On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 02:00:05PM +0200, Warly wrote:
> IMNSHO:
> 
> - I have no problem with the current cooker.

Yes and you get paid to read the list.  I don't.  If you wanna pay me to
read the list then I'll suddenly be okay with spending a lot of time
reading stuff that doesn't matter much.  I read the list so I can help
fix problems and get a better distribution.  For my effort I do get the
reward of my issues being fixed (sometimes).  However, Mandrakesoft
receives many times the reward for my effort.  It's surprising that
Mandrakesoft consistently seems to be unwilling to decrease my cost (not
necessarily money) in helping them get a better distribution.

> - 500 mails a day is about 2 MB, which represents 5 min of a 56k modem
> connection. However the bandwith argument is still valid to my mind.

It's not about bandwidth for me.  When I'm at home on my fast connection
I don't care.  It's about time and energy.  When I'm away on vacation
and on a 56k modem the time that it takes to download is definately more
than 5 minutes and is definately not worth the effort.  Why?  Because
there is so much noise.  Most of the list is utterly uninteresting for
most of the people on the list.

As I said before the argument for filtering and scoring is weak.
Everyone has to go to a great deal of effort (I'd argue so much that it
negates teh value in doing so) to set such a thing up.  Split lists
provide a way that the effort of filtering is distributed to everyone,
sometimes people won't do their part to do the filtering right,
sometimes I won't agree with how they filtered things.  That isn't
really all that different from those that have filters and scoring now.
I doubt those people can seriously claim that their filters and scoring
always pull the right mail out.

> - I agree that some people have various interests and are not
> interested in such or such topics.
> 
> - You are the guys who participate to cooker freely as an help to
> Mandrakesoft, and it should be at your convenience to decide what to
> do (however we can consider that this a community stuff that should be
> decided by all the active contributors)

So how exactly do we vote?  Who gets a vote?  What constitutes an active
contributor?  Who's going to tabulate the votes?  I'm somewhat skeptical
of this.  I've yet to see Mandrakesoft actually act on any sort of
"vote."  Usually we're just told how things are and we can either deal
with them or not.  If there's change afoot to deal with things
differently than they have in the past in that regard well great.  I'll
reserve my judgement till we see what happens here.

> - I agree that multiple list will favor crosspost of people not knowing
> where to ask.

That's why you write clear charters of where to send stuff.  And tell
everyone if in doubt send to the main cooker list.  There will always be
people who read all of the lists and those people (employees and highly
active contributors) will very likely nudge things in the right
direction.  This already happens now with support issues for the
released distros, why would it be any different for split lists?

> - I agree that more mails will be missed because KDE team will not go
> the installation list checking if there is some stuff for them and
> vice et versa (bad example ? :).

Split lists aren't for the convience of the employees it is for the
convience of those that don't spend full time working on it.  If the
employees are that worried that they will miss something they can always
subscribe to all the lists or a master list that is subscribed to all
the lists as I've suggested previously on this thread.

> - I do not agree with the bugzilla mails having a special list, nobody
> will cc to the bug nor read the bugs ml, even if the bug is first sent
> to cooker. I think that the bugs comments are part of the general
> discussion on the developement, and should be considered as equivalent
> to cooker thread.

Part of the use of Bugzilla is allowing people to limit down the amount
of things they have to see.  This response seems just as flawed as the
arguments against using Bugzilla in the first place.  The benefits of
using Bugzilla are numerous...

a) I get to pick and choose *BEFORE* tons of mail gets to me what I see.
b) If someone mentions a bug id to me it is easy to bring it up, see
exactly what has happened to it and read it.  Instead of having to try
and have them (or myself) find the thread on one of the archives.
c) If a bug proves to be uninteresting then I can remove myself from the
CC list.
d) Bugs can be reassigned to more appropriate people/lists taking along with
them all of the previous commentary.
e) It provides an opportunity to require things to be escalated before
employees see it.

Would people not CC to bugs?  Well that's really an unknown question.  We
haven't tried it yet.  The argument that people would file bugs against
the wrong component has proved be a minor issue, they simply get refiled
against the right one.  If someone chooses not to CC to a bug it's
easily fixed in the future, it's easy to find the ongoing conversation
all you need is the bug id.

People also argued that nobody would use it or that there would be too
many crappy bugs for the developers to handle.  As far as I can tell
that hasn't been the case.  Most things get reported on it and the bad
bugs get closed quickly, often by community people who see it first
rather than by an employee.  What's the point of the voting if everyone
is reading the list and reading all the bug reports then?  It sure isn't
saving developer time.

Frankly, I think it's an easy experiment to try... and an easy one to
switch back from if it doesn't work...  You could be right, it may not
work.  But what's the point of arguing about it when we can just try it?
Same goes for the split lists.  If it fails, just point all the list
addresses back to a main one...

-- 
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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