ThorstenLeemhuis/MailingListReorganization

= Mailing list reorganization =

A lot of contributors in the past yelled "there are to many mailing lists; that is contra-productive and leads to a lot of cross-posing and confusion " (this is the short explanation without all the boring details). Thus the idea came up to revisit some of the mailing lists that got created in the past years since Fedora was born and do some adjustments here and there.

That means mainly: shut some down and adjust the usage model/name of some of the others. This will be a really complex task and we likely can't make everybody happy with it, but we at least hope to improve the situation.

The Fedora Board asked me, ThorstenLeemhuis (knurd), to drive this task months ago -- I stopped working further on it as the Core and Extras merge was more important; then there were the Board and FESCo elections due -- those are finished now or will be finished soon, so I thought it would be wise to either do it now (or never).

You can find my proposal below; comments much appreciated. Feel free to write a counter proposal if you think I did stuff (totally) wrong or if you think I ignored your comments (I read all those from the earlier discussion, but as I wrote: we can't make everyone happy -- but I'm trying my best to find a compromise thats better that what we have today and is acceptable for most of us).

Quick overview
The details how do to the mailing list reorganization can be found below, but here is a quick summary for those that don't care about them.

List adjustments
The goal is to touch these lists:


 * fedora-cvs-commits


 * fedora-extras-commits


 * fedora-extras-steering


 * fedora-maintainers


 * fedora-qa-list


 * fedora-test-list


 * fedora-triage-list

And have these in the end:


 * fedora-devel-users


 * fedora-pkgs-commits


 * fedora-fesco

Other adjustments
Short term: create a alias @lists.fedoraproject.org under which the current and all the new lists are accessible.

Long term: have a own mailman frontpage on lists.fedoraproject.org that lists only mailing lists used by the Fedora Project.

Details how to achieve that end-goal
Some lists get renamed (http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=all#4.70 ; users thus don't have to care about re-subscribing; Note that in the past, there has been resistance to doing list renames like this. Perhaps that's changed, but it needs investigating; do all the renames in one step if possible) and some get closed, with the old users invited (not subscribed) to another list.

fedora-extras-commits

 * Background: get rid of the term "extras"


 * Successor: fedora-pkgs-commits


 * Adjustment strategy: rename list to fedora-pkgs-commits directly under the hood of mailman

fedora-extras-steering

 * Background: get rid of the term "extras"


 * Successor: fedora-fesco (or just fesco? but we have the fedora-prefix everywhere else, so better not)


 * Adjustment strategy: rename list

fedora-maintainers

 * Background: not that different from fedora-devel in topics these days; closed list for contributors, but has seen flamewars and noise nevertheless; and we have fedora-devel-announce now to make sure people notice important changes


 * Successor: fedora-devel-list


 * Adjustment strategy: invite people to successor-list (most are likely subscribed there already)

fedora-qa-list

 * Background: Not much traffic. We further should be able to assume that all users on fedora-devel-users are kind of testers/qa, so why not use that list for the QA discussions as well?


 * Successor: fedora-devel-users


 * Adjustment strategy: close list, invite users to successor

fedora-test-list

 * Background: A lot of people never got the difference between fedora-devel and fedora-test list and ask users support questions on fedora-devel. One of the reasons for this is that it was not obvious what "testing" means. Another reason: we answered those users question on fedora-devel, even if they were not on topic (and thus those and other users thought it was on topic there).


 * Successor: fedora-devel-users


 * Adjustment strategy: rename list


 * Other benefits: We can point users that come up with question on devel to that list

fedora-triage-list

 * Background: Not used much anymore.


 * Successor: fedora-devel-users


 * Adjustment strategy: close list, invite users to fedora-devel-users

Not sure
There are some list where I'm not sure if we still need them and/or need to adjust their policy.

fedora-advisory-list / fedora-project
There was the idea to rename fedora-advisory-list to fedora-project list. But fedora-advisory-list works well, so maybe it's better to not touch it... Should we nevertheless create a fedora-project list as discussion list for Fedora-wide things where different groups (packagers, art, docs, EPEL, ...) can share informations -- we don't have such a place currently and some people seem to miss it

fedora-desktop-list
Had not that much traffic months ago, but in the recent two months it increased a bit again; but the stuff that got posted on this list was not that much different from stuff discussed on other lists. The name is confusing as well -- people using Fedora on their desktops now and then thought this is the proper list for usage questions. We could redirect users to fedora-devel-list and fedora-devel-users; or, if we want to keep the list, consider to rename it to fedora-desktop-developers.

jeremy> fedora-desktop-devel seems like a reasonable compromise. Having the separate list for desktop development discussion is definitely worthwhile. Just need to make it clearer that cross-posting is grounds for being thrown off the list (j/k :-)

fedora-devel-list
There were some different ideas for it floating around. One round about was: rename to something else (fedora-developers; that gets rid of the -list postfix as well) and let only real "developers" (Fedora or other distributions packagers; people participating in developing in software we ship or is well known; well known people active in Linux or Fedora-related projects) post freely to that list. Set the moderation flag for all the others initially until they have shown to understand the purpose of this list.

Whatever we do with fedora-devel: with fedora-devel-users in place we should enforce its use and point users *and developers* that on fedora-devel ask questions about using to fedora-devel-users in the future.

fedora-list
This is mostly a list where users help he other. fedora-users would thus be a proper name that would make its use obvious. But would renaming be worth the trouble? Maybe keep it in mind for the longer term

Other lists and misc stuff
Some other ideas floating around that I left out of the proposal for now, as they are not yet thought until the end or quite complex.


 * Some people questioned the needs for these lists.


 * fedora-r-devel-list


 * fedora-xen

Ask the list-maintainers if separate lists really make sense for these topics and let them decide how to move on


 * should we have a official mailing list coordinator that has to ACK new mailing lists?


 * what about fedora-laptop-list? Rename it to fedora-hardware or get rid of this completely (having a dedicated list for hardware issues might be acceptable and the best compromise).

Mailman guidelines
While at it let's define a standard look-and-feel for mailing lists as well, to avoid that people that are subscribed to multiple Fedora mailing lists get confused due to different setting on out lists (which happens). the individual mailing list admins are *strongly* encouraged to follow these guidelines, but they don't have to, *if* there are good reason for it (no, "I like foo better" is not a good reason!).

Suggested settings (can all be found on the first mailman settings page)


 * the reply-to should not be modified by mailman (first_strip_reply_to = no)
 * the reply-to should point to the list (reply_goes_to_list = this list)
 * no explicit Reply-to-Address (reply_to_address = )
 * no tagging (subject_prefix = )

To -list or not to list
With lists.fedoraproject.org on the horizon the domainname will make it obvious that one is posting to the list, thus the plan is to not have the "-list" postfix in new lists, as that shorter to type and thus easier for everyone.

rawhide reports
Send them to a specific channel on fedora-package-announc and only to one other list -- fedora-devel-users

updates-testing announcements
Create another channel in fedora-package-announce where those kind of reports get mailed to. f13 and wwoods considered that already and are evaluating.