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Re: [eclipse.org-committers] What is appropriate use of this list

Masterson, Michael P wrote:
I agree that this list should remain open to all committers.  My general
view on distribution lists is that they should for the most part be one
way communicaions.  There are exceptions, for instance if there are some
generic questions/answers that should be seen by the entire committer
community.  Or things like this where the community at large could be
affected by its outcome.
I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but all projects have the ability to use either CVS or SVN at Eclipse as we maintain both. Discussion about the advantages or disadvantages of either *at Eclipse* are pretty important in my opinion, and they do affect the entire community substantively. With the exception of the very beginning of the discussion, I personally find it hard to find fault with any of the comments made, and particularly not at the point where you felt it was appropriate to cut off discussion. At that very point Walter was informing a committer who clearly did not know (and is definitely not the only one, I can tell you) about the IP cleanliness policy. I'm not sure what could have been more germane, even given your definition above.

But when a discussion starts to de-evolve into a "I think this", "Well I
think that" topic these emails start to lose credibility and importance
to me.  I think it would be nice if such a thing starts to happen that
the originator or someone involved in the discussion create a thread in
a message board and provide a link so that only interested parties can
be involved further.  In fact, an originator's responsibility should be
to consider whether the topic might warrant wide spread feedback and
provide an offline forum in their post.
When I'm on a list where a particular discussion, not the whole list, but a particular thread loses interest to me, I simply filter it. It takes practically no time or effort to do it.

I really think that the majority of the emails I get through this list
ARE important and warrant my attention.  I am interested in what other
projects are doing and in designer news/tips regarding eclipse.  I just
hope people treat such a large distro with the respect it deserves.
Well there will certainly be cases where people post things that aren't quite right for the target of the list. But as we grow as a community and the appropriateness of certain discussions is made clear I expect that concern will diminish. And we can always gently remind people of how we've decided to use this list, once we've done that.

Karl


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