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RE: [birt-dev] Thoughts about the mailing lists and newsgroup
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I share Wenfeng's concerns about multiple mailing lists being a source
of confusion. As an example, we repeatedly see posts to birt-dev that
should go to the newsgroup -- and we are clear about what should go
where on the birt web pages.
For many, the differences between the two mailing lists would just be
too subtle. In fact, as I look at the potential organization below, in
some cases it is not clear to me what would go where, or I can see areas
of confusion. Examples:
- Discussion on a BPS? If we made the announcement List A, then this is
going to get discussion on List A.
- Wiki changes: Community items on one list and committer on another?
- Build status -- does this just go to the committer list? Non-committer
developers work with the latest-and-greatest for their products so they
would want to see these.
Even if we were to answer each of the above items, there are many more
scenarios.
Perhaps the only clear case would be to have a separate mailing list for
commit/check-in notices. These are most likely to be of interest to
committers only, and the definition of the mailing list is fairly clear.
But even in this case, I can see where it would not work -- perhaps a
developer makes a Commit that prompts a discussion on the purpose of
that commit, this then naturally expands into a discussion of the bigger
feature, and that discussion should get community input -- which would
be better on the "community" list.
Net is that I agree with Wenfeng that one list is much simpler and
avoids confusion. I also would like to hear from other members of the
community though.
Paul.
-----Original Message-----
From: birt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:birt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Wenfeng Li
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 8:46 AM
To: Susan Cline; birt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [birt-dev] Thoughts about the mailing lists and newsgroup
Hi, Susan
The birt dev mailing list has been useful to the birt committers. I
vote for not changing it.
The check in messages and daily build status messages are important
information for contributors who want to keep up with birt development.
With that said, mine is only one vote. Let's hear from other
committers.
wenfeng
-----Original Message-----
From: "Susan Cline" <home4slc@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "birt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx" <birt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 1/30/07 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: [birt-dev] Thoughts about the mailing lists and newsgroup
Hi Wenfeng,
I'm glad to hear you like the idea of additional topics/contents on the
mailing list. However, I'm still thinking that two mailing lists would
enable greater community involvement. Let me try to explain further,
and add proposed mailing list names to clarify their purpose;
Mailing List A: birt-commits or birt-checkins checkins, build status,
updates, API changes, BPS announcements, wiki additions/change notices
(Other than BPS announcements .. and maybe these should be moved to
Mailing List B, it seems as though most of these types of posts are
mostly automatically generated? Maybe this is another way to easily
divide the content?)
To re-iterate contributors, committers, and community members would not
use this list for discussion, but as a notification of changes only
mailing list.
Mailing List B: birt-dev or birt-community 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.
I believe one of the goals of the BIRT project is to attract, retain and
grow the community. Also, the majority of community members are not
interested in the contents of what I am calling the birt-commits mailing
list.
If someone is just starting to learn about BIRT, and wants to
contribute, my thoughts are that they will be much more prone to be
active in the community if they can subscribe to the birt-community
mailing list versus the birt-commits mailing list.
Although all subscribers to the existing mailing list coud create
filters to remove the notification items, I wouldn't expect community
members would want to do this, and I would assert that this would be an
impediment to their engagement in discussions.
I do understand that it is difficult to always get the correct type of
post for each mailing list, however, I think the above division is
fairly clear, and folks can always subscribe to both. Other than the
community being confused about which list to post to are there other
reasons for not having two mailing lists?
Regards,
Susan
----- Original Message ----
From: Wenfeng Li <wli@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Susan Cline <home4slc@xxxxxxxxxxx>; birt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 4:14:12 PM
Subject: RE: [birt-dev] Thoughts about the mailing lists and newsgroup
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:
http://dev.eclipse.org/newslists/news.eclipse.birt/msg16235.html
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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