Mailing list reorganization summer 07, round 1

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 16.07.2007 20:22, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-07-15 at 18:46 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>> Now that F7 is out, the new Board is elected and the new FESCo ready
>> soon as well I'd like to restart the mailing list reorganization
>> discussion that the Board asked me to handle months ago, but was first
>> delayed (for the plan to have a dedicated fedora mail(man) server, which
>> was dropped in between) and then not driven further by me as "the merge"
>> seemed more pressing in recent months.
> Thanks for taking the time to really dive into this.  

BTW, is the Board (and the other on the list) still backing the general
idea for a reorganization? Otherwise I can save myself to work further
on this.

> I'll try to keep
> comments short as overall it looks pretty good.

thx

> [...]
>> Long term: have a own mailman frontpage on lists.fedoraproject.org that
>> lists only mailing lists used by the Fedora Project.
> We could also do a short-term form of this just by providing such a
> page.  It could even just redirect to the wiki for now.

Might be the easiest solution.

>> == Details how to achieve that end-goal ==
>> Some lists get renamed
>> (http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=all#4.70 ; users thus
>> don't have to care about re-subscribing) and some get closed, with the
>> old users invited (not subscribed) to another list.
> In the past, there has been resistance to doing list renames like this.
> Perhaps that's changed, but it needs investigating.  Mike -- let me know
> if you want me to check into this

/me waits for further outcome from the subthread that is discussing this

I added it to the proposal to make sure it's not forgotten

>> === fedora-extras-commits ===
>>  * Successor: fedora-pkgs-commits
> Why not just move all commit mail to fedora-cvs-commits and have people
> subscribe to it?  Then it's an existing list that a lot of people are
> already subscribed to.

Because

 * more people are likely on fedora-extras-commits ATM, as
fedora-cvs-commits is only for Core <= 6

 * because we should avoid the SCM's name in the list name

But yeah, you raised a good point: What to do with fedora-cvs-commits?
Close? Leave it working till FC6 is EOL (easy)? Merge with
fedora-pkgs-commits?

I tend to "Leave it working till FC6 is EOL, but invite subscribers to
fedora-pkgs-commits"

>> === fedora-qa-list ===
>>  * Background: Not much traffic. We further should be able to assume
>> that all users on fedora-devel-users are kind of testers/qa, so why not
>> use that list for the QA discussions as well?
>>  * Successor: fedora-devel-users
>>  * Adjustment strategy: close list, invite users to successor
> I think Will has been trying to resurrect this somewhat to really
> concentrate on QA/testing.  fedora-devel-users might be reasonable, but
> then what about people that are wanting to QA/test updates for released
> versions?  I wonder if we're better off trying to migrate to
> fedora-test-list and then make its usage more clear

Well, renaming "fedora-test-list" to "fedora-devel-users" is IMHO part
of the "make its usage more clear", as a lot of people never got what
test-list is for.

Maybe "fedora-testers" would be the better name than
"fedora-devel-users", but as I want to have "rawhide users/user to
{user,developer} talks (like "foo> We need feature bar? us> Will you
work on that foo> No, I have no skills for that ") on that list as well,
so I still prefer the "fedora-devel-users" name. Especially as that has
the "devel" in the name -- a term users often search for.

>> === fedora-advisory-list / fedora-project ===
>> There was the idea to rename fedora-advisory-list to fedora-project
>> list. But fedora-advisory-list works well, so maybe it's better to not
>> touch it... Should we nevertheless create a fedora-project list as
>> discussion list for Fedora-wide things where different groups
>> (packagers, art, docs, EPEL, ...) can share informations -- we don't
>> have such a place currently and some people seem to miss it
> As painful as it might be, fedora-devel-list really probably is that
> place. Otherwise, you end up with cross-posting with your hypothetical
> fedora-project list and the devel list given the amount of cross-over.

Well, then we need to make fedora-devel-list that place, but that's not
in line with other parts of the proposal, that target into a direction
to make fedora-devel-list a list where real developers talk to other
developers. (I'll go a bit more in depth into this and the previous
issue in another reply to this list later)

>> === fedora-desktop-list ===
>> Had not that much traffic months ago, but in the recent two months it
>> increased a bit again; but the stuff that got posted on this list was
>> not that much different from stuff discussed on other lists. The name is
>> confusing as well -- people using Fedora on their desktops now and then
>> thought this is the proper list for usage questions. We could redirect
>> users to fedora-devel-list and fedora-devel-users; or, if we want to
>> keep the list, consider to rename it to fedora-desktop-developers.
> fedora-desktop-devel seems like a reasonable compromise.  Having the
> separate list for desktop development discussion is definitely
> worthwhile.  Just need to make it clearer that cross-posting is grounds
> for being thrown off the list  (j/k :-)

Added that para to the proposal for now.

>>   * fedora-xen
> Originally set up to be analogous to fedora-selinux-list.  Basically, a
> good avenue for specific troubleshooting and working through things for
> a new technology.  Tends to be pretty focused discussion and helpful for
> people asking questions.

Agreed.

/me wonders if we should rename it to "fedora-virtualization", to cover
kvm as well

/me will forget about this thought for now -- remind me of it if you
like it ;-)

> [...]

CU
thl