Ok, I propose this alternative approach - more on the "here's how
things are getting better" tone than the "Here's how things were awful"
tone, and half the length:
--------
Subject: Mailing list threading improvements
To: dev@
Dear Apache project developers,
TL;DR: We’re updating how auto-generated email from Github will be
threaded on your mailing lists. If you want to keep the old defaults,
details are below.
We’re pleased to let you know that we’re tweaking the way that auto-
generated email from Github will appear on your mailing lists. This
will lead to more human-readable subject lines, and the ability of most
modern mail clients to correctly thread discussions originating on
Github.
Background: Many project lists receive email auto-generated on Github.
The way that the subject lines are crafted leads to messages from the
same topic not being threaded together by most mail clients. We’re
fixing that.
The way that these messages are threaded is defined by a file -
.asf.yml - in your git repositories. We’re changing the way that it
will work by default if you don’t choose settings. The change will
happen on {DATE}
Details of the current default, as well as the proposed changes, are on
this page, along with instructions on how to keep your current
settings, if you prefer:
https://community.apache.org/contributors/mailing-lists.html#configuring-the-subject-lines-of-the-emails-being-sent
Chris, on behalf of the Comdev PMC
On Fri, 2023-08-04 at 07:30 -0400, Rich Bowen wrote:
> As discussed offline, I feel like the tone of this messaging is
> wrong. Give me a bit to get to my desk and I will propose an
> alternate draft.
>
> Shosholoza,
> Rich
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 4, 2023, 04:43 Christofer Dutz
> <christofer.d...@c-ware.de> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Here comes a draft for an email I would like to send out.
> >
> > Not quite sure which audience we should choose … committers,
> > (p)pmcs?
> >
> > Also, not quite sure about the timeframe? As I know Infra merges
> > PRs on Thursdays, I would propose the 17th of August 2023 as date
> > for the change to be made. This would give project almost 2 weeks
> > to react and adjust their .asf.yml files, if they wish to stay at
> > the current defaults.
> >
> > So, I wasn’t sure, if I should add links to examples, as it would
> > be putting the project acting as negative example in an unfortunate
> > spotlight and using date ranges in ponymail links has been not
> > quite successful in the past.
> >
> > What do you folks think?
> >
> >
> > Chris
> >
> >
> > --------------
> >
> >
> > Dear {Committers/members of the Apache PMCs},
> >
> > over the years have we added additional options for discussing
> > project matters on a big variety of alternate locations and systems
> > besides email lists, such as JIRA and GitHub.
> > Especially GitHub has been growing in acceptance, as it generally
> > allows participating without requiring yet another login.
> >
> > GitHub currently allows discussing things using: GitHub Issues,
> > GitHub PRs and GitHub Discussions.
> > Infra has built tooling, that forwards these discussions to our
> > mailing-lists.
> >
> > Unfortunately, some defaults were chosen, which have resulted in
> > many dev-lists being swamped with emails, for which no email-client
> > was able to implement any form of threading.
> > Some projects simply reacted by redirecting these emails to lists,
> > such as notifications@ or commits@.
> > Some projects even completely gave up communicating via email lists
> > and only “come back” for voting.
> > Even if the requirement “If it didn’t happen on the list, it didn’t
> > happen” sort of is fulfilled, it no longer fulfills what the core
> > of this rule was:
> > To allow someone to asynchronously participate and find out what’s
> > happening in a project without requiring any form of login and to
> > have some sort of archive of all discussions about Apache projects
> > on Apache hardware.
> >
> > In Comdev we have been discussing how we could possibly address
> > this and bring back the usefulness of our mailing-lists.
> > The tooling Infra provides us with, already allows individual
> > projects to change the settings of the auto-generated emails and
> > several projects have already done so, with great success.
> >
> > Comdev has therefore proposed to change the default settings for
> > auto-generated emails sent out for GitHub.
> > These changes will not change anything for projects hat already
> > manage how the emails should be formatted in their .asf.yml files,
> > but it will affect all projects, that didn’t explicitly do that.
> >
> > For all projects willing to stay at the current format, we
> > encourage to have a look at this page and prepare their “.asf.yml”
> > files accordingly:
> > https://community.apache.org/contributors/mailing-lists.html
> > (This page currently lists the current defaults here
> > https://community.apache.org/contributors/mailing-lists.html#configuring-the-subject-lines-of-the-emails-being-sent
> > as well as the proposed changes)
> > We will be changing the defaults on {date here}, so you still have
> > some time to prepare.
> >
> >
> >
> > Chris, on behalf of the Comdev PMC
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