Re: removing the debian-legal website stuff?
Mark Brown <broonie@sirena.org.uk> wrote:
> I have recently been wondering if it would be possible to come up with
> some way of splitting -legal up in order to make it more approachable
> for outsiders.
There's quite a lot of us trying to do it and we've not
succeeded yet. More eyeballs welcome.
I'm not sure that splitting -legal into other lists would be a
great help. I can divide the types of thread into maintainer,
other packaging, other -legal, other project and outside, but
the issues cut across all of those, so having N archives to
search would be a pain. The issues don't divide neatly to me.
The -legal-announce idea is interesting. Sadly, I think the
reliable posters don't divide neatly by any measurement I
can think of. I suspect it would go the same way as the
license summaries because no fixed group is impartial enough.
> Unfortunately it seems that -legal is prone to enormous
> threads that often appear either obscure or unproductive (normally flamy)
> and these threads can easily swamp the rest of the traffic. I know that
> when the bigger threads blow up I often end up opening my -legal mailbox,
> glancing at the list of messages and immediately deciding that it's not
> worth my time to read it. This experience is extremely off putting and
> means that I can sympathise with what Jeorg is saying.
Yes, I think there's a problem with flamey threads and also
a sort of "thread tennis" where no new information is being
introduced. I think that's what drove me off of devel.
There's some personal development required by some readers
too, IMO. For example, why do you junk the whole mailbox
and not just the flamey threads? I've switched to using the
news:linux.debian.legal because newsreaders seem better at
picking and choosing (and it avoids downloading all). What other
ways do readers make this list readable, should we document
them on the list page and what can we do to support them?
Joerg is a special case. It would be very good for ftpmasters
to start threads here (directly or through bugs) and I think
-legal contributors would make a special effort if asked.
> I can't actually think of a way to do this off the top of my head (I'd
> say that normally people don't actively try to start these large
> discussions) and it would require enforcement by the active members of
> the list.
How do you enforce this, though? We don't have a tradition of
strong moderation here and a lot of posters don't even bother
to follow the debian lists code of conduct (link below), which
I think would make a big improvement here. The few attempts at
pointing out futility haven't had much effect yet, IMO.
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct
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