email is that I get an easy to see
notification about a new message. And I only need to go to _one_ place to
find it.


>
> Another mailing list benefit: Most of these other types of "community
> communicators" sooner or later disappear from the Internet, just like
> mailing lists. But with mailing lists, individuals can keep their own
> archives. I have archives from my first LUG, even though that LUG's
> mailing list went defunct in 2002.
>

so, you're saying you're a LUG nut? [ I just couldn't stop myself. It's a
disease! ]



>
> Because my email folder hierarchy was designed by me, I can usually
> find emails of any age very quickly. Responding is as easy as replying
> to an email.
>

Another plus.


>
> One assertion in the original post was that email communication is "so
> 1990's". That's neither a compliment nor an insult, and has prompted me
> to write an essay, for which I'll provide the URL when it's finished.
>

Agree. I guess the OP doesn't every use paper or pen/pencil for anything.

Bottom line though, don't mess with success.
>

'cause you'll end up a mess!



>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
> March 2017 featured book: Troubleshooting: Why Bother?
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/twb
>
>
>

-- 
"Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is
ancient. It's called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

Re: browser interface to forums please?

vinny <vinny@xs4all.nl> — 2017-04-04T10:01:24Z

On 2017-03-27 23:23, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Mar 2017 11:31:02 +0900
> Michael Paquier <michael.paquier@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> If you have subscribed to more mailing lists than -general, having one
>> subfolder per list can also help a lot, grouping as well some of those
>> having a low activity, for example:
>> - one folder for -hackers and -hackers-cluster.
>> - one folder for -general.
>> - one folder for -jdbc and -odbc.
>> - one for -bugs and -docs.
>> - one for -jobs and -announce, etc.
>> Something like that will make your hacking activity way easier to
>> handle. I would bet that a lot of people around here do that.
> 
> I sure do. I have a heck of a lot of email in a heck of a lot of
> folders, all stored in a nice, easy to drill down hierarchy. That
> hierarchy is maintained by the Dovecot IMAP server that runs on my
> desktop computer.

I'm not against mailinglists at all, but I am for ease of use, 
especially for newcomers.

Every time I tell someone about the mailinglists I then have to explain
how they can subscribe, how to create folders, filters etc. And more 
often than not
they just say forget it and go to some forum.

> When it comes to having a
> lively group discussion that focuses all minds into a supermind greater
> than the sum of the parts, a mailing list is the best tool.

Well, in the end, it's not the fact that it's a mailinglist that makes 
the community great,
it's just the fact that the active members share a methodof 
communication that they all like to use.
Getting notifications of new messages is probably the single most 
important feature to keep discussions going
and email provides that.

The thing is; mailinglists are far from userfiendly if you are not used 
to them.
Even in this thread several people have explained how much work they 
have done to get it
into a state where they can easily work with it. Can you expect Joe 
Average to do something like that
if they want to get more involved in PgSQL?

Now, I'm not saying the mailinglists should go, I'm saying there should 
be an easier way
to access them. It should be possible to register on the site, post a 
message and read replies,
without having to subscribe to the list and setup a way of dealing with 
the influx of messages
that are, for the most post, simply not interesting to the average user.

I'd love to have an RSS feed that contains only new questions, so I can 
just watch the popup
on my screen the way I do with the rest of the world, and not have to 
deal with replies to topics that I don't care about anyway.

And yes, I can probably setup my email to do something like that, the 
point is that I shouldn't have to.

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Thomas Kellerer <spam_eater@gmx.net> — 2017-04-04T10:17:17Z

vinny schrieb am 04.04.2017 um 12:01:
> I'd love to have an RSS feed that contains only new questions, so I can just watch the popup
> on my screen the way I do with the rest of the world, and not have to deal with replies to topics that I don't care about anyway.

You can read them as a newsgroup provided by news.gmane.org - I do it that way. 

Thunderbird works quite well with that. 

Thomas

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> — 2017-04-04T13:04:15Z

Greetings,

* vinny (vinny@xs4all.nl) wrote:
> The thing is; mailinglists are far from userfiendly if you are not
> used to them.
> Even in this thread several people have explained how much work they
> have done to get it
> into a state where they can easily work with it. Can you expect Joe
> Average to do something like that
> if they want to get more involved in PgSQL?

I don't actually feel that it's really all that unreasonable, no.  I've
explained that we use mailing lists to a few different groups at
different colleges I've spoken at and while there's been a bit of
grousing from a few individuals, I don't recall anyone not knowing what
a mailing list is or having all that bad of a reaction.

I'll be speaking later this month again at GMU, so I'll make it a point
to discuss it with the group there.

> Now, I'm not saying the mailinglists should go, I'm saying there
> should be an easier way
> to access them. It should be possible to register on the site, post
> a message and read replies,
> without having to subscribe to the list and setup a way of dealing
> with the influx of messages
> that are, for the most post, simply not interesting to the average user.

I don't think there's anyone who is particularly against that idea, but
it's far from trivial to do and to address the possible spam which will
result from that.  All of the website code is open-source and
improvements to it would be greatly welcomed, as long as they don't
create a significant increase in the maintenance burden for the pginfra
team.

> I'd love to have an RSS feed that contains only new questions, so I
> can just watch the popup
> on my screen the way I do with the rest of the world, and not have
> to deal with replies to topics that I don't care about anyway.

I don't see any reason, off-hand at least, that this couldn't be
provided.  We already provide RSS feeds for other things and it's
reasonably straight-forward.  Replying to the RSS feed would require
an email client though, at least for now.  Perhaps that could be
integrated into the 'whole mbox' download option though or something
along those lines so you can pull the email/thread into your client
easily to reply.

> And yes, I can probably setup my email to do something like that,
> the point is that I shouldn't have to.

I'm all for improving things and adding automation where it'll help, but
the infrastructure is basically run by volunteers.  Making statements
like "I shouldn't have to" isn't the best approach to getting the
changes you'd like to see happen done.

Thanks!

Stephen

Re: browser interface to forums please?

vinny <vinny@xs4all.nl> — 2017-04-04T13:29:07Z

On 2017-04-04 15:04, Stephen Frost wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> * vinny (vinny@xs4all.nl) wrote:
> 
>> And yes, I can probably setup my email to do something like that,
>> the point is that I shouldn't have to.
> 
> I'm all for improving things and adding automation where it'll help, 
> but
> the infrastructure is basically run by volunteers.  Making statements
> like "I shouldn't have to" isn't the best approach to getting the
> changes you'd like to see happen done.

I meant it as "in an ideal world". It's a bit like buying a car
and finding out that they have not put the wheels on. It's not difficult 
to put them on yourself,
but you kind of expect that the people who want you to user their car 
would do that for you.

Anyway, thanks for the response!

> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Stephen

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> — 2017-04-04T13:31:47Z

Greetings Vinny,

* vinny (vinny@xs4all.nl) wrote:
> I meant it as "in an ideal world". It's a bit like buying a car
> and finding out that they have not put the wheels on. It's not
> difficult to put them on yourself,
> but you kind of expect that the people who want you to user their
> car would do that for you.

There's a bit of a difference between buying a car and using a service
which is provided for free from a team of volunteers.

I agree that the "in an ideal world" wording is better. :)

Thanks!

Stephen

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> — 2017-04-04T14:00:25Z

Greetings,

* Robin St.Clair (Robin@RobinStClair.net) wrote:
> Please do not encrypt  what does not need to be encrypted. Signing communications to a mailing list probably isn't required?

Signing communications demonstrates that the message was, indeed, from
me.  You are certainly welcome to ignore it.

Thanks!

Stephen

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Vincent Veyron <vv.lists@wanadoo.fr> — 2017-04-05T13:11:36Z

On Tue, 04 Apr 2017 12:01:24 +0200
vinny <vinny@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> 
> Every time I tell someone about the mailinglists I then have to explain
> how they can subscribe, how to create folders, filters etc. And more 
> often than not
> they just say forget it and go to some forum.

On forums, all you see is the header for the discussion, and the number of messages attached to it. 

It makes it much more difficult to follow discussions, because you don't know if there are new messages or not, unless you memorized how many were there the last time you looked at it. And even then, you can't tell whether you even read them previously or not, which a mailing list will tell you, because the messages are marked.

> Can you expect Joe 
> Average to do something like that
> if they want to get more involved in PgSQL?
> 

How hard is it to subscribe, create a folder and a filter? If that is too involved, I don't see how they can get involved in postgres anyway.

-- 
					Bien à vous, Vincent Veyron 

https://marica.fr
Logiciel de gestion des contentieux juridiques, des contrats et des sinistres d'assurance

Re: browser interface to forums please?

vinny <vinny@xs4all.nl> — 2017-04-05T14:14:04Z

On 2017-04-05 15:11, Vincent Veyron wrote:
> On Tue, 04 Apr 2017 12:01:24 +0200
> vinny <vinny@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>> 
>> Every time I tell someone about the mailinglists I then have to 
>> explain
>> how they can subscribe, how to create folders, filters etc. And more
>> often than not
>> they just say forget it and go to some forum.
> 
> On forums, all you see is the header for the discussion, and the
> number of messages attached to it.
> 
> It makes it much more difficult to follow discussions, because you
> don't know if there are new messages or not, unless you memorized how
> many were there the last time you looked at it. And even then, you
> can't tell whether you even read them previously or not, which a
> mailing list will tell you, because the messages are marked.

It depends entirely on which forum software you use.
If keeping track of read messages is a requirement then you would 
obviously
use a forum that does that for you.

But again, I'm not saying the mailinglist should be replaced by a forum.
What I'm saying is that many users find forums a lot easier to use and 
give the choice,
they will opt for the forum. Hence it makes sense to provide something 
for those users,
if there is the manpower to do so.

>> Can you expect Joe
>> Average to do something like that
>> if they want to get more involved in PgSQL?
>> 
> 
> How hard is it to subscribe, create a folder and a filter? If that is
> too involved, I don't see how they can get involved in postgres
> anyway.

That might be true if you are talking about contributors, sure, but 
we're not.
Or at least, I'm not, and I guess that's where I'm mistaking. Perhaps 
the mailinglists
are the way they are to encourage the more serious users to use them,
and keep everyday questions out a little.

That would be fine too, but don't put it like "if you this is too much 
work, you shouldn't be using postgresql".

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> — 2017-04-05T14:39:13Z

On 04/05/2017 07:14 AM, vinny wrote:
> On 2017-04-05 15:11, Vincent Veyron wrote:
>> On Tue, 04 Apr 2017 12:01:24 +0200
>> vinny <vinny@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>>>
>>> Every time I tell someone about the mailinglists I then have to explain
>>> how they can subscribe, how to create folders, filters etc. And more
>>> often than not
>>> they just say forget it and go to some forum.
>>
>> On forums, all you see is the header for the discussion, and the
>> number of messages attached to it.
>>
>> It makes it much more difficult to follow discussions, because you
>> don't know if there are new messages or not, unless you memorized how
>> many were there the last time you looked at it. And even then, you
>> can't tell whether you even read them previously or not, which a
>> mailing list will tell you, because the messages are marked.
>
> It depends entirely on which forum software you use.
> If keeping track of read messages is a requirement then you would obviously
> use a forum that does that for you.
>
> But again, I'm not saying the mailinglist should be replaced by a forum.
> What I'm saying is that many users find forums a lot easier to use and
> give the choice,
> they will opt for the forum. Hence it makes sense to provide something
> for those users,
> if there is the manpower to do so.
>
>>> Can you expect Joe
>>> Average to do something like that
>>> if they want to get more involved in PgSQL?
>>>
>>
>> How hard is it to subscribe, create a folder and a filter? If that is
>> too involved, I don't see how they can get involved in postgres
>> anyway.
>
> That might be true if you are talking about contributors, sure, but
> we're not.
> Or at least, I'm not, and I guess that's where I'm mistaking. Perhaps
> the mailinglists
> are the way they are to encourage the more serious users to use them,
> and keep everyday questions out a little.

Everyday questions appear here all the time, so that is not the 
motivation. It is more that Postgres is a complex piece of software and 
questions/answers work better in the mailing list work flow then a 
forum. The added benefit is that the list is a tremendous resource and 
you will find many of your questions answered by just monitoring the 
list. There are days that the --general is really busy, but most times 
it very manageable, especially if you apply the eyeball filter to 
topics:) If someone wants to just drop in for a single question there is 
the IRC channel:

https://www.postgresql.org/community/irc/

or Stackoverflow:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/postgresql

>
> That would be fine too, but don't put it like "if you this is too much
> work, you shouldn't be using postgresql".
>
>


-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> — 2017-04-05T16:17:23Z

On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 4:14 PM, vinny <vinny@xs4all.nl> wrote:

> On 2017-04-05 15:11, Vincent Veyron wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 04 Apr 2017 12:01:24 +0200
>> vinny <vinny@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Every time I tell someone about the mailinglists I then have to explain
>>> how they can subscribe, how to create folders, filters etc. And more
>>> often than not
>>> they just say forget it and go to some forum.
>>>
>>
>> On forums, all you see is the header for the discussion, and the
>> number of messages attached to it.
>>
>> It makes it much more difficult to follow discussions, because you
>> don't know if there are new messages or not, unless you memorized how
>> many were there the last time you looked at it. And even then, you
>> can't tell whether you even read them previously or not, which a
>> mailing list will tell you, because the messages are marked.
>>
>
> It depends entirely on which forum software you use.
> If keeping track of read messages is a requirement then you would obviously
> use a forum that does that for you.
>
> But again, I'm not saying the mailinglist should be replaced by a forum.
> What I'm saying is that many users find forums a lot easier to use and
> give the choice,
> they will opt for the forum. Hence it makes sense to provide something for
> those users,
> if there is the manpower to do so.


This has been tried a number of times. I'ts been a couple of years since I
last saw one, but multiple people have set up forums, either mirrored or
not. They have all died because of either lack of usage or because the
person who did it disappeared.

Not saying it can't be tried again, but in the previous attempts it
certainly hasn't been "many users". It could be that whomever set them up
did a bad job of course, I can't judge that as I didn't personally use them
more than take a look every now and then.

-- 
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> — 2017-04-05T16:31:59Z

On 04/05/2017 09:17 AM, Magnus Hagander wrote:

>
> This has been tried a number of times. I'ts been a couple of years since
> I last saw one, but multiple people have set up forums, either mirrored
> or not. They have all died because of either lack of usage or because
> the person who did it disappeared.

Mostly, because they did not work well and the folks on this end of the 
process had to do more work to get the information necessary to answer 
the question. I know I eventually stopped responding to the questions 
from those sources because it was difficult to follow the information 
flow. Namely you had to crawl back up to the forum to get information 
and then the email thread had mix of information that made it through on 
its own and some subset of information that dedicated people pulled in 
from the forum. That mix depended on dedication level and time available.

>
> Not saying it can't be tried again, but in the previous attempts it
> certainly hasn't been "many users". It could be that whomever set them
> up did a bad job of course, I can't judge that as I didn't personally
> use them more than take a look every now and then.
>
> --
>  Magnus Hagander
>  Me: http://www.hagander.net/
>  Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> — 2017-04-05T16:49:10Z

On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 6:31 PM, Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com>
wrote:

> On 04/05/2017 09:17 AM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>
>
>> This has been tried a number of times. I'ts been a couple of years since
>> I last saw one, but multiple people have set up forums, either mirrored
>> or not. They have all died because of either lack of usage or because
>> the person who did it disappeared.
>>
>
> Mostly, because they did not work well and the folks on this end of the
> process had to do more work to get the information necessary to answer the
> question. I know I eventually stopped responding to the questions from
> those sources because it was difficult to follow the information flow.
> Namely you had to crawl back up to the forum to get information and then
> the email thread had mix of information that made it through on its own and
> some subset of information that dedicated people pulled in from the forum.
> That mix depended on dedication level and time available.
>
>
Most likely things like that yes -- which indicates that it really wasn't
enough people who preferred that format to actually reach critical mass.


-- 
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com> — 2017-04-05T16:51:41Z

On Wed, 5 Apr 2017 09:31:59 -0700
Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> wrote:

> On 04/05/2017 09:17 AM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> 
> >
> > This has been tried a number of times. I'ts been a couple of years
> > since I last saw one, but multiple people have set up forums,
> > either mirrored or not. They have all died because of either lack
> > of usage or because the person who did it disappeared.  
> 
> Mostly, because they did not work well and the folks on this end of
> the process had to do more work to get the information necessary to
> answer the question. I know I eventually stopped responding to the
> questions from those sources because it was difficult to follow the
> information flow. Namely you had to crawl back up to the forum to get
> information and then the email thread had mix of information that
> made it through on its own and some subset of information that
> dedicated people pulled in from the forum. That mix depended on
> dedication level and time available.

In addition, once you subscribe to a mailing list, all info comes to
you. No password necessary. Read, reply, lightning quick.

Contrast this with forums, where you have to remember to go out to each
and every forum you're interested in, put in the password, and then
operate within the work-flow of the forum.

I'm subscribed to mailing lists of 20 LUGs. Can you imagine the
inconvenience if I had to go out to each one and put in a password just
to see if there's anything new? With mailing lists, the information
comes to you, instead of making you go out to it.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
April 2017 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques
     of the Successful Technologist
http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques

Re: browser interface to forums please?

John McKown <john.archie.mckown@gmail.com> — 2017-04-05T17:05:39Z

On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 11:51 AM, Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com>
wrote:

> <snip>
>
>
> In addition, once you subscribe to a mailing list, all info comes to
> you. No password necessary. Read, reply, lightning quick.
>
> Contrast this with forums, where you have to remember to go out to each
> and every forum you're interested in, put in the password, and then
> operate within the work-flow of the forum.
>
> I'm subscribed to mailing lists of 20 LUGs. Can you imagine the
> inconvenience if I had to go out to each one and put in a password just
> to see if there's anything new? With mailing lists, the information
> comes to you, instead of making you go out to it.
>

This is exactly my thought on the subject, but phrased better that I could
have done it. I don't mind an "archive" web site which records all of the
emails. And it it properly threads them, that is even better. I have that
on a number of my lists. And you can even post through them. The post goes
directly to the web site, which then "fakes up" an "email" which looks like
it came in via the regular email channel and sends it back out via the
normal email channel. But there are some which don't do this "echoing". In
those, I end up just ignoring people because it is too difficult for me to
bother with going to the site to reply.

>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
> April 2017 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques
>      of the Successful Technologist
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques
>
>

-- 
"Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is
ancient. It's called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> — 2017-04-05T17:22:23Z

On 03/24/2017 11:45 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> John R Pierce <pierce@hogranch.com> writes:
>> On 3/24/2017 9:49 PM, Yuri Budilov wrote:

> They are uniformly unfriendly when viewed from this end of the
> relationship.  nabble for instance reposts stuff into the mailing lists
> that is missing critical portions.  stackoverflow doesn't seem to think
> they have any responsibility to give back at all.

Stackoverflow gives back by providing an interface people want to use. 
It is free (as in beer) and is hugely popular.

We need to be embracing these external communities because it is where 
our growth is. I run into people every single week that absolutely 
refuse to join these lists. They want nothing to do with email and they 
have good reason.

JD

-- 
Command Prompt, Inc.                  http://the.postgres.company/
                         +1-503-667-4564
PostgreSQL Centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Everyone appreciates your honesty, until you are honest with them.
Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Tim Clarke <tim.clarke@manifest.co.uk> — 2017-04-05T17:26:41Z

On 05/04/17 18:22, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> Stackoverflow gives back by providing an interface people want to use.
> It is free (as in beer) and is hugely popular.
>
> We need to be embracing these external communities because it is where
> our growth is. I run into people every single week that absolutely
> refuse to join these lists. They want nothing to do with email and
> they have good reason.
>
> JD
>

+1 Joshua, that's the best reason I've heard so far and it seems very
powerful to me. The more readers we have and the easier they can
communicate with us (doesn't matter if they are "wrong") then  the
better all round for Postgres.

Tim

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> — 2017-04-05T17:44:16Z

On 03/24/2017 09:49 PM, Yuri Budilov wrote:
> Hello everyone
> Can these forums be moved to internet ?
> All these emails is so 1990s.
> So hard to follow, so hard to search for historical answers.
> We really need to be able to post via browser.
>
> best regards to everyone
>

You are going to find that the .Org community is generally hostile 
toward non-email centric communication. My recommendation is to look 
toward these very useful external communities:

* https://plus.google.com/communities/116371937400081693174
* https://www.facebook.com/groups/postgres/
* http://www.stackoverflow.com/
* http://reddit.com/r/postgresql

If you would like a highly dynamic environment, you may try IRC. Yes it 
is an old school protocol but over 1000 people hangout on that channel 
and there are a lot of them that try to help.

IRC:
	* Server: irc.freenode.net
	* Channel: #postgresql

Other collaborative platforms:

	* https://gitter.im/postgresmen/postgresql

If you are looking for an awesome interface to the IRC channel, you can 
try Riot:

	* https://riot.im/app/#/room/#freenode_#postgresql:matrix.org

Thanks for trying to participate,

JD

-- 
Command Prompt, Inc.                  http://the.postgres.company/
                         +1-503-667-4564
PostgreSQL Centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Everyone appreciates your honesty, until you are honest with them.
Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> — 2017-04-05T17:45:20Z

On 04/05/2017 10:26 AM, Tim Clarke wrote:
>
> On 05/04/17 18:22, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>> Stackoverflow gives back by providing an interface people want to use.
>> It is free (as in beer) and is hugely popular.
>>
>> We need to be embracing these external communities because it is where
>> our growth is. I run into people every single week that absolutely
>> refuse to join these lists. They want nothing to do with email and
>> they have good reason.
>>
>> JD
>>
>
> +1 Joshua, that's the best reason I've heard so far and it seems very
> powerful to me. The more readers we have and the easier they can
> communicate with us (doesn't matter if they are "wrong") then  the
> better all round for Postgres.

This implies that ease of communication = quality of communication and I 
am not buying it. Exhibit A, Twitter.

>
> Tim
>


-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

Re: browser interface to forums please?

vinny <vinny@xs4all.nl> — 2017-04-05T17:48:07Z


Op 05/04/2017 om 19:26 schreef Tim Clarke:
> On 05/04/17 18:22, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>> Stackoverflow gives back by providing an interface people want to use.
>> It is free (as in beer) and is hugely popular.
>>
>> We need to be embracing these external communities because it is where
>> our growth is. I run into people every single week that absolutely
>> refuse to join these lists. They want nothing to do with email and
>> they have good reason.
>>
>> JD
>>
> +1 Joshua, that's the best reason I've heard so far and it seems very
> powerful to me. The more readers we have and the easier they can
> communicate with us (doesn't matter if they are "wrong") then  the
> better all round for Postgres.
>
> Tim
>

+1 This is what I was getting at before. I need to learn to phrase 
things better :-)

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> — 2017-04-05T17:57:23Z

On 04/05/2017 10:45 AM, Adrian Klaver wrote:
> On 04/05/2017 10:26 AM, Tim Clarke wrote:

>> +1 Joshua, that's the best reason I've heard so far and it seems very
>> powerful to me. The more readers we have and the easier they can
>> communicate with us (doesn't matter if they are "wrong") then  the
>> better all round for Postgres.
>
> This implies that ease of communication = quality of communication and I
> am not buying it. Exhibit A, Twitter.

Adrian,

I am afraid that you misunderstand the problem. The idea that you would 
use Twitter as the example is a perfect illustration of this. Twitter is 
*not* a collaboration platform. It is a promotion platform and it does 
it very well.

Stack Overflow (as an example) is a collaboration platform. Stack 
understands the problem and is very, very good at solving it. It is why 
they are successful.

Another example of a very good platform (that I can't stand) is Slack. 
It has become so completely dominant in the growth space that even 
Google is changing Hangouts because people were leaving in droves.

So the question is, what is the problem we are trying to solve?

I posed that the problem is that we are hostile toward communities that 
don't communicate and collaborate in the way we feel is "correct".

You have proved that the way I posed the problem is accurate.

Thank you for your participation,

JD

-- 
Command Prompt, Inc.                  http://the.postgres.company/
                         +1-503-667-4564
PostgreSQL Centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Everyone appreciates your honesty, until you are honest with them.
Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> — 2017-04-05T18:14:01Z

On 04/05/2017 10:57 AM, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> On 04/05/2017 10:45 AM, Adrian Klaver wrote:
>> On 04/05/2017 10:26 AM, Tim Clarke wrote:
>
>>> +1 Joshua, that's the best reason I've heard so far and it seems very
>>> powerful to me. The more readers we have and the easier they can
>>> communicate with us (doesn't matter if they are "wrong") then  the
>>> better all round for Postgres.
>>
>> This implies that ease of communication = quality of communication and I
>> am not buying it. Exhibit A, Twitter.
>
> Adrian,
>
> I am afraid that you misunderstand the problem. The idea that you would
> use Twitter as the example is a perfect illustration of this. Twitter is
> *not* a collaboration platform. It is a promotion platform and it does
> it very well.

More a commentary on ease of use trumping content.

>
> Stack Overflow (as an example) is a collaboration platform. Stack
> understands the problem and is very, very good at solving it. It is why
> they are successful.
>
> Another example of a very good platform (that I can't stand) is Slack.
> It has become so completely dominant in the growth space that even
> Google is changing Hangouts because people were leaving in droves.
>
> So the question is, what is the problem we are trying to solve?
>
> I posed that the problem is that we are hostile toward communities that
> don't communicate and collaborate in the way we feel is "correct".

Not being hostile to other communities, just pointing out the reality. 
When push comes to shove and the other methods of collaboration fail, 
said communities then refer the OP to this list or others in the 
Postgres mailing list galaxy to get an answer. Seems to me folks would 
save a lot of time and effort just joining the list instead of hopping 
around looking for a quick answer. Reminds me of college where I saw 
people spend more time looking for the 'cheats' instead of just studying 
the material. The material is here, the people that know the material 
are here, get over your bias and use the resource.

>
> You have proved that the way I posed the problem is accurate.
>
> Thank you for your participation,
>
>
> JD
>
>
>

-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

Re: browser interface to forums please?

George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> — 2017-04-05T18:30:41Z

On Wed, 5 Apr 2017 09:31:59 -0700, Adrian Klaver
<adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> wrote:

>On 04/05/2017 09:17 AM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>
>> This has been tried a number of times. I'ts been a couple of years since
>> I last saw one, but multiple people have set up forums, either mirrored
>> or not. They have all died because of either lack of usage or because
>> the person who did it disappeared.
>
>Mostly, because they did not work well and the folks on this end of the 
>process had to do more work to get the information necessary to answer 
>the question. I know I eventually stopped responding to the questions 
>from those sources because it was difficult to follow the information 
>flow. Namely you had to crawl back up to the forum to get information 
>and then the email thread had mix of information that made it through on 
>its own and some subset of information that dedicated people pulled in 
>from the forum. That mix depended on dedication level and time available.

That's the same observation I made about list participants who
subscribe through Google Groups  ... they often don't [think to] make
the effort to quote or attribute properly because *they* can simply
look back up the thread to see what was written and by whom.  

This makes it difficult to follow a discussion via email, and Google's
list handling is flawed - it sometimes breaks the underlying list
threading [while keeping its own GUI correct], and broken threads can
be hard to follow even with a decent news reader.
[Postgresql lists are available through NNTP: e.g., at Gmane.org].

YMMV,
George

Re: browser interface to forums please?

John R Pierce <pierce@hogranch.com> — 2017-04-05T18:39:17Z

On 4/5/2017 11:30 AM, George Neuner wrote:
> This makes it difficult to follow a discussion via email, and Google's
> list handling is flawed - it sometimes breaks the underlying list
> threading [while keeping its own GUI correct], and broken threads can
> be hard to follow even with a decent news reader.

near as I can tell, gmail ignores the threading headers, and just 
threads based on subjects.

-- 
john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz

Re: browser interface to forums please?

George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> — 2017-04-05T18:39:55Z

On Wed, 5 Apr 2017 12:05:39 -0500, John McKown
<john.archie.mckown@gmail.com> wrote:

> :
>I don't mind an "archive" web site which records all of the
>emails. And it it properly threads them, that is even better. I have that
>on a number of my lists. And you can even post through them. The post goes
>directly to the web site, which then "fakes up" an "email" which looks like
>it came in via the regular email channel and sends it back out via the
>normal email channel.? But there are some which don't do this "echoing".
> :

And then there are sites - e.g., Google - which maintain their own
internal threading of the discussion, but F_ up sending posts to the
list channel and breaking other's views of the discussion.

George

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> — 2017-04-05T18:46:50Z

On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 7:22 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
wrote:

> On 03/24/2017 11:45 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>
>> John R Pierce <pierce@hogranch.com> writes:
>>
>>> On 3/24/2017 9:49 PM, Yuri Budilov wrote:
>>>
>>
> They are uniformly unfriendly when viewed from this end of the
>> relationship.  nabble for instance reposts stuff into the mailing lists
>> that is missing critical portions.  stackoverflow doesn't seem to think
>> they have any responsibility to give back at all.
>>
>
> Stackoverflow gives back by providing an interface people want to use. It
> is free (as in beer) and is hugely popular.
>

I think one of the greatest things that Stackoverflow brins isn't actually
the interface (I for one can't stand it, but I'm clearly not the target
group here), but it's the fact that they have the *userbase* of people. We
have a userbase of "people already using postgres and many of them having
done so for some time because there's a threshold to get over to join this
mailinglist thing". Stackoverflow has a userbase that is orders of
magnitude higher, because they provide a venue for people to ask questions
about *anything* -- so they can use the same venue to ask about their
programming language, their framework-du-jour, their database, their
operating system etc etc.

This is one reason why I don't think having PostgreSQL dedicated web forums
would actually be very interesting today. Those people who prefer to use
the web as their media are more likely to already be using other platforms
which bring them *more value* than a PostgreSQL dedicated forum ever would.
And they don't have to sing up for Yet Another Account. And they can work
on whatever credit-style-kickback their favorite platform does.

> We need to be embracing these external communities because it is where our
> growth is. I run into people every single week that absolutely refuse to
> join these lists. They want nothing to do with email and they have good
> reason.
>

Fully agreed. And I think we're better off doing that than to try to
rebuild our own version of those communities.

Personally, I couldn't stand going through StackOverflow on a regular basis
trying to check if Postgres related questions are answered or not etc.
Luckily, we have other community members who *are* willing to do that, and
they make that platform work. So I'm very grateful for those people doing
it, even better that it's not me.

And also, if somebody wants to take another stab at trying to make web
forums for PostgreSQL, I say let them try. I don't think it would work, but
I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

-- 
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> — 2017-04-05T18:52:49Z

On 04/05/2017 11:46 AM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 7:22 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com
> <mailto:jd@commandprompt.com>> wrote:

>
>     Stackoverflow gives back by providing an interface people want to
>     use. It is free (as in beer) and is hugely popular.
>
>
> I think one of the greatest things that Stackoverflow brins isn't
> actually the interface (I for one can't stand it, but I'm clearly not
> the target group here), but it's the fact that they have the *userbase*
> of people. We have a userbase of "people already using postgres and many
> of them having done so for some time because there's a threshold to get
> over to join this mailinglist thing". Stackoverflow has a userbase that
> is orders of magnitude higher, because they provide a venue for people
> to ask questions about *anything* -- so they can use the same venue to
> ask about their programming language, their framework-du-jour, their
> database, their operating system etc etc.

I would agree with that.

>
> This is one reason why I don't think having PostgreSQL dedicated web
> forums would actually be very interesting today. Those people who prefer
> to use the web as their media are more likely to already be using other
> platforms which bring them *more value* than a PostgreSQL dedicated
> forum ever would. And they don't have to sing up for Yet Another
> Account. And they can work on whatever credit-style-kickback their
> favorite platform does.

Which is a reasonable opinion and why my point is more about interfacing 
with those external communities in some positive fashion (vs propping 
our own infrastructure).

>
>     We need to be embracing these external communities because it is
>     where our growth is. I run into people every single week that
>     absolutely refuse to join these lists. They want nothing to do with
>     email and they have good reason.
>
>
>
> Fully agreed. And I think we're better off doing that than to try to
> rebuild our own version of those communities.

+1

Thanks,

JD


-- 
Command Prompt, Inc.                  http://the.postgres.company/
                         +1-503-667-4564
PostgreSQL Centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Everyone appreciates your honesty, until you are honest with them.
Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.

Re: browser interface to forums please?

George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> — 2017-04-05T20:31:50Z

On Wed, 5 Apr 2017 11:39:17 -0700, John R Pierce <pierce@hogranch.com>
wrote:

>On 4/5/2017 11:30 AM, George Neuner wrote:
>> This makes it difficult to follow a discussion via email, and Google's
>> list handling is flawed - it sometimes breaks the underlying list
>> threading [while keeping its own GUI correct], and broken threads can
>> be hard to follow even with a decent news reader.
>
>near as I can tell, gmail ignores the threading headers, and just 
>threads based on subjects.

In my experience it isn't consistent - I suspect Google's server
configurations are not uniform.  I follow a number of lists routinely,
but I see the threading problems only occasionally, and it seems to
follow certain participants.

George

Re: browser interface to forums please?

George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> — 2017-04-05T21:19:40Z

On Wed, 5 Apr 2017 10:57:23 -0700, "Joshua D. Drake"
<jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:

>Stack Overflow (as an example) is a collaboration platform. Stack 
>understands the problem and is very, very good at solving it. It is why 
>they are successful.

Stack Overflow *is* successful ... at driving people away because any
complicated question that could lead to a lengthy discussion gets
closed by the moderators.

Hardly an example of "collaborative" behavior.

>Another example of a very good platform (that I can't stand) is Slack. 
>It has become so completely dominant in the growth space that even 
>Google is changing Hangouts because people were leaving in droves.

Slack is only slightly better.  IRC and other synchronous "rendezvous"
instant messaging methods are great for *simple* questions, but they
are *not* conducive to complex technical discussions.  

If you take time to craft a message [e.g., one lacking spelling or
grammatical errors], to gather information for someone trying to help,
or to try out someone's suggestion, very quickly you find yourself
inundated with "are you still there?" messages.

>So the question is, what is the problem we are trying to solve?

How to support BOTH quick and dirty questions:answers AND complex
technical discussions that require significant time from their
participants.

George

Re: browser interface to forums please?

David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> — 2017-04-05T21:44:55Z

On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 2:19 PM, George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> wrote:

>
> >So the question is, what is the problem we are trying to solve?
>
> How to support BOTH quick and dirty questions:answers AND complex
> technical discussions that require significant time from their
> participants.
>
>
The problem of self-interest - people want to be able to ask their
questions and get responses to those questions without being inundated with
lots of other people asking questions that they don't have any intent to
answer.

Our bug reporting mechanism works pretty well in this regard - which is why
people choose to use it instead of -general.  Most (all) respondents on
-bugs will remember to Reply-All which is a critical element of making it
work in a two-way flow.  I don't know how much effort is spent moderating
that list...

A mailing list configuration that will automatically add on the OP to any
email in a message thread lacking the OP would work-around those list
respondents who would use "Reply" instead of "Reply All".  Keeping track of
all respondents and adding them would be something to consider as well.

The above would address the problem of our inability to provide a limited
engagement channel for people seeking help without forcing them onto the
-bugs list.

I don't think that "quick and dirty" vs. "complex" is necessarily addressed
here though likely the vast majority of posts would be of the former
style.  Maybe so much so that directing that traffic to a separate
"-questions" list would let people discriminate their participation between
the different traffic profiles there and on -general.

A second problem is how to easily allow people to join (both read-only and
read-write) an ongoing conversation that isn't in their inbox.  Asking for
a "forum" seems to be expressing a problem of this nature.  I'm deferring
consideration of this problem-area for some other time.

David J.

Re: browser interface to forums please?

George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> — 2017-04-06T01:40:06Z

On Wed, 5 Apr 2017 14:44:55 -0700, "David G. Johnston"
<david.g.johnston@gmail.com> wrote:

>A mailing list configuration that will automatically add on the OP to any
>email in a message thread lacking the OP would work-around those list
>respondents who would use "Reply" instead of "Reply All".  Keeping track of
>all respondents and adding them would be something to consider as well.
>
>The above would address the problem of our inability to provide a limited
>engagement channel for people seeking help without forcing them onto the
>-bugs list.

That seems like a good idea.  But having no experience with mailing
list administration or available software, I don't know how easy it
would be to implement.


>A second problem is how to easily allow people to join (both read-only and
>read-write) an ongoing conversation that isn't in their inbox.  Asking for
>a "forum" seems to be expressing a problem of this nature.  I'm deferring
>consideration of this problem-area for some other time.

That's [partly] what digest mailings are for ... to alert people to
interesting discussions they aren't following.  Unfortunately, most
lists don't provide digests by default.

George

Re: browser interface to forums please?

Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> — 2017-04-12T01:15:13Z

On Tue, Apr  4, 2017 at 12:01:24PM +0200, vinny wrote:
> Now, I'm not saying the mailinglists should go, I'm saying there should be
> an easier way
> to access them. It should be possible to register on the site, post a
> message and read replies,
> without having to subscribe to the list and setup a way of dealing with the
> influx of messages
> that are, for the most post, simply not interesting to the average user.
> 
> I'd love to have an RSS feed that contains only new questions, so I can just
> watch the popup
> on my screen the way I do with the rest of the world, and not have to deal
> with replies to topics that I don't care about anyway.

You might want to look at PgLife, which gives you a read-only view of
what's currently happening in the Postgres community:

	http://pglife.momjian.us/
-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

+ As you are, so once was I.  As I am, so you will be. +
+                      Ancient Roman grave inscription +