Re: signal-to-noise on d-d-l

["jorge o. castro" <jorge whiprush org>]

Luis Villa wrote:
> I think any healthy project that wants to think of
> itself as a single project needs a main list- d-d-l has been that list,
> and is in danger of splintering, which sucks.

Long time lurker here, not a dev (just a fan) but I've been around long 
enough to spot trends so I thought I would comment on this.

IMO the -devel lists exist for the GNOME developers. While the 
development of GNOME is done "in the public", any noise done on a -devel 
list does nothing more than distract developers with opinions that are 
better kept in other mediums.

For example, the Evolution 2.0 thread should have ended at "Maintainer 
says no, end of thread." But it didn't. Now we have more opinions of 
what GNOME developers _should_ be doing instead of real work going on. 
Ditto with the flag thread. Users like myself have gnomedesktop.org and 
umpteen avenues to express our views, material like this shouldn't be 
cluttering -devel lists, those should be used by actual GNOME developers 
to get work done, period.

If I want to complain about default behaviors or $my_favorite_module 
being ommited then there are plenty of places I can complain about 
without adding noise to the -devel lists. I for one trust that GNOME 
developers read gnomedesktop.org (or whatever) when they're looking for 
feedback, they don't need me posting on nautilus-devel wondering when 
they're going to fix my pet crack bug.

If Luis can't even recommend a -devel list for a colleague that is 
interested in helping then they need to be fixed. As a GNOME user I 
subscribe to the lists to monitor what the devs are working on and the 
future of the GNOME desktop, not catch up on every user's opinion on the 
2.5.3 release name.

My 2 cents.

-jorge