Re: Mailing list cleanup proposal

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

On Sun, Dec 01, 2002 at 12:50:16AM +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote: 
> My point is, do we want to continue with the hackers/private configuration
> oddness, or simplify and discard the confusing lists? (On top of that, the
> policy for gnome-hackers is non-existent, so it's extra painful to have all
> this on top.)

Reading the -private archives, it has been used for:

 - flames that were not very diplomatically phrased, probably on
   -private to avoid news stories about them. (you have to hate "article
   based on a flamewar on a mailing list" journalism)

 - announcements such as "Sun is getting involved," to avoid spoiling
   press releases. (In fact we have a policy that releases go to
   -private slightly in advance.)

 - discussion of not-yet-disclosed security issues (this is probably a
   bad idea in fact; typically these issues are intended to be
   need-to-know)

 - a job ad or two

The private list is problematic because:

 - it isn't really that private, it has a few hundred people on there

 - the few hundred people on there are sort of random
   (especially now that we have d-d-l I bet people don't bother 
   to ask to be on gnome-hackers).

Still, in the case of press releases, it has allowed some interesting
news to go more public than "board members only" a bit sooner than it
otherwise would have. In those cases it kept the broader community
more informed.

Also, the flames on there were perhaps better off posted than fumed
about quietly, though who knows.

Havoc