Re: New mailing list?

Josh,

* Josh Berkus (josh@agliodbs.com) wrote:
> On 06/20/2014 08:39 AM, Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:
> > I think in the end this ties down to how far we want or should go in
> > providing mailinglist services in general to projects in the wider
> > postgresql.org ecosystem and if "yes" in what way...
>
> So when WWW decided to de-support pgFoundry, one of the services which
> pgFoundry was supplying which was discontinued is having mailing lists
> for satellite projects for PostgreSQL.  At the time we made that
> decision, several people on this list gave the impression that mailing
> lists would be created more liberally in the future in order to pick up
> the slack.

I wasn't here for that, but I find it to be, generally, a good thing
that there is a discussion regarding the need for a list, rather than
just rubber-stamping or automating the process.

> However, that is not what has happened.  Every time someone has
> requested a new mailing list here they've had to extensively justify
> their request for the list.  The impression I get is that there's a lot
> of support infrastructure associated with each list for the infra team,
> which is fueling their objections.  However, the result is that people
> who were enthusiastic about doing something with PostgreSQL get
> frustrated and discouraged, or go off and set up a forum on some website
> not even associated with postgresql.org, making it hard/impossible for
> users to find.

This happens *just as much* (if not more..) for users who find an
inactive and/or useless list.  We have -general for a reason and I would
argue that we should be happier about having individuals discuss things
on that list and only look to create an alternative list when the
traffic for that specific topic has enough traffic to warrent it.

> At this point, I have active lists still running on Marc's pgfoundry
> because I've been discouraged from moving them over.

Are they active?  Which ones are they?  I don't think anyone has a
problem with moving actually active lists over- but what we ware not
interested in supporting are 100 lists which all get less than one email
a month.  It becomes a real headache which simply isn't worth it.

> If adding new lists to majordomo is painful (and I can imagine it might
> be), can we please set up a low-SLA mailman instance somewhere on
> postgresql.org so that every list request doesn't have to turn into an
> argument?  If this is a PITA for the infra team, can we ask OSUOSL for one?

OSUOSL has not been a good source of resources for us.  We have tried
(I've spoken with Lance personally a couple of times) and they are more
overwhelmed than we are, generally speaking.  Email, sadly, is a time
consuming business to be in.

> > Anyway for this request I still dont think it is a good idea but given
> > nobody else seems to share my concerns I wont object further.
>
> Personally, I have enough trust in Craig/Andres that if they say they
> need a list, they need a list.  And if the list doesn't get used, it'll
> be shut down.

This *does not happen*.  Look at all of the PUG lists which we have and
can't be shut down because someone, somewhere, might email them some day
(and end up, most likely, not getting any reply- but that doesn't
matter).  The idea that mailing lists somehow provide "validation" for a
project simply needs to stop- it doesn't and it's better to have an
active-but-busy list with a lot of different discussions than lots of
low/no-traffic lists where people ask for help and get zero responses
back.
Thanks,
    Stephen