RFC: Create d-user-woody, d-user-sarge maillists, deactivate d-user
Since many questions in the debian-kde list are user oriented questions,
I thought it would be helpful to the Debian community to ensure the
readers here aware of the following message I just sent to the
debian-user list.
RFC: Create d-user-woody, d-user-sarge maillists, deactivate d-user
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/debian-user-200312/msg00018.html
If you are interested in the enhancement of the Debian mailing lists and
community, you might have a useful comment or suggestion to offer to this
RFC. :)
If you are subscribed to the debian-user list, you might want to reply to
the message that came through on that list, since that is the main place
that this message is related to.
If you aren't subscribed to debian-user, and have a relevant comment,
replying to this message on this list would be useful also.
Best wishes. :-)
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Request For Comment on:
Enhancing the Debian mailing lists by:
Creating debian-user-woody and debian-user-sarge mailing lists,
and deactivating debian-user.
Summary:
1) The Debian user community is substantially suboptimally served
with the existence of the current debian-user list.
2) The debian-user list is _unnecessarily_ overtrafficked,
[due to it being the most likely place to ask user questions, and find
answers, regarding both Stable(Woody), and
Testing/Unstable(Sarge/Sid)]
which causes several problems for the Debian community:
a) Wasted mental effort discerning which version a message
pertains to,
b) Wasted mental effort searching for information on either
Woody or Sarge/Sid in the (currently) combined list.
3) The Debian community would be much better served
a) by the creation now of two new mailing lists, called:
1) debian-user-woody, or possibly debian-user-stable,
or possibly debian-user-3
2) debian-user-sarge, or possibly debian-user-sid,
or possibly debian-user-sargesid,
or debian-user-testing, or possibly debian-user-unstable,
or possibly debian-user-testingunstable,
or possibly debian-user-4,
b) and, perhaps, by deactivating debian-user.
4) This message is requesting:
1) Comment regarding specific suggestions of how the situation
could be inproved through the creation of 1 or more additional
lists to augment or replace debian-user,
2) "Seconds" (to the motion) for the request of these changes.
5) After a comment period (perhaps one week), I will review &
analyze the comments. I will then either:
a) Submit a new RFC email, to solicit further clarifications &
additions, or
b) Submit a wishlist bug to request creation of the new lists, as per:
http://debian.org/MailingLists/HOWTO_start_list
6) Once a wishlist bug for new list creation has been registered with
the Debian bug tracking system, it would be very helpful if
"several other people interested in the new list
would send a mail to the bug, in order to record their interest"
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Debian stable releases have been approximately 1-2 years apart. During
this period of time, many Debian users make active use of the
testing/unstable system.
Currently, user questions about testing/unstable are likely to be asked
in the debian-user list.
But, that is definitely not the best way that things could be.
By asking T/U questions in the -user forum, this is putting
communications on two logically separable topics (stable, and
testing/unstable) into one channel/forum. This causes several problems:
1) The repeated need for QUESTION ASKERS to specify which of the two
versions their question refers to.
2) The repeated need for READERS to be constantly alert as to which of
the two versions each message is referring to.
3) The difficluty of being unable to easily FIND INFORMATION in the list
archives relevant to a topic on which you want some information/data.
Ex: Someone wanting info about a specific topic regarding T/U would have
to try to de-cohere the combined list to find the messages pertaining to
their (S, or T/U) system.
These problems could be eliminated, and no new long term problems more
serious than the current situation would occur, through the creation of
two new mailing lists, perhaps called
debian-user-woody and debian-user-sarge,
and perhaps by deactivating the current debian-user list.
An excellent time to do this would be just before the start of the new
calender year, January 2004.
Your solution oriented comments are greatly appreciated.
Thank you. :-)
=====
If you think this would be a good idea, please reply to the list re this
email, so that there is a public record of support for this enhancement
of the Debian mailing lists. This is important for documenting desire
for this enhancement, so that the Debian mailing list maintainer(s) will
have evidence that this is useful for the Debian community. Thank you.
:)
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Some relevant web pages:
HOWTO request a mailing list
http://debian.org/MailingLists/HOWTO_start_list
Requests for changes to the mailing lists:
Debian Bug report logs: package lists.debian.org
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=lists.debian.org
A recent mailing list creation request:
request for new list: debian-desktop
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=218757
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