Re: The role of debian-private
On Wed, Jun 09, 2010 at 03:46:13PM +0000, Clint Adams wrote:
On Wed, Jun 09, 2010 at 04:52:42PM +0200, Giacomo A. Catenazzi wrote:
> I don't think traffic shoudl be keep at minimun, it is not a
> important list. We don't hide problem, so important things are
> send to d-d-a (which is the only required list for DD).
Why would we not be better served if the people who think that
there should be an exclusive club for patently idiotic discussions
went off and made a separate, unofficial mailing list for that
purpose? That way both groups could be happy.
As wrote by Jonas, there is a risk of "cabalization".
Good discussion could also start from off-topic bad threads.
Anyway I must explain the purposes or my previous mail:
Enrico mail was (IMO) too "restrictive", specially considering
that it was the first mail on project. So I think it could be
mis-interpreted.
I replied to enrico's mail as a stand-alone.
I know from IRC and few mails on -private that it seems that some
most I left unread are "funny" (and highly off-topic).
But this was not the subject of enrico mail. So I don't want that
because of chatty mails we will set a too restrictive policy.
[I'm pretty indifferent to the off-topic threads, as you see,
I usually just ignore most of bad sub-threads, so restrict
or not such mails are indifferent to me, but the very
offtopic mails did seem the original topic of enrico mail]
On 10.06.2010 12:37, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
On Wed, Jun 09, 2010 at 04:52:42PM +0200, Giacomo A. Catenazzi wrote:
Personally I like also that "debian-private" carries strong personal
opinion (instead of public mailing list).
I don't think I'm able to interpret the above properly. If that is to
mean that on -private you don't need to be respectful of others (as we
are supposed to be on other public mailing list), then I firmly
disagree.
I'm not saying that you said that, but I think the above sentence is a
bit slippery in that respect.
We know each others and we know how to interpret the messages
That too is an argument that I personally don't like: we don't know each
other any better on -private than we do on public lists. Keep in mind
that lots of DDs have never met each other in person even if they share
the status of being DDs. So, please avoid making the assumption that
even if you write something in a bad/emotional way, it will be taken in
a good way; "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you
accept from others" applies pretty well to mails and can prevent tons of
flames, on -private as anywhere else.
The paragraph your quoted was also controversial to me.
I don't like my arguments, but it seems that there are true. So
I hope some other people will clarify this topic.
My observations:
Personal discussion (eyes-to-eyes) has so great values that list cannot
even think to reach.
For this reason BSPs, DebConfs and the famous keysigning+beer bilater
meetings are so popular.
You (Zack) are a great mediator, so you must confirm that: it is
difficult to hide emotions, and some attack starts from
miss-interpretation of people behaviour and people writing.
People will learn about email conduct, but it take time (thus flames),
and possibly one should live on the wrong side to learn about to
write neutral mail and to assume good faith (no personal attack) by
default on other intentions.
It seems to me that new channels are gaining significance:
irc and private email (especially on controversial topic).
Why? I suppose (but I'm really not an expert, and not so involved
in a lot of discussion, especially on last months) that
being frank/open has a lot of advantage (and surely quicker) than
a "self-moderate" public discussion.
To conclude: On last DebConf there was a BOFH about the losing of
debian-devel volume of mails. I fear that limiting (or better to
enforce existing limits) on debian-private will not move discussion
to other lists, but to private mail or simply to destroy communications.
(IMO a lost)
BTW an other comment about my previous mail topic:
debian-private is not so private. Disclosing mail seems a good
things for Debian: the "violator" usually (IIRC) must solve 10 or
so bugs ;-) , so it is really not a place for highly secret things.
ciao
cate
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