[BuildStream] About patch notifications via email

[Tristan Van Berkom <tristan vanberkom codethink co uk>]

Hi all,

At the pre GUADEC team meeting there was some discussion about
receiving patches by email, and I'm unsure that we are all in alignment
about what has to be done.

This also does not appear to have been discussed since on the mailing
list as far as I can see, so before something drastic happens I want to
touch base on this point again.

My understanding was that:

  o We want to reduce noise from gitlab notifications, such that we
    only receive notifications that are relevant.

  o When we do get notifications from gitlab about a patch which has
    been updated and is under review (either because we watch all of
    gitlab notifications like I do, or because we are subscribed to a
    specific issue), then we want to get the patch in the email itself,
    so we don't have to visit gitlab to view it.

  o Some have expressed a desire to have a feed of commits which land
    on master, I agree that this is desirable.

On the implementation side of this, it seems that some have understood
this to mean "Let's send the patch notifications to buildstream-list".

I think that this specific course of action is wrong and would like
feedback before this happens. My reasoning is that:

  o We want people to subscribe and stay subscribed to our project
    mailing list - we want as much mind share as we can get.

  o A very typical deciding factor for whether somebody subscribes,
    or remains subscribed after a period of time when they really
    needed to be subscribed, is the level of traffic/volume of the
    mailing list.

  o Saying that "people can create filters in their email client"
    is a bit of a cop out, it's not a kind statement towards
    whomever might decide to start contributing to the project.

  o Finally, there is a lot of precedent for this sort of thing,
    having a channel for receiving updates on what lands in master
    is valuable; the solution usually involves using a separate
    mailing list, e.g. "buildstream-commit-list".

I strongly suggest that if we implement a feed for commit
notifications, that we use a separate communications channel for that
than we do for general project related discussion.

Does anyone feel that we really should be sending commit notifications
to the same mailing list that we use for high level project related
discussion ?

Best Regards,
    -Tristan