On Mon, Jul 07, 2003 at 02:40:10PM +0200, Buchan Milne wrote:
> There are some topics I haven't brought up on cooker, that I would like
> to discuss with other cookers, but since it is quite specialised
> (regarding default ACLs in openldap, kerberos, samba in conjunction) I
> don't really feel comfortable spamming the cookers who want to discuss
> latest KDE or similar topics.
> 
> So, would it be worthwhile to have lists dedicated to:
> -server software (apache/samba/ldap/postfix etc)
> -KDE
> -GNOME
> -Other desktop software
> -kernel
> -admin tools (incl. drakxtools/drakx etc)
> 
> Although a lot of people may end up subscribing to all the lists, it
> *would* mean that we could have more focused discussions, and some
> people who aren't active on cooker (due to high traffic) may be able to
> participate in a more focused list.
> 
> Of course, normal cooker list would stay as is mostly, for general stuff
> that affects everyone or more than one or two focused areas.
> 
> WDYT?
> 
> Warly, you have mentioned this before, is it worthwhile doing?

You know I used to fall in the I don't like this category... But I'd
have to say I agree with this.  I'm 10,000 emails behind on this list.
Mostly because other things have come up and I just haven't had time to
keep up with the list.  As a result my contributions are down.  If I can
just not receive KDE/Gnome/and other things I don't really care about it
would save me time.  

Part of the reason I fall behind is because I set cooker mail not to
download when I go on vacation.  I just don't have the time to be
downloading all of this email when I'm on dialup.  If I actually knew
the majority of it was relevent then great I probably would.  But
99.9999% of this list is entirely worthless to me.

Back when Bugzilla was put in place I suggested that bugs only be sent
to the list for the first bug report (so people see the reports) and
then the rest would happen off the list.  If you cared about a bug you
subscribed to it.  If you didn't then you wouldn't see it after the
first entry.  We really aren't taking full advantage of the power of
Bugzilla... Why shove every bug report and comment down everyone's email
pipe?  It's entirely wasteful of our time to delete stuff we just don't
care about.

As far as scoring and filtering...  That only works if people write
proper email subjects and that doesn't always happen.  Of course a huge
problem around here is that certain people always assume that there's no
point in doing anything because the majority of people are stupid or
something.  It's like my suggestions to update the documentation on
building rpms, which was responding with essentially "Why nobody reads
it?"  

Automation requires time to setup and tweak to what you want and even
then isn't entirely accurate.  Separating the lists out won't be
entirely accurate, but it moves the job of sorting from the receiver and
puts it on the sender.  Rather than have many of us redoing the same
work only one person has to do it that way...

Will people abuse multiple lists?  Yes
Will people ignore the proper lists?  Yes

But these aren't any different than the existing problems we have.
People already abuse this list.  People already ignore the proper lists
here and already set bad subjects which make filtering difficult.
Splitting the list isn't an argument to solve these problems.  It is an
argument to solve the problems that can be solved, the emails from
conciencious people.  

Further, splitting the list won't harm anyone anyway.  If some people
really want a master list just make another list that is subscribed to
all the other lists.  Then the people that want to get everything can
and can use their filtering.  Those that want to limit what they want to
receive can.  Everyone is happy.  Problem solved.

-- 
Ben Reser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://ben.reser.org

"What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can
no longer believe you." -- Nietzsche

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