The -devel list is dominated by patches just because that's how our workflow works; but if you have a technically focused question or one that's about the internals or the source code then you should feel free to ask it there (though of course I can't promise anybody will answer it...) The user list is lower traffic and tends to be more "users helping other users with straightforward queries"; not all the developers read it.
The documentation is indeed not great, and documentation of the internals is worse. I think this is a mix of people often not having the time or priority to write documentation, being on the inside and not seeing the gaps in the docs that are obvious from outside, and sometimes the docs not having a structure that gives a simple place to add the needed new information. Plus as a low-level tool we assume to some extent that most users will be using a higher-level management app like libvirt which has hopefully better UX and docs. I don't have any bright ideas here, so if anybody does I'd be interested in them. Bug reports of the form "functionality X is undocumented" would be useful too I think.
> The -devel list is dominated by patches just because that's how our workflow works
I guess the community likes it this way, but it's my least favorite part of working with upstream QEMU. I think partitioning patches and discussion into separate lists would be a (IMO) small impact but would significantly facilitate communication.
The documentation is indeed not great, and documentation of the internals is worse. I think this is a mix of people often not having the time or priority to write documentation, being on the inside and not seeing the gaps in the docs that are obvious from outside, and sometimes the docs not having a structure that gives a simple place to add the needed new information. Plus as a low-level tool we assume to some extent that most users will be using a higher-level management app like libvirt which has hopefully better UX and docs. I don't have any bright ideas here, so if anybody does I'd be interested in them. Bug reports of the form "functionality X is undocumented" would be useful too I think.