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RE: [birt-dev] Thoughts about the mailing lists and newsgroup
Title: Message
Hi, Susan
 
+1 for your idea of the contents that can be posted to the birt-dev mailing list.  And it is even better if the community can tag/syndicate threads in the mailing list to the BIRT wiki site for commonly interested topics, such as how to build from head version. 
 
But  I vote for having one mailing list for all those contents, since different user might want different subset of the content. It is difficult to have a division that meets everyone's need.   Requiring user to always use the right mailing list is also not easy.   Even with published the guideline, we still see user reporting bugs, asking usage questions in the birt-dev mailing list.    I expect same will happen that the user community will not know which mailing list to use when they want to send a message.
 
If you would like to avoid getting too many emails about the check in notice and daily build status message to the birt-dev mailing list, one approach is to set up a auto processing rule in your email client to look for all emails with "check in:" or daily build status titles, then move them to a folder or delete them.
 
Regards,
 
Wenfeng
 
-----Original Message-----
From: birt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:birt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Susan Cline
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 2:21 PM
To: birt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [birt-dev] Thoughts about the mailing lists and newsgroup

Hi,
 
The BIRT web site makes it pretty clear about what the newsgroup and birt-dev mailing lists are for.
 
From the Community page:
 

The BIRT newsgroup is for users of the project to ask questions, discuss ideas and so on. Join in and get involved!

 
birt-dev (archive) Development discussions about BIRT of interest to all BIRT committers. Topics include PMC meeting minutes, source code structure, CVS management, and integration among the various BIRT components.
 
It seems like discussion of ideas tends to get lost in the newsgroup posts.  BIRT users post specific technical questions in the newsgroup, but very few discussions occur.
 
Also, the birt-dev mailing list is intended to be limited to information of interest to BIRT committers.  This seems appropriate, but it appears that most of the posts to this mailing list are check-ins, updates or build status reports.  These may be helpful to existing BIRT committers, but for new contributors who are trying to learn BIRT, not a lot of information is obtained from these posts, to actually help contributors understand how to develop in BIRT.
 
I was wondering if an additional mailing list could be created that would help new developers and community members to discuss ideas and share their thoughts about infrastructure suggestions.  For instance, yesterday and today there has been some exchange of ideas on the organization of the wiki, with the unlikely subject line of: stored procedure in data set:
 
 
I think it would be great to get more community input on how the wiki and website are organized to increase involvement by the community, as well as increase the quality of the information, but I fear that folks won't see this discussion when it is buried in a post with that subject heading.
 
My thoughts are to have two mailing lists with the following purposes:
 
Mailing list A: checkins, build status, updates, API changes, BPS announcements, wiki additions/change notices
 
Mailing list B: Community and development discussions: How to build, how to debug?  Suggestions / thoughts about the community - changes to the website and/or wiki, project specification proposals/submissions, PMC minutes (the entire community may be interested in these, not just committers), design discussions.
 
Comments?  Objections? Does this make sense?  Would folks be opposed to having two mailing lists?
 
One of the reasons I was thinking this would be helpful is just as discussions get lost in the newsgroup, discussions are lost in birt-dev with the number of check-ins and update notices.
 
Also, per the newsgroup discussion I cited above, I think it would be helpful if wiki additions/updates could be subscribed to by either joining Mailing List A, or by possibly adding a mechanism to the wiki itself that would allow community members to be notified of wiki changes.
 
By doing so the community could become more responsive / responsible for the content of the wiki, versus leaving committers to do the bulk of the work.
 
Regards,
 
Susan

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