Re: Publicly-readable list for only DDs and DMs to post to

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Lars Wirzenius writes ("Re: Publicly-readable list for only DDs and DMs to post to"):
> On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 01:47:19PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > We also need to understand why people use -private when perhaps they
> > ought not.  One reason is that -private has a better signal to noise
> > ratio than -devel or -project, and therefore people pay more attention
> > to it.
> 
> I'm sorry to be so negative, but I'm afraid I have to say that I
> object to the suggestion of creating a members-only mailing list. It
> creates another barrier to participation in Debian at a time when we
> should be tearing them down.

I can see why you think that.

I think that such a list would provide an opportunity for discussions
to move out of -private, which is of course an even bigger barrier to
participation.

If it would result in discussions moving from -devel to -members,
rather than from -private to -members, your conclusion would be
correct.  But I'm not convinced.

In principle we could perhaps tell by creating it as an experiment.

In any case, with the renewed opposition here I'm certainly not going
to push this issue unless there are others who agree with me and
disagree with the views of others posted so far.

> Years ago, Ubuntu split their development mailing list into an open
> list and one where posting was allowed for Ubuntu members only. I
> don't know if that's still the case, but in about 2007-2009 it didn't
> seem to me that it worked very well.

I'm not sure the two communities are particularly comparable.

Thanks,
Ian.