+1 to the improved language for the dev
mailing list.
Scott Rosenbaum
From:
birt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:birt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Krishna Venkatraman
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007
12:49 AM
To: home4slc@xxxxxxxxxxx; Wenfeng
Li; birt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [birt-dev] Thoughts
about the mailing lists and newsgroup
Hi Susan,
I like your suggestions below.
Thanks!
Krishna
-----Original Message-----
From: birt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of home4slc@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wed 1/31/2007 5:12 PM
To: Wenfeng Li; birt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [birt-dev] Thoughts about the mailing lists and newsgroup
Hi,
The two PMC members who have voted on the proposal for an additional mailing
list are not in favor of it.
As a new member to the BIRT community, at times I've found it a little bit hard
to find information, and determine which mailing list / newsgroup to post to.
I'd like to propose something else, while keeping only one mailing list:
How about modifying the community page with additional info that would help to
differentiate the newsgroup and mailing list, and add the suggestion about
adding a filter for the check in notices?
Change this:
BIRT also provides mailing lists for developers contributing to BIRT:
birt-dev (archive) Development discussions about BIRT of interest to all BIRT
committers. Topics include PMC meeting minutes, source code structure, CVS
management, and integration among the various BIRT components.
To something like this:
BIRT also provides mailing lists for developers contributing to BIRT:
birt-dev (archive) Development discussions about BIRT of interest to all BIRT
contributors and committers. Topics include PMC meeting minutes, source code
structure, CVS management, and integration among the various BIRT components.
Suggestions on how to improve the website or wiki are also welcome.
Note: This mailing list receives numerous check-in and build notices. If
you are not interested in these notifications setting up a filter in your email
client will allow you to delete or remove these messages.
Also, I did a brief search in the newsgroup for the word 'Build' and came up
with quite a few threads about building BIRT. Would it be possible for us
to "nudge" people to the birt-dev mailing list for these types of
discussions?
It seems like if we started being more consistent about this (and vice-versa
nudge folks to the newsgroup when they post user questions to birt-dev) that it
will help to clarify channels of communication.
Is this more palatable? Is this helpful? Does it make sense?
Regards,
Susan
----- Original Message ----
From: Wenfeng Li <wli@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Susan Cline <home4slc@xxxxxxxxxxx>; birt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 8:46:17 AM
Subject: RE: [birt-dev] Thoughts about the mailing lists and newsgroup
Hi, Susan
The birt dev mailing list has been useful to the birt committers. I vote
for not changing it.
The check in messages and daily build status messages are important information
for contributors who want to keep up with birt development.
With that said, mine is only one vote. Let's hear from other
committers.
wenfeng
-----Original Message-----
From: "Susan Cline" <home4slc@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "birt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx" <birt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 1/30/07 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: [birt-dev] Thoughts about the mailing lists and newsgroup
Hi Wenfeng,
I'm glad to hear you like the idea of additional topics/contents on the mailing
list. However, I'm still thinking that two mailing lists would enable
greater community involvement. Let me try to explain further, and add proposed
mailing list names to clarify their purpose;
Mailing List A: birt-commits or birt-checkins
checkins, build status, updates, API changes, BPS announcements, wiki
additions/change notices
(Other than BPS announcements .. and maybe these should be moved to Mailing
List B, it seems as though most of these types of posts are mostly
automatically generated? Maybe this is another way to easily divide the
content?)
To re-iterate contributors, committers, and community members would not use
this list for discussion, but as a notification of changes only mailing list.
Mailing List B: birt-dev or birt-community
Community and development discussions: How to build, how to debug?
Suggestions / thoughts about the community - changes to the website and/or
wiki, project specification proposals/submissions, PMC minutes (the entire
community may be interested in these, not just committers), design discussions.
I believe one of the goals of the BIRT project is to attract, retain and grow
the community. Also, the majority of community members are not interested
in the contents of what I am calling the birt-commits mailing list.
If someone is just starting to learn about BIRT, and wants to contribute, my
thoughts are that they will be much more prone to be active in the community if
they can subscribe to the birt-community mailing list versus the birt-commits
mailing list.
Although all subscribers to the existing mailing list coud create filters to
remove the notification items, I wouldn't expect community members would want
to do this, and I would assert that this would be an impediment to their
engagement in discussions.
I do understand that it is difficult to always get the correct type of post for
each mailing list, however, I think the above division is fairly clear, and
folks can always subscribe to both. Other than the community being
confused about which list to post to are there other reasons for not having two
mailing lists?
Regards,
Susan
----- Original Message ----
From: Wenfeng Li <wli@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Susan Cline <home4slc@xxxxxxxxxxx>; birt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 4:14:12 PM
Subject: RE: [birt-dev] Thoughts about the mailing lists and newsgroup
Hi, Susan
+1 for your idea of the contents that can be posted to the birt-dev mailing
list. And it is even better if the community can tag/syndicate threads in
the mailing list to the BIRT wiki site for commonly interested topics, such as
how to build from head version.
But I vote for having one mailing list for all those contents, since
different user might want different subset of the content. It is difficult to
have a division that meets everyone's need. Requiring user to
always use the right mailing list is also not easy. Even with
published the guideline, we still see user reporting bugs, asking usage
questions in the birt-dev mailing list. I expect same will
happen that the user community will not know which mailing list to use when
they want to send a message.
If you would like to avoid getting too many emails about the check in notice
and daily build status message to the birt-dev mailing list, one approach is to
set up a auto processing rule in your email client to look for all emails with
"check in:" or daily build status titles, then move them to a folder or
delete them.
Regards,
Wenfeng
-----Original Message-----
From: birt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:birt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Susan Cline
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 2:21 PM
To: birt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [birt-dev] Thoughts about the mailing lists and newsgroup
Hi,
The BIRT web site makes it pretty clear about what the newsgroup and birt-dev
mailing lists are for.
>From the Community page:
The BIRT newsgroup is for users of the project to ask questions, discuss ideas
and so on. Join in and get involved!
birt-dev (archive) Development discussions about BIRT of interest to all BIRT
committers. Topics include PMC meeting minutes, source code structure, CVS
management, and integration among the various BIRT components.
It seems like discussion of ideas tends to get lost in the newsgroup
posts. BIRT users post specific technical questions in the newsgroup, but
very few discussions occur.
Also, the birt-dev mailing list is intended to be limited to information of
interest to BIRT committers. This seems appropriate, but it appears that
most of the posts to this mailing list are check-ins, updates or build status
reports. These may be helpful to existing BIRT committers, but for new
contributors who are trying to learn BIRT, not a lot of information is obtained
from these posts, to actually help contributors understand how to develop in
BIRT.
I was wondering if an additional mailing list could be created that would help
new developers and community members to discuss ideas and share their thoughts
about infrastructure suggestions. For instance, yesterday and today there
has been some exchange of ideas on the organization of the wiki, with the
unlikely subject line of: stored procedure in data set:
http://dev.eclipse.org/newslists/news.eclipse.birt/msg16235.html
I think it would be great to get more community input on how the wiki and
website are organized to increase involvement by the community, as well as
increase the quality of the information, but I fear that folks won't see this
discussion when it is buried in a post with that subject heading.
My thoughts are to have two mailing lists with the following purposes:
Mailing list A: checkins, build status, updates, API changes, BPS
announcements, wiki additions/change notices
Mailing list B: Community and development discussions: How to build, how to
debug? Suggestions / thoughts about the community - changes to the
website and/or wiki, project specification proposals/submissions, PMC minutes
(the entire community may be interested in these, not just committers), design
discussions.
Comments? Objections? Does this make sense? Would folks be opposed
to having two mailing lists?
One of the reasons I was thinking this would be helpful is just as discussions
get lost in the newsgroup, discussions are lost in birt-dev with the number of
check-ins and update notices.
Also, per the newsgroup discussion I cited above, I think it would be helpful
if wiki additions/updates could be subscribed to by either joining Mailing List
A, or by possibly adding a mechanism to the wiki itself that would allow
community members to be notified of wiki changes.
By doing so the community could become more responsive / responsible for the
content of the wiki, versus leaving committers to do the bulk of the work.
Regards,
Susan