:not-kotlin: is excessive IMHO. Curious if the com...

# android

[Sudhir Singh Khanger]

😶 is excessive IMHO. Curious if the community feels strongly in favour of not allowing #android discussion which isn't related to the #kotlin language?

[Kirill Grouchnikov]

See the channel description. There are enough places for Android question, and we don't need those to take over this channel

[Sudhir Singh Khanger]

I don't know if you see that at least 70% of posts, if not 90%, are marked as 😶 probably because of the narrow criteria of coming up with Android-specific Kotlin questions. But I will see myself out.

[Kirill Grouchnikov]

Yes, because they do not follow the very specific restriction of this channel

[Kirill Grouchnikov]

And it's not that you have to ask Android specific Kotlin questions here. It is that if you have an Android specific Kotlin question, this is the right channel for it.

[Sudhir Singh Khanger]

I don't see how and when Kotlin may behave erratically within Android. If it is a Kotlin problem then it likely makes sense to isolate the language issue from the framework and ask Kotlin related questions in one of the specific channels.

Considering how deeply Android has become invested in Kotlin with the language of choice, coroutine baked inside and out, and now the UI framework, I feel like 😶 is highly unwelcoming and I will miss some of the smart folks here who engaged in a wider discussion on Android. But I totally get that JetBrains wants it to be only Kotlin questions that occur out of Android. I get the purpose of the channel and it's not for me.

Thanks for clarifying.

[Dominaezzz]

Scrolling back, I can't see any questions that really fit this channel. A lot don't even have to do with Kotlin, sometimes not even Android itself, however some of them could go in #compose, #coroutines or #getting-started.
I challenge you to find (or come up with) a well fitting question on this channel from the last few months.

[CLOVIS]

I don't really understand what the problem is with allowing wider Android discussions in that channel. It's not like it's going to pollute the Slack, it's only that specific channel

[Florian]

@Kirill Grouchnikov "There are enough places for Android question"
Where is that? Because I've never found a place where you can get quality help like here. Not even close.

[eygraber]

I think that just because you can get decent help with Android related questions here, doesn't mean that it should be the place for it.

I think an Android slack community managed by Google is the best solution, but it seems like Googlers prefer that we use SO + issuetracker

[Kirill Grouchnikov]

You come to a place that says "We talk only about X here", and you say to yourself, hey, there sure seems to be a lot of people in here that know about Y. And you say "Why are we only talking only about X in here. I sure want to talk about Y". Now, it is true that there's a lot of people in here that can talk about Y instead of X. But it doesn't mean that they are here to talk about Y. They are here to talk about X. Forcing the place to be about Y instead may or may not drive away the very people who you think will gladly talk about Y. Because they may or may not be here to talk about Y.

[Sudhir Singh Khanger]

I understood your logic of reminding people of the channel description. But OMG so much presumption about people forcing other people to speak on things they have not come to speak about. Even speaking on behalf of the whole community on what they want. It went a little far.

[louiscad]

I've been an Android Developer for nearly 7 years, I'm a member of the #android channel, but I don't want to get involved in non Kotlin related Q&A and topics there, I'm here to talk about Kotlin, and for me, the #android channel is right for Kotlin + AndroidX and Kotlin + Android topics, that are not language agnostic.

So, I'm definitely here to talk about X, despite knowing about Y.

[louiscad]

I obviously don't represent all experienced Android developers here, but I know that a non negligible number of them have a similar take, and I'm personally fed up with all the noise. I wish Slack would give tools to put friction on out-of-topic messages.

[Florian]

well I was just wondering what good places for Android questions you were referring to because maybe I'm missing any

[louiscad]

Google search can answer many, many questions, and beyond that, StackOverflow and the Android issue tracker are a good complement.

[Florian]

not comparable unfortunately

[Kirill Grouchnikov]

Comparable to what? To what #android may be if it had focused, uncluttered, deep discussions about general Android development? That's the holy grail of developer forums, but not attainable in the real world without massive, subjective-based moderation.

[Florian]

No, to what #android is right now

[eygraber]

I've been working with Android for 11+ years, and I made it just fine without #android. Google + SO + issuetracker is definitely enough to be successful.

I think an Android slack community would be excellent, but I don't think hijacking #android on the Kotlin slack community is the way to do that

[Sudhir Singh Khanger]

This channel hasn't been hijacked. Nobody is being forced to discuss anything. Nobody is holding a gun over anybody's head. People are discussing what they would like to discuss. If as you say a handful of people are driving this channel and the wider mystical community doesn't want that discussion then why is this channel alive and thriving. If the wider community doesn't want to discuss something then they simply wouldn't.

[CLOVIS]

At this point there's also the option of splitting it into #android (where all things Android are ok) and #android-kotlin (for just Kotlin-related things).
That would solve the spam problems for everyone that wants the latter, because people who don't read the rules of the channel will find #android first

[Dominaezzz]

Don't think that'll solve the spam tbh. No matter how descriptive the channel name or channel description, you'll still have people posting off-topic stuff, mostly because they don't care to read or even care, just trying their luck.
I told someone their question was offtopic, but they just re-posted it two days later 🤷🏼 .
The people who post offtopic, typically just don't care.

[CLOVIS]

Yeah but if the channel's subject is really wide, it's rarer that people are accidentally off-topic

[Dominaezzz]

The current description works as good as it can for people who are accidentally off-topic. The problem is people who just don't care.

[Joost Klitsie]

@Sudhir Singh Khanger this channel has been hijacked by people that are too lazy to use google. Somehow I could find everything Android related for the past 10 years online, yet people join the Kotlin K slack to ask questions about "how do I do this basic view thingy?", which is unrelated to kotlin as well as it pains to see people too lazy to google things. It goes from a range of people asking questions about popular libraries (written in Java) to people that lack the creativity to write code themselves "Here is a screenshot. Please tell me how to code this". In the title there are links to the appropriate android channels. The 😶 is not excessive at all, there is just that much abuse of this channel. I think 95% of the 😶 labels are correctly placed. If I scroll the past days, it is "I have issues with retrofit", "I have issues with Dagger", "How to use Navigation library", "I want to disable 3rd party keyboard". All questions unrelated to Kotlin, which makes it hard to find the actual questions related to Kotlin. I think most people are still in this channel because they are too lazy to leave, not because it adds something to their skillset.