Re: New-maintainer proposal
(I've taken this solely to -devel, -private doesn't belong)
On 17-Oct-99, 15:57 (CDT), Josip Rodin <jrodin@public.srce.hr> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 17, 1999 at 07:33:35PM +0000, Dale Scheetz wrote:
> >
> > As soon as the group started to grow, the solution to traffic began to be
> > the creation of alternative lists. As we have grown, the number of "sub"
> > lists has grown as well, and it seems that the confusion and uncertainties
> > we are dealing with today grew from those very fracturings of the lists.
>
> Although I have been in Debian for just one year, so far I haven't noticed
> *that* many people who are confused about the number of the mailing lists.
I'm with Dale on this one. For example, what is this -project list? When
did it get created, what is it's purpose, and where was it announced?
How is it different than -devel? Apparently I need to subscribe to
it...great, another list.
I'm not confused by the number of lists, but I don't think that
fragmentation really helps reduce volume. What I've seen is a lot of
cross-posting (because people want to reach a wide audience). I've
seen innappropriate posting (because people are confused about what's
on-topic). And what I've mostly seen is that something gets discussed
on one of the obscure groups, announced on -devel, and then everybody
and her sister bitches and moans about the cabal making decisions
"out-of-sight".
I'm also confused about what groups I'm actually subscribed to because
there are so damn many and they seem to occasionally drop subscribers; I
think I got bounced from debian-devel-announce again, but it's hard to
tell, because there is no (apparent) way to get the list of lists I'm
subscribed to -- if there is, someone please e-mail me.
But mostly I think the proliferation of lists is bad for the community.
It encourages people to concentrate on some specialized area, and not
read the general purpose list.
As for the volume argument, two words: procmail, mutt. (Or some other
mail filter and a threading MUA). (I realize that this doesn't help the
pay-by-the-minute folks. Changing over to newsgroups might, though there
are other issues with that.)
Steve
--
Steve Greenland <vmole@swbell.net>
(Please do not CC me on mail sent to this list; I subscribe to and read
every list I post to.)
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