Re: gnome-hackers is now closed

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Tue, Oct 31, 2000 at 01:40:39PM -0800 or thereabouts, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> > Well, my two weeks time-frame really isn't such a bad choice IMHO. I don't
> > see any urgent need why this needs to be done immediately - gnome-hackers
> > has always been closed and there actually was confidential material on it
> > (which most likely isn't anymore, but it was at the time it was posted).
> 
> People are already getting in the bad habit of using gnome-private for
> discussion that should not be private. I have not seen a single post
> on gnome-private that couldn't have gone to the new open gnome-hackers.

I totally agree.

Think about it. Suppose we say "Woo, gnome-hackers is now open to all"
Everyone will head for the archives, see a complete lack of posts
for the previous week, and say "Uh-huh". We're going to look stupid
and we're going to look like it got opened up and we all ran away
to talk somewhere else. Because that's what will have happened.

> > a) the whole gnome-hackers/gnome-private stuff will have settled down; ie.
> >    people will be using gnome-private as they did with gnome-hackers before
> >    without any confusion about to which list to post etc.
> 
> That's exactly the problem! People should NOT be using gnome-private
> as they used gnome-hackers before. They should use the new open
> gnome-hackers as they used gnome-hackers before, with the exception of
> the very few things that truly need to be confidential (which is
> pretty much none). We DON'T want people to start using gnome-private
> just like gnome-hackers.

Yay Maciej.

We should also be using the right lists much more. Even if Evolution
isn't stable enough for you yet :), most of us have access to mailers
which can keep track of different mailing lists. It's sheer laziness
on many people's parts: we post to g-h on the assumption that more
people concerned will read it, and the more people who do that,
the more cluttered it gets. The more cluttered it gets, the more
we unsubscribe from other lists to keep track of it. The more we
unsubscribe from other (possibly more relevant) lists, the more 
people will post here because they know that "everyone important" 
(which seems to be, "people with commit access) will read it and
many people here don't read gnome-list, gnome-devel-list, gnome-1.4-list,
 (I saw "should this be in 1.4?" resurface only this week in fact),
and all the far more specialised ones. Which means they'll post stuff
here to be sure that people read it, which means more clutter, which
means... (etc etc)

It's silly.

> I think carrying over the old archives, if at all, is a completely
> separate issue. In my opinion it's less important than making sure
> things are more open in the future.

I bet I'm not the only one who on getting onto gnome-hackers went
through a good half of the archives thinking, "So. Where is all
this exciting super-secret stuff then?" And finding about eight
posts, if that.

You almost need an X-embargo header :) "Show up in the archives
after this date". (In fact, if anyone's read David Brin's "Earth",
there's a similar concept there. Everything becomes public as a
matter of course: the only thing you can do is to delay the
publication of stuff by days, months or in serious cases, years.)

Telsa