On 3/14/06, Simon Kitching <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I was just considering proposing exactly this! > > The issues about groupings, subprojects, etc. are completely irrelevant > it seems to me. A community is the set of people subscribed to emails > about a particular project, no more and no less. > > Unfortunately the way email lists are currently run at apache forces a > strict hierarchy onto community structure, and forces a choice between > coarse-grained and fine-grained style communities (eg one commons list > vs one-per-project). PMCs are structured hierarchically, and that is > reasonable, but communities don't need to be this way. > > The perfect system, to me, would be a website that allows a user to > register a username/email-address; the process would confirm that the > user's email address is valid. > > A set of checkboxes would allow a user to "subscribe" to various lists, > or to virtual groupings such as "jakarta commons" which would implicitly > subscribe to the list for every project that is tagged as being a > jakarta-commons project. Of course this implies fine-grained email lists > (ie one for each project); the problems of partitioning the subscriber > base too much is avoided by the existence of the groupings. > > This system would allow overlapping groups to occur; for example > commons-digester can be filed under both "commons" and "xml" virtual > groups; someone subscribing to *either* group would receive > digester-related emails. It also allows projects to move from one PMC > to another without destroying the existing community (which *is* the set > of people receiving emails). > > Groups also allow new projects to be created and added to the group; all > people subscribed to the group would then automatically get emails > related to that new project. > > Any list which has less than 3 subscribers would automatically forward > its emails to the PMC list (or similar) for purposes of oversight. > > Any person subscribed to 3 or more projects associated with "commons" > would automatically be subscribed to the whole commons group (or maybe > just sent a weekly nag email recommending they do so). That hopefully > allows casual commons developers to get just postings for one or two > projects, without destroying the useful commons-wide community that > exists now. > > Having a single point for managing subscriptions would also help greatly > with something that regularly frustrates me: suspending subscription > when I'm away on holiday. Currently, I need to unsubscribe to > half-a-dozen lists then resubscribe on return. > > This sort of functionality probably already exists in one of the > open-source mailing list management packages; it isn't anything radical > as far as I can see.
Perhaps a forum frontend would be even better for users, at least for non-power-users. For instance, from what Patrick Lightbody told me about OpenQA, they have a system that is both a forum and a mailing list: any forum entry gets posted to the list, and any mail posted to the list appears in the forum (e.g. see the Selenium forum at http://forums.openqa.org/forum.jspa?forumID=3). I haven't used it myself yet, but I could ask him if there is interest in the technical details. cheers, Tom --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
