On Fri, 19 Oct 2001, Bojan Smojver wrote:
> Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 08:59:27 +1000 > From: Bojan Smojver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To: Tomcat Dev List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Mailing list proposal > > I have subscribed myself to Tomcat User list a few days back with the > intention to help a few people on it (given my +1 on TC 3.3 final). I > have to say that the amount of e-mails and sometimes the superficial > nature of them prevented me from actually doing any useful work. Don't > know about the rest of you guys, but I really can't go through 200 > something Tomcat e-mails every day, just to weed out the good questions > from the bad ones. > Tell me about it :-). I've gotten to the point where it takes < 15 minutes to weed out the 90% of the questions that I'm not interested in (or don't know enough to) answer and then delete 'em. But the "interesting" questions can still be pretty time consuming. > Although Tomcat Dev list is usually kept to the point, I think the > amount of traffic on it warrants a change too. > > So, at risk of being ridiculed or flamed, I propose this: > > 1. Tomcat User list should split into Tomcat 3 and Tomcat 4 lists I don't really like this idea, for the following reasons: * It relies on users understanding which list to use. While the version they are running is a lot more rational than some of the ways that have been suggested (i.e. Beginner vs. Advanced), you'd be amazed how many people don't know which version they are using, and don't know how to find out. :-) * Lots of users use both, especially if they are faced with transitioning a pile of already-deployed apps. * Lots of issues are common to both (i.e. all the generic servlet/JSP programming things), so you'll get lots of cross-posts anyway. * Lots of question-answering developers would need to subscribe to both anyway (see below for that). > > 2. Tomcat Dev list should split into Tomcat 3 and Tomcat 4 lists > I really don't (note the intentional inversion :-) like this idea: * It's taken a long time for TOMCAT-DEV to get to the point where we basically thought we were all on the same team. Splitting lists would tend to undo that. * Now that 3.2 is basically done, and 3.3 is about to go final, lots of 3.x developers seem to be ready or willing to work on both, so they'd have to subscribe to both anyway. * Fewer issues would get cross posted due to relevance to both, but there's still quite a number of them. > 3. There should be Tomcat Connectors lists as well (both Dev and User) > since there are many questions related to connectors alone (and j-t-c is > a separate beast in CVS these days anyway) > I'm not sure that the way CVS is organized is all that compelling a reason to organize the mailing lists. You do these things for different reasons. At any rate, I don't mind seeing the developer traffic about connectors even though I'm not directly involved in those efforts. > 4. There should be a web form for submitting serious questions to Tomcat > User list. This form would force the users (that really need developers > attention) to fill in all relevant information, rather then just ask > superficial questions which create a lot of noise on the list. The page > http://jakarta.apache.org/site/mail.html should make it clear that > questions submitted through the form would probably get more attention > then other 'user-to-user' questions. It would be easy for the developers > to recognize and respond to 'properly formatted' questions, rather then > waste time on browsing through hundreds of e-mails every day. > It's certainly technically feasible to do this. Are you volunteering to set this all up, be the moderator, and hound developers until we answer the questions? :-) > Bojan > Craig
