mailing-list reorganisation, round 3 on this list

Fri Jan 5 20:48:56 UTC 2007

Hi again!

Thorsten Leemhuis schrieb:
> second round in the process to solve the "we have to many mailinglists"
> problem (first round starts at
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2006-December/msg00104.html
> ; diff against first proposal:
> http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/ThorstenLeemhuis/MailingListReorganization?action=diff&rev2=2&rev1=1
> ).

Okay, here we go with round 3:

http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/ThorstenLeemhuis/MailingListReorganization

Diff to previous:
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/ThorstenLeemhuis/MailingListReorganization?action=diff&rev2=5&rev1=2

Sorry, the whole think got a bit longer. I'll send this out to some
lists for public discussions early next week. I'll try to incorporate
feedback afterwards. The I should be able to trim the list down again a bit.

= Mailing list reorganization =

A lot of people yelled "there are to many mailing lists; that is
contra-productive and leads to a lot of confusion" (this is the short
explanation without all the boring details). Thus the idea came up to
revisit the Fedora mailing lists that got created after Fedora was born
(that's years ago now!) and do some adjustments -- shut some down
mainly. That's needed in parts for the Core and Extras merge in any case.

The Fedora Board asked me, ThorstenLeemhuis (thl), to drive this task.
So here we go, comments appreciated.

----

== Shut down ==

Meaning: Send a EOL message with some informations to the list and
disallow further postings. Achieves remain accessible.

=== fedora-packaging-list ===

Packaging is important to all package maintainers. Everyone should get
involved and see the discussions and at least see the topics being
discussed, thus do it directly on fedora-devel (e.g. in the public where
everybody can post). Use a special tag like "[packaging]" to mark the
mails if there really is a need to differentiate.

=== fedora-extras-list ===

Well, the "Core packages gets merged into the Extras framework" is
official -- thus discuss the stuff that was on fedora-extras-list until
now on fedora-devel in the future, as there won#t be a "Extras" anymore
soon.

=== fedora-test-list ===

A lot of people don't get the difference between fedora-devel and
fedora-test list. And testing is a crucial part of the devel process,
thus lets drop the test-list.

=== fedora-triage-list ===

Not used much anymore;  fedora-qa-list will take over the job (see below)

=== fedora-extras-commits ===

No extras anymore; send the stuff to fedora-cvs-commits in the future.

----

== Create ==

We need some new lists, too.

=== fedora-qa-list ===

Rename fedora-triage-list to fedora-qa-list and use it for wwoods
efforts and his recruits. Will be created quite soon, probably before
this discussion is finished, because its badly needed.

=== fedora-project-list ===

We until now have no real list where Ambassadors, packagers,
programmers, art-people and other contributors can talk to each other
about general stuff that's important to the project as a whole without
getting lost in the noise or scared away with "this is off topic on this
list" calls. fedora-advisory-board somehow was this list until now in
parts, but it's moderated and thus even some project contributors that
were not subscribed feel excluded (bad).

=== fedora-maintainers-announce ===

Created already, but not uses until now. This is not a real mailing list
for discussion, it's rather meant as a way to get really important
information out to all maintainers -- e.g. low traffic, normally less
then 3 mails a months. The plan is to subscribe users semi-automatically
from the accounts system.

Some people question the use of this list; they want people subscribed
to fedora-maintainers instead. But important informations can get lost
there in the noise easily, and that would be bad. And some of our
maintainers (e.g. upstream maintainers that co-maintain the fedora
package) are not interested in all those discussions that happened on
fedora-maintainers in the past.

Reply-to of this list will be set to fedora-maintainers. No monthly
mailinglist-reminder. fedora-maintainers gets subscribed to
fedora-maintainers-announce

== Change policy ==

=== fedora-advisory-board ===

The list remains for now, but we want to move most of the discussion
into the border public. fedora-project should thus be used for most of
the stuff that got discussed on fedora-advisory-board in the past. But
the list will remain for the purpose it was created for: a communication
channel between important project contributors. We'll close it later if
we notice that this is not needed anymore (that what some people hope)

----

== Not sure ==

There are some list where I'm not sure if we still need them and/or need
to adjust their policy.

=== fedora-desktop-list ===

Now traffic. Do we really need it?

=== fedora-games-list ===

Does it really make sense to have a mailing list for this particular
group of packages?

=== fedora-devel-foo ===

There are several; some of them lists

=== fedora-maintainers ===

Open fedora-maintainers to all project contributors -- e.g. those from
other projects like arts, docs, infrastructure, ambassadors, ...? Or
will fedora-project serve this purpose?

Some people requested a way to have a mailing list where only packagers
discuss stuff. But is it really a big help? It leads to fragmentation
again as it might easily happen that we discuss stuff on
fedora-maintainers in a semi-official way that would be more suitable
for fedora-devel *because* everyone can participate there. Comments?

=== fedora-list ===

This is mostly a list where users help he other. fedora-users-list or
fedora-help-list would thus be a proper name that would make its use
obvious.

But renaming this list is probably not worth the trouble.

=== fedora-devel-help ===

A lot of developers get annoyed if users ask on the devel list for help
(even if the questions are specific to the devel-tree. Most users of the
devel tree on the other hand probably are not much interested in the
discussions on fedora-list and won#t find help there.

Maybe try to separate those questions to their own list? We would need
to enforce that (e.g. never answer those question on fedora-devel).

=== fedora-cvs-commits ===

Could we use that for all commits and seperate the stuff (web, docs, F6,
devel, ...) with channels? Similar to how it is done for
fedora-packaging-announce?

=== fedora-desktop-list ===

Not much traffic. Do we still need it?

=== fedora-r-devel-list ===

Not much traffic. Do we still need it?

----

== Suggestions from the discussions ==

 * rsc wants to get the daily developments reports, but does not what to
subscribe to fedora-devel; can we create another channel in
fedora-package-announce that mails the reports in addition to fedora-devel?

== Miscellaneous ==

=== Mailman guidelines ===

While at it let's define a standard look-and-feel for mailing lists,
too. (FIXME: some mailman experts around? Is this sane?). Mailing list
admins are strongly encouraged to follow this guidelines, but they don't
have to if there are good reason for it (no, "I don't like it" is not a
good reason!). Suggested setting (can all be found on the first mailman
settings page)

 * the reply-to should not be modified by mailman (first_strip_reply_to
= no)
 * the reply-to should point to the list (reply_goes_to_list = this list)
 * no explicit Reply-to-Address (reply_to_address = <empty> )
 * no tagging (subject_prefix = <empty> )

== Legacy ==

Jesse will close fedora-legacy and fedora-legacy-annouce in the near future.

=== Notes ===

Ubutu has similar problems; they splitted ubuntu-devel into ubuntu-devel
and ubuntu-devel-discuss:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2006-December/023022.html
We have a similar concept with fedora-devel and fedora-maintainers already.

EOF

CU
thl