Re: Flames on d-d-l

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Alex/Daniel/Jamie:

> On Fri, 2004-12-17 at 19:05 +0100, Daniel Pörsch wrote:
>
> > Alexander Larsson schrieb:
> >
> > > Its a hard problem. We want to encourage everyone, including non-
> > > developers to give feedback.
> >
> > I'm a non-developer, I'm just reading most of the time and I can really 
> > see that the noise is big.
>
> The noise is quite variable although it has been quite high of late. I
> tend to manage stuff by using the threaded view in evolution so I only
> read stuff thats of interest to me and it does alleviate the problem to
> some extent. As we also have vfolder support so its relatively simple to
> filter out stuff by subject or sender. I know this is not an ideal
> solution but it does help manage things.
>
> > What about making a dedicated, managed 
> > gnome-core-devel-list, which is readable for everyone but writable only 
> > for you guys?
>
> That would be counter productive cause all the developers would use that
> instead of d-d-l.
>
> Still if the only way to keep d-d-l open is to have someone police it
> (like as before) then I would prefer that.

I think part of the problem is that d-d-l is a very high-level list.  A
wide range of issues seem appropriate, so a person who is only interested
in a specific topic has to wade through all the other emails to keep
focused.  Perhaps creating some new lists where people can discuss
specific topics might help to keep the traffic lower on d-d-l.  It would
also allow people to better select what aliases they want to subscribe
to and keep their mailbox lighter.  I have been suggesting creating a
separate list to specifically discuss interface issues.  Lists could
also be created to discuss other common sub-topics, such as the following:

+ proposals for adding new modules to the GNOME desktop (this would
  probably cut d-d-l traffic in half by itself).
+ branch notifications
+ new functionality proposals
+ MIME issues
+ more mail lists for specific gnome modules.  A lot of discussion for
  modules like gnome-panel, gnome-terminal, etc. happen on d-d-l since
  there isn't a dedicated list for these modules.  Since many modules do
  not have their own alias, some people probably send emails to d-d-l
  without first checking to see if they should be using a list that
  does exist for that module.
+ Simply reviewing what sort of traffic has been archived for d-d-l should
  also highlight other common sub-topics that could be better handled
  on a separate list.

And of course, people could be a bit better about using the appropriate
list for certain topics.  No need to have so much l18n related discussion
on d-d-l when they already have their own list, etc.

--

Brian