Hereon wrote:
Debian stable releases have been approximately 1-2 years apart. During this period of time, many Debian users make active use of the testing/unstable system. Currently, user questions about testing/unstable are likely to be asked in the debian-user list. But, that is definitely not the best way that things could be. By asking T/U questions in the -user forum, this is putting communications on two logically separable topics (stable, and testing/unstable) into one channel/forum. This causes several problems: 1) The repeated need for QUESTION ASKERS to specify which of the two versions their question refers to. 2) The repeated need for READERS to be constantly alert as to which of the two versions each message is referring to.
Given the large use of backports with stable, and given the fluid nature of testing/unstable, and given that testing and unstable are different, I don't think that your proposal would eliminate this, at least as far as best practice goes. Also, consider the archive, it will become more difficult to determine whether or not a given post is relevant. Even for stable, how do you know without research[unrelated to your actual question] whether or not there has been a security or other update that has affected a package if you don't know what version an archived post is referring to?
3) The difficluty of being unable to easily FIND INFORMATION in the listarchives relevant to a topic on which you want some information/data. Ex: Someone wanting info about a specific topic regarding T/U would haveto try to de-cohere the combined list to find the messages pertaining to their (S, or T/U) system.
Given the fluid nature of testing/unstable, any question specific to testing or unstable[as I said before it can't be specific to both] is likely going to need a response within the last couple of weeks so there couldn't be that many topics to go through that might be pertinent.
Also, I find that most questions on this list are independent of the specifics of stable/testing/unstable so it serves little useful purpose to fragment the subscribership.
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