Re: Proposal: Debian Science mailing lists

> On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 1:13 PM, Brett Viren <bv@bnl.gov> wrote:
> Sylvestre Ledru <sylvestre@debian.org> writes:
>
> > == Proposal ==
> >
> > I would like to propose the following:
> > * move all packaging related discussions to
> > debian-science-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org
> > * use debian-science@lists.debian.org only for user oriented
> discussions
> > * make sure that all the commit mails are sent on
> > debian-science-maintainers-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org
> >
> > Any comments / opinions ?
>
>
> FWIW, your proposal is more in line with what I thought
> debian-science
> was about when I joined. I haven't, personally, minded seeing
> packaging
> related discussions go by but I do think the two types of
> discussions
> would benefit from having their own venues.
> +1
> Benefit is we also get updates about packages and that is really
> useful for us.
> As Linux user cannot remain only user, need to do system admin level
> work also for scientific packages.

Well, I do not consider that as always true. Software like R or Scilab
can be used by normal users who do not care about packaging issues (or
admin work).

They do care when they found some thing is not working in particular version.
For example in Scilab 5.1.* versions there was graphics card compatibility issue.
Which was settle later on. When debian is maintaining the current latest version of scilab will be of interest of Scilab users.

> Second thing is, after making 2 separate list will there be increase
> in the user level queries? At present there are hardly user related
> queries.

I might be wrong but I feel like (it is the main idea behind this
proposal) that debian-science@lists.debian.org is too geek and too
packaging oriented for regular users.
If I was a regular user of scientific software, I would have
un-subscribed myself a long time ago since the ratio
scientific/packaging questions is very low.

Scientific software users generally subscribes to respective software mailing list.
Like I subscribed to Scilab mailing list.

Anyways, if you find it is useful to have 2 separate lists. No matter.
One should watch out percentage of user relative queries and then decide to separate 2 mailing list.
One can change the name of current mailing list. It looks like most of the subscribers are interested in package related discussion.

Can have new mailing list for users.
Regards,