Excerpts from Luigi Toscano's message of 2017-02-27 03:02:45 -0500:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> > Excerpts from Shamail Tahir's message of 2017-02-27 00:44:44 -0500:
> > > Hi Clint,
> > >
> > > On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 12:25 AM, Clint Byrum <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Excerpts from Matt Riedemann's message of 2017-02-26 19:48:50 -0600:
> > > > > On 2/26/2017 6:52 PM, Clint Byrum wrote:
> > > > > > During some productive discussions in the Stewardship Working Group
> > > > > > PTG
> > > > > > room, the subject of the mailing list came up. The usual questions
> > > > > > around whether or not we should have per-project lists came up and
> > > > > > the
> > > > > > reasons we don't were re-affirmed. To recap those reasons:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > * Cross posting is the pits
> > > > > > * People don't always know at the beginning of a thread that a
> > > > > > discussion will need to go wider, leading to silos and
> > > > > > confusion.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > So we turned to ways to help reduce peoples' load while reading
> > > > > > e-mail,
> > > > > > since many (most?) tend to opt out of reading openstack-dev.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > There are a number of ways that we can help, including teaching
> > > > > > people
> > > > > > to have more efficient workflows and use specific mail reading tools
> > > > > > (don't worry, we're not adding an NNTP gateway.. yet). But one that
> > > > > > received positive feedback from the room was to have moderated
> > > > > > business-only mailing lists for each project.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Basically, there are things that we _do_ know will not go wider when
> > > > > > the thread begins. Just running through the threads on the February
> > > > > > thread index, there are a few obvious classes:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > * Mascots
> > > > > > * Social meetups
> > > > > > * Meeting logistics
> > > > > > * Core team membership
> > > > > >
> > > >
> > > I'm curious as to how much of the traffic (such as the examples given)
> > > generates message fatigue on new users but I do appreciate that we are
> > > trying to find solutions to make it easier to enter into the mailing lists
> > > around OpenStack without having to resort to digests.
> > >
> >
> > I think it's worth analyzing it, if somebody has time. I do not. My wild
> > ass guess is between 1 and 5 percent of all messages, but probably more
> > like 5-10 percent of threads, as a lot of them are the shorter, less
> > interesting threads.
> >
> > These seem like small numbers, but cognitive load is not linear and the
> > number of threads people end up reading varies whether or not they use
> > tags.
>
> I share the feeling too that those messages are the minority of the total
> amount of real discussions, so moving them away won't address the problem and
> lead to more complication to the rest of the world.
>
Not every solution is a force multiplier. Some things are just fine
tuning. And again, cognitive load is not linear. If you are in a single
project silo, sure, these are easy to tune out. If you are trying to
work cross-project, you have to spend more time on each thread, even if
it is obvious.
> >
> > > > > There are likely others. The idea is that these messages would go into
> > > > > a
> > > > > > ${project}[email protected]. Said list would be
> > > > > > moderated
> > > > by
> > > > > > a team of the PTL's choosing, and we would admonish moderators to
> > > > reject
> > > > > > soundly any threads not obviously single project business related.
> > > >
> > > In this approach, we could send messages that fall within the ${
> > > project}[email protected] to the dev ML as well. This would
> > > allow people who want only the ${project}-business news to get the content
> > > without having to get all messages from the dev ML but at the same time
> > > allow threads to be available to both subscribers (dev and
> > > ${project}-business}.
> > >
> > > I hope we still advocate for subscribing to the openstack-dev mailing list
> > > even if a contributor is only starting with a single project (and not
> > > interested in cross-project things) because it allows for people to see
> > > conversations they might have expertise in or find a new project they want
> > > to contribute to based on learning something new about it.
> > >
> >
> > Wow, I must have failed in my wording ,sorry about that, because you
> > got it 100% backwards. The idea is that everyone stays in openstack-dev
> > for _all_ discussions (single-project as well). Only the most mundane
> > but necessary emails go on per-project "business lists". So there would
> > be zero point in ever subscribing to the business lists without also
> > subscribing to openstack-dev, and likewise, republishing business lists
> > to openstack-dev would defeat the entire point.
>
> But why not educate people about the *topic* filtering that you can enable on
> mailman directly?
> You don't need filters on your client, just go to your mailman page and
> select the topics.
>
This is not for users who only want to see some projects. That is a well
understood space and the mailman filtering does handle it. This is for
those who want to monitor the overall health of the community, address
issues with cross-project specs, or participate in so many projects it
makes little sense to spend time filtering.
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