RFD: Separate mailing list for users running testing?
[moving to debian-project]
On Thu, Sep 06, 2001 at 06:24:37PM -0700, tluxt wrote:
> --- Chris Halls <chris.halls@nikocity.de> wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 05:28:22PM -0700, tluxt wrote:
> > > --- tluxt <tluxt@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > I think it would be an excellent idea to have a debian-user-woody list.
> > >
> > > The debian-testing is for developers. But I suspect there are many people
> > > I think it would be an excellent idea to have a debian-user-woody list.
> > >
> > > The debian-testing is for developers. But I suspect there are many
> > > people
> > > (myself included) who are just trying to _use_ woody, and are _not_
> > > developers.
> > > Such a list would help debian by:
> > > 1. Providing a forum for woody _users_ to discuss issues.
> > > perhaps enabling testing debugging to proceed faster since
> > > woody users will have a concise reference place for their concerns
> > > and not have to waste lots of time digging through other places
> > > (such as debian-user, perhaps)
> > > where woody issues are not the primary topic.
> > > 2. Keeping debian-testing from having user traffic,
> > > thus letting it focus on development issues.
> > >
> > > I believe this list would be a big time saver for debian-woody users and
> > > help boost the efficiency of the debian project overall.
> >
> > Wouldn't debian-testing-user be better, so there isn't any confusion once
> > woody becomes stable?
>
> I think that is quite good also.
>
> My only reservation with using the word "testing" is that it has
> so many other possible meanings/interpretations other than:
> "the Debian distribution known as 'testing'".
>
> Perhaps merely the description attached to such a list on
> http://lists.debian.org/users.html
> would be sufficient to clear up any such potential misconceptions.
It may be worth thinking about whether this is a possible way to reduce
the traffic on debian-user a little. I for one was a bit confused when I
first installed debian stable, and quite a lot of the discussion on
debian-user was not about stable at all, but about people running testing
or unstable, without mentioning that explicitly.
Maybe if there were separate user lists it would make things easier to
follow. The stable users could carry on at debian-user, and
testing/unstable discussion would happen somewhere else. It would be
easier for developers to monitor the user experience in testing, rather
than having to filter through all of debian-user, which can be time
consuming, and it is not always obvious anyway.
The same goes for documentation. It should be a bit easier to spot where
the documentation for testing needs improving by monitoring the new list.
So,
1. Should we create such as list?
2. What could we call such a list? Possible suggestions:
debian-user-testing (ie a debian-user list for those running testing)
debian-testing-user (ie debian-testing for users instead of developers)
debian-user-woody (it would get out of date to soon..)
My favourite is debian-user-testing, because debian-testing is so low traffic
that it does not need to be 'split'. And I think it's a bit more obvious for
the actual users themselves.
Chris
Reply to: