Subject: Re: When and how to to contact the Git developers (gist)

From: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2015 14:10:02 -0700

Hi,

Thomas Ferris Nicolaisen wrote:

>              Perhaps someone here would prefer to use my gist when
> redirecting people with "user questions" away from this list, or
> inspire them to write better bug reports.

This won't come as a surprise given what I said at Git Merge: I'd
rather we don't redirect people with user questions away from this
list.  The current volume has been pleasant and manageable.

I especially disagree with

	Generally speaking, Git has very few bugs, and if you're not
	sure what you are doing, it's probably a user-issue, and not
	an issue for the Git developers.

User issues are an issue for git developers.  The hardest part of
making git work well is getting it to match how humans work, not
getting it to be technically correct or theoretically bug free.

So if I were writing it, I'd drop everything up to "If you believe
you've found a bug in Git for Windows".

Another alternate forum to point people to is #git on freenode.  It is
reachable from https://webchat.freenode.net, so a person seeking quick
help doesn't even have to set up an IRC client.

It might be nice to add a note to the "If you can find no existing
discussions" paragraph: if there's been a previous discussion, it's
fine to raise the subject again.  A good practice is to link to and
summarize the previous discussion so people can learn from what has
happened before.

On the other hand inspiring people about how to tell stories better or
write bug reports in a more useful way is always welcome.

Thanks,
Jonathan