Re: Splitting debian-user (was Re: DO NOT UPGRADE TO POTATO...)
David Coe wrote:
>
> Ben Pfaff <pfaffben@msu.edu> writes:
>
> > "A. M. Varon" <andre@mail.lasaltech.com> writes:
> >
> > > Could we have a potato mailing lists?
> >
> > That's part of what debian-devel *is* for. Why would we want another
> > list for it?
>
> Ben answered on _debian-devel_, but not on _debian-user_; I hope he
> doesn't mind my posting in both places (this discussion has been going
> on in both places).
>
> A.M. said (I'm paraphrasing) that casual readers of debian-user may
> come away thinking Debian has lots of problems, when in fact the
> problems discussed are mostly in the unstable (currently "potato")
> distribution.
Maybe, but how many have done what I and many others have done and
simply lurk in deb.usr long enough to figure out whats going on, ie,
learn about the stable and unstable branches?
>
> A.M's suggestion may have merit: a new _debian-user-unstable_ list
> could separate the user "bleeding edge" discussions from the stable
> user discussions.
Ok, lord knows Debian has enough mailing lists already, but adding this
one wouldn't hurt too much.
>
> As Ben said, _debian-devel_ is already a place to discuss problems
> with unstable -- but there's lots of cruft there that's uninteresting
> to unstable users unless they're considering becoming developers.
This is a bit problematic, as for a time I lurked in debian-devel, and
at one point developers were frustrated with the presence of
non-developers posting to the list. For a time, closing the list to
non-developers was debated there. So, having debian-devel do double
duty will not work, AFAICT, because this will create a lot of new
traffic that developers would have to wade through. Disclaimer: I'm
not a developer.
>
> But if we create _debian-user-unstable_, the _debian-user_ readers
> would miss (would they care?) the discussions -- some of them
> interesting -- about changes, and might therefore be less well
> prepared to handle the upgrade to potato when it becomes stable.
If the mailing list web page puts these two options side-by-side and
explains the differences, that should be enough. I have a feeling
though that a majority of people will just subscribe to both. Plus
there will probably be a fair amount of crossposting.
>
> So I obviously can't make up my mind; I think we should let the
> _debian-user_ population decide: would you like to split the group?
>
I'm not strongly for or against. I could certainly live with another
mailing list, but whatever we do, lets leave debian-devel to the
developers.
--
Ed C.
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