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#community-development
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2022-06-27
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plexus09:06:37

How do folks feel about setting up some guidelines for #beginners? It seems that some of the questions are far from beginner questions, and some of the answers are far from suitable for beginners. For example someone asked about intricacies of syntax quote and gensym (really should've been asked in #clojure?), or someone asked a simple question about update-in and was told to look at specter. Someone also recently cross posted from #news-and-articles... I feel like this all diminishes the usefulness of the channel, which should be a space for actual beginners where they don't need to feel intimidated.

pez10:06:23

I'm all for it. I often feel like a beginner and ask what I think is a beginner question there, but really probably should most often ask in #clojure instead. I guess the name trips me up a bit, if it would be named #clojure-beginners, it would guide me better, I think. But if we think a name change is too drastic, some guidelines could do. And we can remind each other about where we think a particular question should go, and what we consider is proper advice to a beginner. The main function of that channel should be to help Clojure beginners, so everything that doesn't do that should probably go somewhere else.

Aron10:06:28

Same here, it would be good for me to know where to ask a particular question.

slipset12:06:40

@U0ETXRFEW think of it as a place for questions asked by a person starting on their Clojure journey. Even though you might feel like a beginner, that is obviously not you 🙂

eggsyntax13:06:38

> I often feel like a beginner and ask what I think is a beginner question there, but really probably should most often ask in #clojure instead. That was true for me for a long time too — it felt like there was a sense of hubris to saying “I’m not a beginner anymore”…

pez15:06:02

I think that for me it is that I explore Clojure piece, by small piece. When I am using some part of the language for the first time it is like being dropped into uncharted territory in some retro top-down game.

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seancorfield19:06:51

The main difference that is intended, is for responses to questions in #beginners being much more gentle and at length, whereas asking in #clojure is likely to get you a shorter and sometimes sharper answer. So it's more about the type of answer (and treatment) you want, than about the question...

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quoll10:06:20

My question is: where should a beginner go to ask a question? If I were new to Clojure and went into that room, I would feel like my questions were too naïve to ask in there, because the people in that channel are clearly at a significantly better level than someone trying to learn the language

seancorfield16:06:07

We can certainly try to encourage some of those folks to "graduate" to #clojure but I don't feel comfortable judging which is a beginner Q and which isn't (based on the type of answer/treatment they might get or want).

quoll17:06:55

I get that. But I would like to see a space that is welcoming to people who are new. I know a couple of people who have been too intimidated to ask questions in that channel for the reasons outlined, and I’d like to provide a supportive space for people who are very new

eggsyntax19:06:00

We could take a tip from David Bowie and make an #absolute-beginners channel 😉 More seriously, we could try to make the topic in #beginners a bit friendlier, something like “Getting started with Clojure/ClojureScript? Welcome! ALL questions are welcome here and will usually get friendly, helpful answers. Also try: https://ask.clojure.org. Check out resources at https://gist.github.com/yogthos/be323be0361c589570a6da4ccc85f58f.” If that seems too long, we could make a shortlink for Dmitri’s list of resources and just have “Getting started with Clojure/ClojureScript? Welcome! ALL questions are welcome here and will usually get friendly, helpful answers. Also try https://ask.clojure.org and https://some.short/link.”

pez06:06:21

I think @U077BEWNQ is proposing the a good measure we could take with the #beginners channel. There will always be different levels of beginning.

pez07:06:38

Threading replies would help as well, I think. The discussion can be hard to follow when questions and answers are mixed at the channel level like they often are today. An answer or followup-question without context looks more ”advanced”. If a visit to the channel showed the original question, it would be easier to see where one can help, and also less of a ”wall of incomprehensible comments”. We are somewhat successful with keeping things threaded in the #calva channel. Where we also use channel bookmarks to help find resources.

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eggsyntax13:06:57

> The discussion can be hard to follow when questions and answers are mixed at the channel level like they often are today. That’s a really good & valid point. My only worry is that it may feel unfriendly to beginners if we enforce it as we do in eg #announcements (delete the unthreaded response & PM the author asking them to post it in-thread instead). That may be especially true since beginners are disproportionately likely to be unfamiliar with Slack conventions. Do you enforce it in #calva, or have you just tried to encourage it as a social norm?

pez13:06:36

We encourage it as friendly as we know how to. It's mentioned in the channel topic with the 🧵 emoji. We regulars always answer threaded. And when someone posts several things that we think should be threaded, we choose one for our answers. Then we place 🧵 emojis on the other posts.

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seancorfield16:06:22

We have been requesting answers go in threads for some time in #beginners and most respondents do use threads. There are a couple who persistently don't.

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