Re: [gentoo-dev] Too many mailing lists

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Tue, 2004-12-07 at 15:18 +0200, Ivan Yosifov wrote:
> I agree that no one wants to get too much irrelevant mail. However if
> there is a single dev list where improvements (and not user problems)
> are discussed there will usually be several threads that just keep
> growing. AFAIK Thunderbird (which you appear to be using) supports
> message folding and threading. So if there are a dozen messages under
> the XOrg message tree you can quickly tell that they are not for you. I
> mean that just because there are 100 messages more , does not mean you
> will need more than 10 seconds to filter them all.

You must not have been on this list long.  Threads on this list tend to
"wander" from their original topic all the time.  In fact, many times a
thread seems completely unimportant to you, but 80 messages in, somebody
brings up something that directly affects you.

Having fewer, more on-topic emails is a plus, as it makes it easier to
search through them for things that relate directly to you.  I
definitely would not want to see every email that goes through
gentoo-ppc or gentoo-releng or gentoo-desktop all in one mailing list,
as it would present a ton of extra noise.

> > *This* gentoo-dev isn't there for helping users with their problems.
>
> I agree. What I meant was that sometimes users have ideas about
> improving Gentoo (apart from fix bug #####). And such ideas (i think)
> are for gentoo-dev.

Correct, but that isn't what you said at first.  That is definitely a
development-related issue and should be on this list.  Any
support-related issues should go to gentoo-user, or to bugs.gentoo.org
for the problem to be fixed.

> Mind your own example with app-foo/bar-1.0 on amd64. Most bugs (and
> problems) are arch independent. Especially problems like "How do I use
> this app" , or "where is this in the gnome menu". And these are the
> problems a user is likely to ask help for. You can't expect form a user
> to see the amd64 TCP/IP stack bug when all he knows is that gaim can not
> connect. I believe that ppc,amd64,x86,etc users (and lists ) have more
> experience to share than arch specific stuff.

Actually, on some of the more exotic arch lists, there is very little
arch-independent stuff simply because they may or may not be a fully
supported platform on Linux.  Since I have started using non-x86
machines, I have noticed a dramatic difference in the way I view things.
Also, simply posting as much information as possible to a bug report
usually gets it to the right people.  There have been many bugs that
have had to have been passed around between various groups before the
true problem was discovered.  Having all of that extra noise on a single
mailing list wouldn't improve things, as the more noise there is, the
less likely people are to read through everything to see if it is
relevant to them.

> > time the more emails you get about stuff you aren't interested in. I
> > really don't care about java, and i don't care about hardened in general
> > (well, i care about them if it's a amd64-specific problem :))
>
> I understand. However something currently going on the java list may
> very well have to do with amd64 , and you may never know about it.

Because none of the java guys would ever suggest "that might be an amd64
problem", right?  I'm playing Devil's advocate here.  It is very rare
that you see an arch-specific problem show up that doesn't get addressed
properly.  After all, if it works for me and I'm on sparc and x86 and it
doesn't work for you and you're on amd64, with all other things being
equal, I would think it is an arch-specific bug.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Operational/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux