Re: Bugs should be reported to mc-devel gnome org

[Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>]

On Tue, 2007-04-10 at 09:10 +1000, Jeremy Dawson wrote:

>         Bugs should be reported to mc-devel gnome org
> 
> If an email to this address is to be replied to in this fashion, it 
> would be preferable if the address was not publicised.

I disagree.  There is no guarantee that you get an acceptable reply or
any reply at all from a mailing list.  It's determined by many factors,
such as the quality of the original post and the availability of the
subscribers who want to reply.

I think a public mailing list is still a better than other alternatives.
It's archived, so all replied are visible to others.  It encourages good
replies.  It also discourages rude and stupid replies, since they will
stay online for everybody to see.  It's not to say that it doesn't
happen, but other subscribers can take corrective actions, and do it in
public view.

Mailing lists split the load between participants, so nobody is under
pressure to respond.  Every subscriber makes a choice whether to
subscribe, so they are in control.  Getting support requests by private
e-mail may be an annoyance for somebody who chose to stop working on the
project or who cannot comment on a specific issue.

Bug tracking may be also adequate for some more specialized tasks, but
they are less visited by anyone but core developers.  In any case,
mailing lists are superior to personal e-mail.

I believe the mailing lists should stay and should continue to be
publicized as the place to report bugs.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin