Re: [PHP-WEBMASTER] Is there a discussion-only list

On 9/01/11 5:15 AM, Hannes Magnusson wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 18:40, Daniel Brown<[email protected]>  wrote:
>> On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 12:25, Paul Dragoonis<[email protected]>  wrote:
>>>
>>> wiki accounts, karma requests, svn commits are really only directed at
>>> people who are involved in the development of php stuff.

Or perhaps even further restricted to the people responsible for
maintaining it. Events too. From my viewpoint, this stuff is only
interesting to people what can actually do something about it (people
with commit access, or who are admins of the wiki or whatever).

>>> Usually what happens is when you see a commit, you reply to it and
>>> start a conversation about it. I think if you want to start a
>>> discussion about a commit but if that turns into a debate with more
>>> than 2 people it should move to php-webmaster to get more peoples
>>> opinions on it.

That makes a lot of sense to me.

>>     I agree with separating the discussions and system messages, but
>> want to see it done differently than suggested so far.  Historically,
>> we've always used the webmaster@ and php-webmaster@ addresses (and the
>> correlating list) for system messages (CVS/SVN commits, site bug
>> reports, event and calendar submissions, et cetera), as well as a
>> first point of contact for anything related to the php.net website.
>> I'd not only like to see it stay that way, but also revert the change
>> for events, so that they'll be emailed in real-time like they always
>> had been (but that's not entirely relevant to this discussion).

That sounds good to me, except I can imagine emails from real users,
e.g. to webmaster@ could be redirected to the discussion list, i.e.
'first point of contact' stuff. Essentially, I imagine one list where
the posters are mainly human, and one where the posts are automatically
generated in some way.

>>     In order to really keep this separate, what about the creation of
>> a list specifically related to the tasks at hand, such as ui@ or
>> site-ui@?  There are a variety of pragmatic options, I just don't
>> believe that shifting things entirely and rededicating this list is
>> one of them.  That, and, it's a hell of a lot less work to move new
>> discussions to a new list and just have everyone subscribe there.

I suggest subscribing everybody and just letting people unsubscribe if
they wish. Conceptually it's more like splitting the current list than
creating a new one.

> I really do not see the need for a specific discussion list which will
> after January/February get one, maybe 2, emails a year.

Yeah, I don't think the list should be restricted to the current work,
but just for any website-related discussion. For instance, I am here
because I'm interested in the bug tracker and working on making it more
useable by other projects. I haven't raised the matter yet, though.

I hope the PHP website is considered important enough to be discussed,
rather than just left to rot and only touched by a few core developers
who react to the system messages.

> I recommend that these<10 new subscribers create filters to deal with
> mails they don't care about :)

This isn't always an option. In my case, I'm not particularly keen to do
this, as from time to time I'm away from home and on a slow and pricey
connection. I'd rather not wait and pay for a bunch of downloaded
messages I know I'm not interested in, even if that time and money can
be automatically rather than manually wasted. But I'd still like to keep
abreast of discussions.

> An specific commit list for /repository/web/* (minus peclweb) would
> however make sense imo.
>
> And if the 'system messages' are supposed to be kicked off too.. I
> ph33r we get into the same situation as with the manual notes;
> ignored.

I guess how annoying they are depends on their volume. If there's only
one every few days it'd be alright.

I'm not sure the reasoning is very sound, though. The whole point is
that I'm ignoring these messages anyway, and I'd like not to receive
them. Stopping me receiving them isn't going to make me ignore them--I'm
already doing that. I imagine that is the case for anyone wishing to opt
out of them.

Just a few more ideas from me!

Cheers,

Ben.