[eclipse-dev] mailing lists and newsgroups

[Ben Konrath <ben@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I would like to take a bit of time to explain my inflammatory comments
from yesterday. My comments weren't directed at anyone specifically, but
were intended to be a bit of a criticism of some aspects of how the
Eclipse project is run. Looking back, I should have taken the time to
flush out my criticism and said this instead ...

It's very common for Eclipse "users" to post messages to the mailing
lists instead of to the newsgroups. Part of the reason for this is that
it is *very* uncommon to separate user and development communities into
newsgroups and mailing lists. Because the majority of people working on
Eclipse are employees of IBM, I feel that there is a big separation
between IBM employees and others. To me, the mailing lists vs.
newsgroups is just another thing that promotes this separation, even if
it's only a perceived separation. 

As far as communication is concerned, there is no significant difference
between mailing lists and newsgroups. However, the way that they are
used on eclipse.org seems to be different than other open source
projects and this seems to confuse some users. Also, some people find
that mailing lists are more convenient than newsgroups (the reverse may
also be true, but for that gmane.org provides a nntp <-> smtp gateway
and archive). 

Most Open Source projects that don't want to receive user questions on
development lists create user lists. Here are some recommendations to
make communication on eclipse.org better for users and developers:

* remove dead mailing list (direct people to bugzilla if it's 
  appropriate)
* combine low traffic lists that have similar nature
* change the newsgroups to user oriented mailing lists (although 
  changing this might confuse users now that it's established) 
* provide read only access to lists without the need to log in to the 
  website (of course, you should munge email addresses)

I'm sure there are other recommendations people will have. I know from
some bugs I have filed about this stuff that not all agree with me -
that's fine, this is just my opinion. Besides, I'm not running the
project :) Anyway, sorry if I offended anyone.

Cheers, Ben