Poor tool detail on lucene.apache.org/solr/ site

[Tomthumb99]

Folks,

The detail on the  lucene.apache.org/solr/ is very brief and poor.  It seems you are just pushing folks to buy the newest SOLR book.  very sad, who new is going to use this tool if the documentation detail is lousy.   Most will just go buy a well document non-open sorce tool that is well supported.

The introduction pages are just a half page is detail, a Readers Digest book has more information. Once again, open sorce folks have their tin cup out trying to collect funds by selling books and not educate new comers.  Imagin the use population of you tool if it was easy to use and no secret-secret on how to use and set.  Everybody could use their own private data mine and we crawl tools,  it would marginalize the Google world/impact.

Have a nice day.

TH

[Adam Walz]

I’m not a committer but I wholly disagree with this sentiment. The amount of information in the solr reference guide is vast and it is the first place I go to find out how some component works. I rarely have to go to the code when there is some piece not documented in enough detail in the reference guide.

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 10:51 PM Tom Hoffelder <[hidden email]> wrote:

Folks,

The detail on the  lucene.apache.org/solr/ is very brief and poor.  It seems you are just pushing folks to buy the newest SOLR book.  very sad, who new is going to use this tool if the documentation detail is lousy.   Most will just go buy a well document non-open sorce tool that is well supported.

The introduction pages are just a half page is detail, a Readers Digest book has more information. Once again, open sorce folks have their tin cup out trying to collect funds by selling books and not educate new comers.  Imagin the use population of you tool if it was easy to use and no secret-secret on how to use and set.  Everybody could use their own private data mine and we crawl tools,  it would marginalize the Google world/impact.

Have a nice day.

TH

--

[Gora Mohanty-3]

Dear Tom,

Speaking as a Solr user who has not even been very active on this list for a while,though we continue to use Solr, I am a little surprised to hear the sentiment in your message. In my experience, anything that I needed to know about Solr, from getting started with the basics to much more complicated requirements were  answered by the online documentation, Google searches, and queries on this mailing list. Have yet to buy a Solr book, and have not seen anyone pushing people in this mailing list to buy a book. I think that books serve a different purpose, and are often useful, so not sure why they would not be referenced in the available resources.

Further, among the several open-source mailing lists that I subscribe to , this list  has been among the friendliest, and most welcoming to people.There are several regulars, including many Solr / Lucene committers, that take the time to help people.

Maybe your criticism would be more constructive, and help  improve the documentation if you would point out specifics of where it falls short. What did you try, and what issues did you have that were not addressed by the documentation? Did you try following up on this mailing list?

Regards,

Gora

[Chris Hostetter-3]

: The detail on the lucene.apache.org/solr/ is very brief and poor.  It
: seems you are just pushing folks to buy the newest SOLR book.  very sad,
: who new is going to use this tool if the documentation detail is lousy.  
: Most will just go buy a well document non-open sorce tool that is well
: supported.

So.... there is a "Books" section on lucene.apache.org/solr/ -- but it's
basically the last thing on the page, after the sections on "Learn more
about Solr" (which inlcudes links to the "Resources" page where all the
free documentation are -- also promomently featured in the main nav, in
red, at the top of the page) and and aftet the "Getting Started" section
which includes a direct link to "Read the Tutorial" and another "Level Up"
call linking again to the detailed "More Resources" (which is all free
documentation)

So from my perspective it's confusing that your perspetive of the page is
that the "focus" is on selling books?

At the same time: your perspective as a new user and your "first
impression" of the website is fascinating to me -- and I geniuniely
encourage you to elaborate more on how you think the main web page should
be structured to better draw attention to the important content for new
users.

i say with some intentional irony: as a person railing against the solr
website for being too brief, your email was very brief on details about
what exactly you suggest we change.  This is an open source project, even
if you aren't a java developer and/or have a detailed understanding of the
code, your advice/contributions to the 'new user' experience can be a
valuable way to contribute.  If you want to see changes made, be specific
about what changes you suggest:
On topic:
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxL3trl6-fI
        https://people.apache.org/~hossman/activate2018/



-Hoss
http://www.lucidworks.com/

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