Volume on -devel and dumping non-registered developers

["Shannon C. Dealy" <dealy@deatech.com>]

I am another one of those not yet registered developers on this list.
As the administrator of several email lists who has dealt with the
email overload issue, it seems to me the real problem is the large number
of postings that appear (to me anyway) to be off topic.  Discussions of
licensing issues (particularly Apple), inclusion of non-computer related
documents in the distribution, and other similar issues would appear to me
to be more appropriate on the debian-policy list, though since I am not a
member of that list, I can't say for sure.  In any case, they do not
appear to be "development" related.

With regard to dumping non-registered developers, it may be your loss as
much as ours.  There have been a number of technical questions from
developers that I have seen go unanswered which I could/would have
resolved for the person if I had the time.  The assumption in dumping the
non-registered developers is that they are "newbies" and add to the email
volume on the list without contributing much useful content.  I can't
speak for other non-developers on this list, but I have been using Linux
for 6+ years (switched to debian at 1.0 whenever that was), UNIX for
11+ years, and have done everything from commercial system administration
to debugging/fixing device drivers.  I have debian currently installed on
five systems in my office, including two laptops, an internet firewall, a
file server, and a development system.  The point here is not how
wonderful I am :-) but rather, that as time permits, I have useful
"development" knowledge to offer on this list, even though at the
moment I am not an official developer.

It looks to me like if you can keep it on topic, avoid personal attacks
and non-technical philosophical discussions, that you could easily reduce
the volume on this list by over 50%.

I did a write up on being a considerate member of a mailing list a while
back for one of the lists I administer.  I don't claim it's great or
anything else, but I received requests from several other list admin's for
permission to use it on their lists.  It is rather list specific, but if
anyone is interested, the general philosophy of the last section would
apply to any email list:

  (skip the begining and go to the numbered items in "POSTING POLICIES")

    http://www.deatech.com/natural/coblist/coblist.info.txt

This one posting cut the email volume on my list by over half.


Note: The only reason I'm not a registered developer is lack of time to
pursue debian specific projects, a problem which I expect to remedy by the
end of the year, which is why I finally went ahead and joined this list.

Now since I am not a developer I will shut-up :-)

Shannon C. Dealy
dealy@deatech.com
                           DeaTech Research Inc.
                      - Custom Software Development -
                Embedded Systems, Real-time, Device Drivers
              Networking, Server Configuration/Administration
                   Scientific & Engineering Applications

                              www.deatech.com