Mailing list reorganization summer 07, round 1

[Karsten Wade]

On Sun, 2007-07-15 at 18:46 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:

> Long term: have a own mailman frontpage on lists.fedoraproject.org that
> lists only mailing lists used by the Fedora Project.

To be clear, the request from everyone is satisfied with the
lists.fedoraproject.org alias.  Mike specifically said (IIRC) that we
should really stick with the Red Hat supplied Mailman instance
(listman.redhat.com); it works very well and is not worth breaking.

So, such a page as you describe would need to be either manually created
or screen-scraped.

> == 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.

It is _possible_ we could have one, well-organized renaming event.  Mike
can find out.

> === 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

I'm mixed myself on what to do here.

On one hand, I like the signal:noise ratio on this list.  I would be
pretty bummed if it were a free-for-all to discuss all manner of random
ideas.

As others have pointed out, there are lists where every new idea is on
topic.  -devel, -marketing, etc.  It doesn't make sense to start or
force focus on one list, when the active communities are within the
existing lists.

For now, I think we should encourage people to have future/idea
discussions on the existing lists.

> === fedora-devel-list ===
> 
> There were some different ideas for it floating around. One round about
> was: rename to something else (fedora-developers; that gets rid of the
> -list postfix as well) and let only real "developers" (Fedora or other
> distributions packagers; people participating in developing in software
> we ship or is well known; well known people active in Linux or
> Fedora-related projects) post freely to that list. Set the moderation
> flag for all the others initially until they have shown to understand
> the purpose of this list.
> 
> Whatever we do with fedora-devel: with fedora-devel-users in place we
> should enforce its use and point users *and developers* that on
> fedora-devel ask questions about using to fedora-devel-users in the
> future.

What is the problem we are trying to solve with moderation?

>  * should we have a official mailing list coordinator that has to ACK
> new mailing lists?

We sort of do in the form of Fedora Infrastructure.  We'll have to have
more something in the future.  Either Red Hat IT needs to inform Fedora
Infra, or we'll consolidate list request in Fedora Infra.

I think the latter is the best idea.  Just enter a Trac ticket for a new
list; F Infra person requests it; when they get the go-ahead back, the
alias is created, and the new list owner is informed.

> === Mailman guidelines ===
> 
> While at it let's define a standard look-and-feel for mailing lists as
> well, to avoid that people that are subscribed to multiple Fedora
> mailing lists get confused due to different setting on out lists (which
> happens). the individual mailing list admins are *strongly* encouraged
> to follow these guidelines, but they don't have to,  *if* there are good
> reason for it (no, "I like foo better" is not a good reason!).
> 
> Suggested settings (can all be found on the first mailman settings page)
> 
>  * the reply-to should not be modified by mailman (first_strip_reply_to
> = no)
>  * the reply-to should point to the list (reply_goes_to_list = this list)
>  * no explicit Reply-to-Address (reply_to_address = <empty> )
>  * no tagging (subject_prefix = <empty> )

The tool that Red Hat IT uses for mailing list requests is a Web form;
it includes a few choices from amongst standard sets for configuration
defaults.

Maybe Mike can get a "new Fedora mailing list" default type added.  It
would then come pre-configured in to match the guidelines.  An owner
could change the details, but they would have to know what they were
doing and why.

I think most people just accept and get used to the defaults. :)

> === To -list or not to list ===
> 
> With lists.fedoraproject.org on the horizon the domainname will make it
> obvious that one is posting to the list, thus the plan is to not have
> the "-list" postfix in new lists.

FWIW, I'm partially dubious about typing 26 characters instead of 10.
So, anything that _reduces_ the character count overall is good.

- Karsten
-- 
   Karsten Wade, 108 Editor       ^     Fedora Documentation Project 
 Sr. Developer Relations Mgr.     |  fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
   quaid.108.redhat.com           |          gpg key: AD0E0C41
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