What is the current distinction between https://users.scala-lang.org/ and https://contributors.scala-lang.org/?
From looking at the most recent posts, it seems like the users’ forum is for QA and the contributors’ forum is where community related things happen.
Any thoughts?
I often find there’s an overlap. So I will have a question about how to do something, but that is effected by how Scala is going to evolve going forward, what is gong to be deprecated, what is going to be developed and supported. A modern general purpose computing language is so much more than a compiler, or a compiler and a standard library. Its library eco system and its best practices, or its common practices and how it is taught are all part of the language.
So personally I don’t find the distinction between Users and Contributors always helpful. Contributors threads seem to get significantly more responses and I just find myself checking the contributors discourse, more often than I check the User’s. I wonder if one forum might not be better but with a clearly marked beginners section, to allow for questions in a non threatening environment.
It’s never possible to make these distinctions completely firm…
A contributors post should always be made in the spirit of participating in helping Scala improve, change, move forward. Whereas it’s fine for a users post to be a request for help, pure and simple.
It’s really not that common for someone to post in the “wrong” forum, so I feel that the distinction has been working well enough in practice.
Let’s say I create a video about Scala. I think it is pretty cool, and I want to share it and maybe even get some feedback on it.
Would I post that in the contributors’ forum, the users’ forum, or both forums?
To be honest, I have been on the sidelines for the last couple of years. Now that Scala 3 is being released I am looking to contribute and participate more.
It is more likely some contribution, so here is a good place for it.
It seems as request for help, so may be it is wrong place here
I would put that on users, if the intended audience of the video is normal Scala users.
Library announcements go on users; videos is the same, IMO. (Unless it’s a video about scalac internals or some such.)
why are they on contributors ?
I think we’ve gotten in the habit of putting Scala 3 stuff on contributors because Scala 3 has been experimental, early-adopter stuff for so long. Note that Julien’s post is from September 2020 and both Scala 3 and the courses were still under heavy development at the time, so it really was a call for participation from contributors.
Now that Scala 3 is nearing final release, I think it’s time (or very nearly time) to shift gears and start putting announcements like these on the users forum.
We (the Scala Center) have kind of developed the habit of posting our work reports here, on contributors. Our workflow is to start a project by creating a thread here with a roadmap, and then to follow up with the relevant updates. We are still not sure whether the best place to do it is here, or on users.scala-lang.org, or somewhere else. When a project is completed, and there is a release or something that has been made available to the Scala users, I agree that we should communicate on users.scala-lang.org. (I will post an update soon about the online courses.)
Maybe other people were also hoping that “Contributors vs Users” is the name of a new reality show.