Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Artur Malabarba]

Since coming into open beta, the Emacs.StackExchange site has been going
well.
Over the last couple of weeks, there have been approximately 16 new
questions per day.
At the same time, the gnu-emacs mailing lists form the strongest Emacs
community that I'm aware of.

I'd like to try and build some bridges between the these two communities.
One way of doing that would be to forward here (to help-gnu-emacs) a list
of new questions posted on Emacs.SE. On average, the quality of answers at
the site has been very nice, but things can always be improved. Not only
that, but I've also learned a lot just by reading some of the posts there,
so I'm sure it would also be of interest to the mailing list.

I certainly don't want to spam this list, so the idea would be to have a
daily email listing new questions.
A second option would be an email every 3 hours (8 emails a day), but I
think that would be too much.

*Is this something people would be happy with?*

Cheers to all,
Artur Malabarba
------------------------------

PS 1: For now, there's no way to turn email replies into actual answers
there. But if any interesting discussion lights up here anyone with an
account could turn it into an answer there.

PS 2: For those not familiar with the SE network, the site is heavily
focused on Q&A. There is a place for discussion (a sub-site called the
meta), but the main site itself is strongly focused on objective questions.
It also has some very good tools to prevent duplicate questions, and to
help maintain discoverability of old questions.

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Rasmus]

Hi,

Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> writes:

> I certainly don't want to spam this list, so the idea would be to have a
> daily email listing new questions.
> A second option would be an email every 3 hours (8 emails a day), but I
> think that would be too much.
>
> *Is this something people would be happy with?*

Once a day might be stretching it, no?  Every three hours certainly is
spam in my book.  People who care are probably already checking
stackexchange.

I'd encourage you to send a curated best-of mail once a week or every
fortnight.

If particularly technical questions are posted, like the one on
nadvice.el, to post it on the ML.

—Rasmus

-- 
Together we'll stand, divided we'll fall

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Fri, 7 Nov 2014 18:14:14 +0000 Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> wrote: 

AM> PS 1: For now, there's no way to turn email replies into actual answers
AM> there. But if any interesting discussion lights up here anyone with an
AM> account could turn it into an answer there.

We could get the discussions as RSS into Gwene and read them via NNTP,
but posting replies is going to be a problem. This is a general problem
with web forums, of course.

Ted

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[ablepharus]

Hello,

this would probably be the most work, but I would prefer an own
mailinglist that should be mentioned together with the other official
lists. This way the mailing list community might be reached, by
providing the questions and discussion in their favorite form and no one
can complain about being spamed.

I certainly would not feel spamed by an email every three hours, I
wouldn't feel spamed if every question would directly be anounced on the
list if the Subject has a clear pattern *cough* mail sorting *cough*. It
is a mailing list, there might be hundreds of mails a day, why would 18
more bother.

Cheers



Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> writes:

> Since coming into open beta, the Emacs.StackExchange site has been going
> well.
> Over the last couple of weeks, there have been approximately 16 new
> questions per day.
> At the same time, the gnu-emacs mailing lists form the strongest Emacs
> community that I'm aware of.
>
> I'd like to try and build some bridges between the these two communities.
> One way of doing that would be to forward here (to help-gnu-emacs) a list
> of new questions posted on Emacs.SE. On average, the quality of answers at
> the site has been very nice, but things can always be improved. Not only
> that, but I've also learned a lot just by reading some of the posts there,
> so I'm sure it would also be of interest to the mailing list.
>
> I certainly don't want to spam this list, so the idea would be to have a
> daily email listing new questions.
> A second option would be an email every 3 hours (8 emails a day), but I
> think that would be too much.
>
> *Is this something people would be happy with?*
>
> Cheers to all,
> Artur Malabarba
> ------------------------------
>
> PS 1: For now, there's no way to turn email replies into actual answers
> there. But if any interesting discussion lights up here anyone with an
> account could turn it into an answer there.
>
> PS 2: For those not familiar with the SE network, the site is heavily
> focused on Q&A. There is a place for discussion (a sub-site called the
> meta), but the main site itself is strongly focused on objective questions.
> It also has some very good tools to prevent duplicate questions, and to
> help maintain discoverability of old questions.

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Jonathan Groll]

On Fri, 7 Nov 2014 18:14:14 +0000, Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> wrote:
> I certainly don't want to spam this list, so the idea would be to have a
> daily email listing new questions.
> A second option would be an email every 3 hours (8 emails a day), but I
> think that would be too much.

I would prefer a once-a-week mail with new questions in it. Three
times per day would be too much like desperate spamming for me.

Stack Exchange is a useful site, but help-gnu-emacs is something
different to the moderated (and, admittedly commercial) site that SE
is and I personally would rather that it stays as it is.

Cheers,
Jonathan

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Artur Malabarba]

> Once a day might be stretching it, no? People who care are probably
already checking
> stackexchange.

Didn't feel like stretching to me. This list gets well more than one email
a day, so I thought that adding one more wouldn't be a bother.
But I accept your opinion. There were 2 voices in favor of 1/week and 1 for
the 1/day, so I won't be sending daily emails unless more people voice in
favor.

> I'd encourage you to send a curated best-of mail once a week or every
> fortnight.

The problem is that it would have to be done manually. The website offers a
daily email subscription (so that would have been trivial), but it doesn't
offer a weekly option (stupid, I know).
With the advent of stack exchange mode for Emacs, it wouldn't be too hard
to implement a bot that does all of that. But I really won't have the time
for that at least for another 6 months.

> If particularly technical questions are posted, like the one on
> nadvice.el, to post it on the ML.
>

We have technical questions like that practically every day. :-)
With 16 questions per day, you're bound to have a couple interesting ones.

Best

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Grant Rettke]

Please forward a single post at a time in close to real time.

We get 5-30 posts a day on the email lists so 15 more will not break
it or us as readers.

On Sat, Nov 8, 2014 at 5:54 PM, Artur Malabarba
<bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Once a day might be stretching it, no? People who care are probably
> already checking
>> stackexchange.
>
> Didn't feel like stretching to me. This list gets well more than one email
> a day, so I thought that adding one more wouldn't be a bother.
> But I accept your opinion. There were 2 voices in favor of 1/week and 1 for
> the 1/day, so I won't be sending daily emails unless more people voice in
> favor.
>
>> I'd encourage you to send a curated best-of mail once a week or every
>> fortnight.
>
> The problem is that it would have to be done manually. The website offers a
> daily email subscription (so that would have been trivial), but it doesn't
> offer a weekly option (stupid, I know).
> With the advent of stack exchange mode for Emacs, it wouldn't be too hard
> to implement a bot that does all of that. But I really won't have the time
> for that at least for another 6 months.
>
>> If particularly technical questions are posted, like the one on
>> nadvice.el, to post it on the ML.
>>
>
> We have technical questions like that practically every day. :-)
> With 16 questions per day, you're bound to have a couple interesting ones.
>
> Best



-- 
Grant Rettke
gcr@wisdomandwonder.com | http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/
“Wisdom begins in wonder.” --Socrates
((λ (x) (x x)) (λ (x) (x x)))
“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop
taking it seriously.” --Thompson

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Artur Malabarba]

> I would prefer a once-a-week mail with new questions in it.

(see my other reply on this)

> Three
> times per day would be too much like desperate spamming for me.

Agreed.

> Stack Exchange is a useful site, but help-gnu-emacs is something
> different to the moderated (and, admittedly commercial) site that SE
> is and I personally would rather that it stays as it is.

All true. I have no intention of changing this list. I'd like to link the
two communities, not overwhelm one with the other.
Every week there are several questions which I think would be of interest
here and/or the experts from here could offer further insight into.

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[John Mastro]

Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> wrote:
> Didn't feel like stretching to me. This list gets well more than one email
> a day, so I thought that adding one more wouldn't be a bother.
> But I accept your opinion. There were 2 voices in favor of 1/week and 1 for
> the 1/day, so I won't be sending daily emails unless more people voice in
> favor.

I'm in favor of one a day.

-- 
john

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Tom]

Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am <at> gmail.com> writes:
> so I won't be sending daily emails unless more people voice in
> favor.

I think 1 mail per day is completely OK. It's frequent enough
and it's not too much.

And I guess it will have a unique subject line, so if somebody
is not interested then it is easy to filter out.

So 1 mail per day is not spammy and it can help bridging the
two communities.

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Tom]

Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am <at> gmail.com> writes:

> 
> I'd like to try and build some bridges between the these two communities.
> One way of doing that would be to forward here (to help-gnu-emacs) a list
> of new questions posted on Emacs.SE. 

I think you shouldn't limit this to Emacs.SE questions, because quite
a few questions are posted elsewhere. See this filter which shows
all questions from Emacs.SE and all emacs tagged questions from other 
sites:

http://stackexchange.com/filters/19474/emacs-questions

Questions on other sites are also of interest, so they should not 
be ignored.

BTW, if somebody is interested in following the above filter
directly then you can subscribe to email updates on the above link
or you can follow it via RSS:

http://stackexchange.com/feeds/tagsets/19474/emacs-questions?sort=newest

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Matthias Dahl]

Hi Artur...

On 09/11/14 00:54, Artur Malabarba wrote:

> so I won't be sending daily emails unless more people voice in favor.

+1 for daily. I think that it is really not a bother at all. Thanks for
your effort, by the way.

Have a nice day,
Matthias

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 15:12:03 -0500 Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> wrote: 

TZ> On Fri, 7 Nov 2014 18:14:14 +0000 Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> wrote: 
AM> PS 1: For now, there's no way to turn email replies into actual answers
AM> there. But if any interesting discussion lights up here anyone with an
AM> account could turn it into an answer there.

TZ> We could get the discussions as RSS into Gwene and read them via NNTP,
TZ> but posting replies is going to be a problem. This is a general problem
TZ> with web forums, of course.

For those with NNTP powers, use:

nntp+gwene:gwene.com.stackexchange.feeds.tagsets.emacs-question.sort.n

from gwene.com.  You can't reply as I mentioned, you have to follow the
link to discuss.  Which IMO sucks.

Ted

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Artur Malabarba]

Ok, thanks to all who replied here. I've been overworked but I haven't
forgotten this.

As it turns out, I was wrong in thinking 1/day was the slowest option
available, the site does have weekly newsletters as well (I was just
looking in the wrong place).
Furthermore, this weekly newsletter is of much nicer quality than the
daily emails. Instead of just listing everything, it lists questions
which got a lot of attention (and are thus presumed to be interesting)
and lists those who didn't get any answers (and thus would benefit
from more attention).
It seems reasonable to use that as a starting point, and then we can
see whether we want more frequent updates or if nobody cares.

The only question is now how to send this newsletter here to the list.
I've set up a dummy account at the site, and I could just add the
help-gnu-emacs address as the target for the newsletter. A
confirmation e-mail will arrive first, to verify the address, but that
should be it.
I think that's a fine approach, but I'd rather be safe than sorry so
I'm asking here first.

Best,

2014-11-10 14:05 GMT+00:00 Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>:
> On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 15:12:03 -0500 Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> wrote:
>
> TZ> On Fri, 7 Nov 2014 18:14:14 +0000 Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> wrote:
> AM> PS 1: For now, there's no way to turn email replies into actual answers
> AM> there. But if any interesting discussion lights up here anyone with an
> AM> account could turn it into an answer there.
>
> TZ> We could get the discussions as RSS into Gwene and read them via NNTP,
> TZ> but posting replies is going to be a problem. This is a general problem
> TZ> with web forums, of course.
>
> For those with NNTP powers, use:
>
> nntp+gwene:gwene.com.stackexchange.feeds.tagsets.emacs-question.sort.n
>
> from gwene.com.  You can't reply as I mentioned, you have to follow the
> link to discuss.  Which IMO sucks.
>
> Ted

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Tom]

Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am <at> gmail.com> writes:
> 
> As it turns out, I was wrong in thinking 1/day was the slowest option
> available, the site does have weekly newsletters as well (I was just
> looking in the wrong place).

But you shouldn't limit the newsletter to only emacs.SE, because
there is emacs activity on other sites too which shouldn't be
excluded:

http://stackexchange.com/filters/19474/emacs-questions

So you should subsribe to a filter like this, instead of to
only one site's newsletter.

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Tom]

Tom <adatgyujto <at> gmail.com> writes:
> 
> http://stackexchange.com/filters/19474/emacs-questions
> 
> So you should subsribe to a filter like this, instead of to
> only one site's newsletter.
> 

Though I don't know if there is a way to subscribe to only
to the top voted questions of a filter.

RE: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Drew Adams]

> But you shouldn't limit the newsletter to only emacs.SE, because
> there is emacs activity on other sites too which shouldn't be
> excluded:
> 
> http://stackexchange.com/filters/19474/emacs-questions
> 
> So you should subsribe to a filter like this, instead of to
> only one site's newsletter.

+1

In particular, Stack Overflow.

And add filtering (separately) over tag `elisp'.  Good posts
are sometimes tagged with one and not the other.

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Artur Malabarba]

2014-12-02 21:20 GMT+00:00 Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>:
>> But you shouldn't limit the newsletter to only emacs.SE, because
>> there is emacs activity on other sites too which shouldn't be
>> excluded:
>>
>> http://stackexchange.com/filters/19474/emacs-questions
>>
>> So you should subsribe to a filter like this, instead of to
>> only one site's newsletter.
>
> +1
>
> In particular, Stack Overflow.
>
> And add filtering (separately) over tag `elisp'.  Good posts
> are sometimes tagged with one and not the other.
>
>

>> Though I don't know if there is a way to subscribe to only to the top voted questions of a filter.

Tom nailed the problem here. As far as I can tell, you can't. The
filter just sends you everything inside it, and it's at least once a
day.
Newsletters have better quality (only top/unanswered questions) and
are 1/week. But newsletters are for an entire site, they can't filter
by tag.

So if want questions from SO (and other sites), it needs to be
everything under the `emacs' (and `elisp') tag and be 1/day.

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Tom]

Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am <at> gmail.com> writes:
> 
> Tom nailed the problem here. As far as I can tell, you can't. The
> filter just sends you everything inside it, and it's at least once a
> day.

Other also asked about it and here there is an accepted answer
for this:

http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/62364/rss-feed-of-hot-questions-during-the-week-for-specific-tag

So a script could walk through all the interesting sites (programming,
computer related) collect the hot emacs questions for the week
from them and assemble it in a single post.

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Artur Malabarba]

> Other also asked about it and here there is an accepted answer
> for this:
>
> http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/62364/rss-feed-of-hot-questions-during-the-week-for-specific-tag
>
> So a script could walk through all the interesting sites (programming,
> computer related) collect the hot emacs questions for the week
> from them and assemble it in a single post.
>

Yes, a script to aggregate all of this would be ideal. Now that we
have sx.el[1] it could even be written in Emacs Lisp.
It's definitely something I'm planning on doing sometime next year, I
just can't right now.

[1]: https://github.com/vermiculus/sx.el

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Grant Rettke]

Please post the link here to the Emacs SE RSS feed so that people can
try before they buy in regards to what they want from the work done
here instead of just guessing.

On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 5:45 AM, Artur Malabarba
<bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Other also asked about it and here there is an accepted answer
>> for this:
>>
>> http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/62364/rss-feed-of-hot-questions-during-the-week-for-specific-tag
>>
>> So a script could walk through all the interesting sites (programming,
>> computer related) collect the hot emacs questions for the week
>> from them and assemble it in a single post.
>>
>
> Yes, a script to aggregate all of this would be ideal. Now that we
> have sx.el[1] it could even be written in Emacs Lisp.
> It's definitely something I'm planning on doing sometime next year, I
> just can't right now.
>
> [1]: https://github.com/vermiculus/sx.el
>



-- 
Grant Rettke
gcr@wisdomandwonder.com | http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/
“Wisdom begins in wonder.” --Socrates
((λ (x) (x x)) (λ (x) (x x)))
“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop
taking it seriously.” --Thompson

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Artur Malabarba]

2014-12-03 14:26 GMT+00:00 Grant Rettke <gcr@wisdomandwonder.com>:
> Please post the link here to the Emacs SE RSS feed so that people can
> try before they buy in regards to what they want from the work done
> here instead of just guessing.
>

This is the plain list of questions. http://emacs.stackexchange.com/feeds

You can see what the weekly newsletter would look like by going here:
http://stackexchange.com/newsletters
Searching for "Emacs" and clicking "Preview" (or subscribe).

Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Sharon Kimble]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2179 bytes --]

Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> writes:

> 2014-12-03 14:26 GMT+00:00 Grant Rettke <gcr@wisdomandwonder.com>:
>> Please post the link here to the Emacs SE RSS feed so that people can
>> try before they buy in regards to what they want from the work done
>> here instead of just guessing.
>>
>
> This is the plain list of
> questions. http://emacs.stackexchange.com/feeds

Every time I've tried this in gnus it has failed, and this is the
backtrace -

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Invalid date: 01-Jan-2055 00:00:00.00 GMT")
  signal(error ("Invalid date: 01-Jan-2055 00:00:00.00 GMT"))
  byte-code("\b\204\b	\203\0\304\n@\nA\"\210\202\0\305\306\v\"\210\304\207" [debug-on-quit debug-on-error err url signal message "nnrss: Failed to fetch %s"] 3)
  nnrss-fetch("http://emacs.stackexchange.com/feeds")
  nnrss-check-group("Recent Questions - Emacs Stack Exchange" "")
  nnrss-request-group("Recent Questions - Emacs Stack Exchange" "" nil ("nnrss:Recent Questions - Emacs Stack Exchange" 6 nil nil (nnrss "")))
  gnus-activate-group("nnrss:Recent Questions - Emacs Stack Exchange")
  gnus-select-newsgroup("nnrss:Recent Questions - Emacs Stack Exchange" nil nil)
  gnus-summary-read-group-1("nnrss:Recent Questions - Emacs Stack Exchange" nil t nil nil nil)
  gnus-summary-read-group("nnrss:Recent Questions - Emacs Stack Exchange" nil t nil nil nil nil)
  gnus-group-read-group(nil t)
  gnus-group-select-group(nil)
  #<subr call-interactively>(gnus-group-select-group nil nil)
  ad-Advice-call-interactively(#<subr call-interactively> gnus-group-select-group nil nil)
  apply(ad-Advice-call-interactively #<subr call-interactively> (gnus-group-select-group nil nil))
  call-interactively(gnus-group-select-group nil nil)
  command-execute(gnus-group-select-group)
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

This has survived even a reboot.

Sharon. 
-- 
A taste of linux = http://www.sharons.org.uk
my git repo = https://bitbucket.org/boudiccas/dots
TGmeds = http://www.tgmeds.org.uk
Debian testing, fluxbox 1.3.5, emacs 24.4.1.0

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Re: Forwarding Emacs.SE questions to help-gnu-emacs

[Artur Malabarba]

That's odd. it works on newsticker with (setq newsticker-url-list
'(("SX" "http://emacs.stackexchange.com/feeds" nil nil nil)))

2014-12-03 19:53 GMT+00:00 Sharon Kimble <boudiccas@skimble.plus.com>:
> Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> 2014-12-03 14:26 GMT+00:00 Grant Rettke <gcr@wisdomandwonder.com>:
>>> Please post the link here to the Emacs SE RSS feed so that people can
>>> try before they buy in regards to what they want from the work done
>>> here instead of just guessing.
>>>
>>
>> This is the plain list of
>> questions. http://emacs.stackexchange.com/feeds
>
> Every time I've tried this in gnus it has failed, and this is the
> backtrace -
>
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Invalid date: 01-Jan-2055 00:00:00.00 GMT")
>   signal(error ("Invalid date: 01-Jan-2055 00:00:00.00 GMT"))
>   byte-code(" \204      \203 \304\n@\nA\"\210\202 \305\306 \"\210\304\207" [debug-on-quit debug-on-error err url signal message "nnrss: Failed to fetch %s"] 3)
>   nnrss-fetch("http://emacs.stackexchange.com/feeds")
>   nnrss-check-group("Recent Questions - Emacs Stack Exchange" "")
>   nnrss-request-group("Recent Questions - Emacs Stack Exchange" "" nil ("nnrss:Recent Questions - Emacs Stack Exchange" 6 nil nil (nnrss "")))
>   gnus-activate-group("nnrss:Recent Questions - Emacs Stack Exchange")
>   gnus-select-newsgroup("nnrss:Recent Questions - Emacs Stack Exchange" nil nil)
>   gnus-summary-read-group-1("nnrss:Recent Questions - Emacs Stack Exchange" nil t nil nil nil)
>   gnus-summary-read-group("nnrss:Recent Questions - Emacs Stack Exchange" nil t nil nil nil nil)
>   gnus-group-read-group(nil t)
>   gnus-group-select-group(nil)
>   #<subr call-interactively>(gnus-group-select-group nil nil)
>   ad-Advice-call-interactively(#<subr call-interactively> gnus-group-select-group nil nil)
>   apply(ad-Advice-call-interactively #<subr call-interactively> (gnus-group-select-group nil nil))
>   call-interactively(gnus-group-select-group nil nil)
>   command-execute(gnus-group-select-group)
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>
> This has survived even a reboot.
>
> Sharon.
> --
> A taste of linux = http://www.sharons.org.uk
> my git repo = https://bitbucket.org/boudiccas/dots
> TGmeds = http://www.tgmeds.org.uk
> Debian testing, fluxbox 1.3.5, emacs 24.4.1.0