On Wed, 2008-04-16 at 18:21 -0400, Gwern Branwen wrote: > Hi everyone. So I happened to notice > <http://lists.osuosl.org/pipermail/darcs-users/2008-April/011722.html> while > searching today: > > > 'Whoa. For those who didn't follow the link, it's to an announcement on > > darcs-devel that Darcs 2.0.0 has been released. > > > I'm subscribed to darcs-users because I thought it would bring me that > > kind of information. Was it a deliberate choice not to announce it > > here, or just an oversight?' > > It turns out to have been an oversight, but I still think it's worth noting. > > While we're revamping darcs and project structures and merging development > branches, perhaps we should merge the two mailing lists. > > This strikes me as a good idea. Two mailing lists is adding complexity beyond > what is necessary; if you really want to follow darcs, you have to subscribe > to both, and that leads to confusion sometimes. (Not to tout myself, but I > didn't even realize there was a mailing list beyond darcs-dev until today.) I wasn't aware that, as a user, I needed to be on the -dev list. Granted that if I "really" wanted to follow darcs I would be. > > Further, looking through March on darcs-users > <http://lists.osuosl.org/pipermail/darcs-users/2008-March/thread.html>, I see > a lot of stuff which is quite obviously -dev business, like this one: > <http://lists.osuosl.org/pipermail/darcs-users/2008-March/011593.html>. > That looks like a user-level question, though maybe only a developer can answer it. (If the questioner really wanted to know the internal implementation it might be a developer question, but it looks to me like someone who just wants to get something to work).
> Doesn't look like anyone answered him. That's not so good. If merging the lists produced more answers, that would be good. > > This wouldn't cause any problems, I don't think. -user has a significant > trend downward to somewhere around 30KB a month from 300KB in April 2005, > while -devel is still a active mailing list. Your point seems to be that adding -user wouldn't raise the traffic on -dev much. My concern is more that adding -dev to user could raise the traffic and "noise" (from my perspective) on that list. As I said, if that's the trade off for a better chance of getting an answer, then I personally think it's worth it. David Roundy was very helpful in answering some questions I had a few months ago, and I do wonder if his announcement that he was focusing on development means that if I asked those questions now they would go unanswered. (It also means I'm not sure if I should keep him on the cc list. Sorry if you didn't want to get this!) > > I'd note that while -users and -dev may be a traditional split, it isn't > necessary. XMonad and Yi get along fine with a single mailing list to which > developers and users both subscribe, and in my experience, they're better > projects (lighter-weight, better consensuses, a faster & more user-driven dev > cycle) for not being segmented. In short, I see no downside to a single > 'darcs' mailing list subsuming darcs-dev and darcs-users. > > Thoughts? I know from #darcs that I'm not alone in this sentiment. As you can probably tell, as someone who gets way too much email, I'm not crazy about getting more. I can live with either separate or unified lists. Ross _______________________________________________ darcs-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/darcs-users
