Well, its becoming more and more clear that the model does not work. The user forum drives people (anyone) slowly insane. The last few days have been just awful, people getting angry in every other thread.

So, perhaps it is just better if the Hibernate team stops reading the user forum, and we let you guys help each other out from now on. You will still have the option of commercial support, which does not have the same downside, we've noticed how people value more what they have payed for.

I don't want things to get gradually worse and worse, until the project itself starts to suffer.

What do you guys think?

I fully agree with Gavin here, we have to find a solution for this problem. Giving support on the forum has been hell in the last couple of weeks:

About 150 postings per day, with a wide range of difficulty. Some posters can't even read the red box, while others have problems that need > 15 minutes for testing and searching.

I guess that I have spent about 3 hours every day (including weekends) with answering forum questions in the last two weeks. We can't continue with this, it drives you insane. I think everyone on the team who has done forum support for a couple of months will agree. Some of us are due for a break.

Unfortunately, there is no middle ground, we either have to stop doing it or continue like we do now. I know that most of you think "well, just answer only some of the questions". We tried this, it doesn't work. As long as we are around, people ask for our support. As long as we are around, others don't feel the need to answer much questions. As long as we are around, we are too fast and no interesting questions are left for others. This is a difficult approach and we never got the hang of it, so let's not try it again.

It is really up for a final answer. I have to say that I'm more confident now that the community can handle most questions without our help. The book is now available and we also have some things on TODO to improve the current documentation (especially translations). I'd rather spent my time with this than answering questions every day.

No, the trouble with "only answer some" is that you still have to read them all. And then naturally the ones that pop out at you are the rudest or most derogatory ones. And then you of course find yourself answering those. So the end result is that you end up mainly arguing with rude people, and ignoring polite posts, which is exactly the opposite of what you intend.

I'm sure this has been discussed before, but what about using something like php.net's documentation system, that allows people to post their own comments that are integrated into the reference documentation. The details of something like this, such as omitting the extra content from the builds, would have to be discussed further.

Another improvement that may help is enhancing the search functionality in the forums. I have a hard time finding anything useful in the forums.

It may also be worth mentioning that there is an IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, #hibernate. Although to be honest, we're pretty terse when the answer to questions can be easily found in the reference docs.

Hope this helps.

This is actually on the TODO list, it just needs time to get it done properly. Most of the functionality is in place. What problems do you have with the forum search? I use it myself and don't miss features.

Perhaps I'm using it incorrectly. Tonight I wanted to get some peripheral information on custom value types, so I searched on "custom value types" and specified that I wanted the search to encompass all terms. I got results with the terms, but not the consecutive terms. Is there something I should be doing differently?

Hm, it doesn't realize the quotes, interesting. I'll have a look into this.

Thanks.

I agree it's tough on you. And you have other things to do as well.

But there are bound to be a few rude posts when the user community of Hibernate is so large. Maybe you should try and consciously ignore them. And do take weekends off. No one would grudge that.

Using Hibernate is not a piece of cake. There are so many features and nuances that a few books can be written about them. And as yet there's just one, not even available in print outside the US.

It'd be great if you guys continue for some more time to answer questions. There are a large number of newbies (like me) who would benefit from your insight.

There's the book and commercial support. I say that's enough. You guys should at least take a break.

From my forum times, I try to stick to two rules:

- Don't read it if you don't feel like it. If I am stressed, or busy or ready to kill people at random, I just don't read the forum. People can live with longer response time, and there are a lot of people who answer questions here if they are just given the chance to. I use the "mark all forums read" button to lower the morale pressure :)

- Be determined in ignoring people. If I meet a post where I feel the need to post a brush-off response, I make a determined decission not to answer. A rude response won't make the poster happy and me neither.

So IMHO as long as you feel that the forum has become a burden for you, just ignore it. Concentrate on hacking Hibernate and making the EJB3 spec crush all opposition :)

I'll be honest, I've had a heck of time finding information in the forums. The FAQs, the reference guide, and MEAP have been extremely helpful, so I mostly lean on those to get up to speed. Like the one guys mentioned about quotes...I haven't been able to get that to work. Also sorting by relevence would be extremely useful. That alone could save so much of your time.

Due to the relative newness of Hibernate, I think a lot of us our in the boat of trying to learn it, but carry baggage from other technologies which drives our assumptions in different ways and seems to cause some friction in the forums. Also, the stress of deadlines drives a need for some quick answers.

I don't think you should leave the forum, but I also think you shouldn't be on here 3 hours a day! Some recommendations might be breaking the forum into more topics. Having a nebulus "Hibernate Beginners" is daunting. Some categorization would be very helpful (e.g., mapping, configuration, transactions, etc.). And maybe have an advanced questions area, for those difficult questions where you guys could troll around in.

As I learn more, I'll be sure to stick around and try to help out in the community. Thank you very much for a wonderful product and your support.

I think you guys are doing a terrific job in answering as much as you do!!! And I must say I'm amazed how much effort you put into it.
Thanks ever so much!!

The strain that you have experienced the last weeks falls heavily upon the community. So I want to encourage all posters to behave. There's no gain in getting nasty, picky, irritated etc etc. If you get answers, you do. If not, there's probably a reason. So all posters; behave yourself!!!

I agree with the view that sometimes you get page after page of not so relevant topics when searching for a specific problems. Maybe som kind of relevance filter would be appropriate. It's just too much getting 28 pages of answers when searching for "No AND persister" for example. So if it is possible to implement some kind of filter.... at least I would be extremely grateful.

And if Hibernate team feels that they must answer all posts, my advice is: don't!! Maybe there is a way of marking the posts where you actually give useful information.

Sincerely,

/C

It's clear to me, having being using Hibernate for about a year now, that a large part of its success in getting traction in the Java community has been the forum support provided by both Gavin and Christian. Of course this success now means many more posts are being made to more forums.

Yes, HIA's going to help, as would some improvements to searching on the Hibernate sites, if that was possible.

Still, Hibernate can never be a completely opaque black box, and it's useful to be able to get information on the original intention of how it's meant to be used and what goes on under the covers from the original authors.

Maybe if there was a way for team members to escalate individual posts to you guys or something...

I am administrator of a brazilian forum about Java and I really know that there are a lot of questions that could be solved with a little search in google or forum. So, you, hibernate team, IHMO, must to be concerned on development. The community helps itself. Hibernate is a very popular project and so much people could response the questions. Therefor, I give to you two suggestions, 1) spend some time to get the most popular questions and put them on faq. Many people simply dont read the documentation and faq is more fast and 2) more and more marketing about forum and faq. ;-)

valeuz...