Re: [Xen-API] Proposal to rename xen-api mailing list

[Mike McClurg <mike.mcclurg@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 17/06/13 10:38, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:
> On 17 Jun 2013, at 10:18, Lars Kurth <lars.kurth@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Anil,
> >
> > > It's quite a lot of trouble renaming mailing lists (in terms of address book 
> > > entries, archives, and so on).
> > The impact on users is fairly limited: the main impact is on the sysadmin side. 
> >  Basically we need to rebuild archives and set up redirects for archive pages 
> > and emails. This means that as a user you can keep on using the old list name 
> > (but of course it will be cleaner to use a new one). The main impact for user 
> > is on mail filters.
>  From experience, the mail filter problem is the worst one.  It's *really* 
> annoying when a mailing list I read occasionally changes its name, and it all 
> comes flooding through into my Inbox since I didn't see the change notice in 
> time (for instance, I only sample xen-devel once a month or less).
Yes, I'd rather worry about user experience than admin experience 
(sorry, Lars!).
> > > I would prefer a xapi-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx list for now, where both 
> > > developer discussion and user
> > > enquiries are welcome (i.e. this list).
> > That would be a possibility, however the reality is that today most traffic on 
> > xen-api is user traffic, with the occasional developer question. Choosing 
> > xapi-general, was a reflection of this. My personal view is to have two lists, 
> > but Mike as project lead does not agree as he is worried that the developer 
> > list would be too quiet and thus would discourage new developers. This is a 
> > valid point.
>
> I think that the problem of a "too-quiet" developer list should be tackled 
> straight away.  Combining the mailing lists only solves the symptom.  There's clearly a 
> lot of discussion about xapi that happens off-list or internally to Citrix, and that's 
> not appropriate for an open-source project that wants to attract fresh developers.
Really, I would prefer two lists, but I am worried that the xapi-devel 
list would be a bit quiet. As Anil points out, this is entirely up to us 
to fix.
> A lot of developer mail traffic is usually generated by patchbombs that elicit 
> peer review.  This doesn't really apply to Xapi since most of the discussion 
> goes on in Github now.  One solution is to gateway Github comments into a mail 
> digest to have an archive of it on the developer list.  That's a convenient way 
> to get the discussion into our mail clients for easier search, etc.
Would people find this useful, or would this just be list spam? If 
automatically generated commit mails are useful to people, then we can 
definitely bring these back. Having two lists would also help to keep 
Xapi/XCP users from having to read these (fairly boring) messages.
> Another way to generate discussion is to have a volunteer write up a monthly "xapi 
> review" that gets posted on the blog and mailing list.  See, for example, the 
> legendary Caml Weekly News that has been running for over a decade:
> http://alan.petitepomme.net/cwn/
I'm currently in the process of writing a Xapi Project Roadmap, in which 
I plan to keep updated with the output from the Xapi team's two week 
sprints. This would make perfect material for a monthly "xapi review" mail.
Would the combination of github pull request mails and monthly updates, 
in addition to the current level of dev chatter, be enough to seed these 
two lists? I think I'm in the process of swaying myself to vote for both 
-users and -devel lists. Thoughts?
Mike

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