Re: is this list alive?

On Tue, 2005-03-22 at 21:32 +0100, Maik Schreiber wrote:
> >>I subscribed to this list last week to watch closely the development
> >>of gentoo installer, but so far, it's dead.
> > 
> > Many/most of us prefer to talk in the #gentoo-installer IRC room at
> > Freenode.
> 
> I really think this is an incredibly bad idea because it doesn't take into 
> account the different time zones or working times of the folks watching the 
> project and possibly wanting to help out. In my opinion the mailing list 
> should be the central place to discuss things, not some direct messaging 
> systems or IRC. Even if that means discussions would be slowed down.

You're new here, aren't you?  *grin*

I would bet that most discussion for Gentoo happens on IRC and not on
the mailing lists.  Things that are widely affecting tend to hit the
lists, but general development discussion usually does not.

Personally, I dislike mailing lists for discussions, as they tend to
gain a lot of heat with little resolution.  Look at any of the
discussions on the gentoo-dev list as opposed to the logs of the
manager's meetings.  You'll see flames galore on the mailing list, and
the meetings tend to stay on-topic.  I prefer to do my coordination on
IRC and not a mailing list.  A list tends to slow development, as you
said.  In cases of Release Engineering, where we are on a schedule, this
sort of delay is unacceptable.  Imagine if I sent an email to someone on
the opposite side of the world just to ask a question.  This would be an
immediate 24 hour delay.  Now imagine trying to get anything done that
is time sensitive with such a delay.  I've worked on projects where
email was the primary means of communication across geographically
diverse teams and trust me, it was a waste of all of our time.  So much
so, that we ended up using voice calls most of the time anyway.  Being
able to quickly ask a question about, for instance, an eclass and
getting an instant answer means that I am able to continue working
immediately, without having to wait hours or possible even days before I
can return to the task.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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