Hi, everyone. I'd like to request Infra to establish a new mailing list that would fill in the gap between our public mailing lists and the gentoo-core mailing list.
Name: gentoo-dev-internal Topic: technical discussions between active Gentoo contributors Restrictions: - public (open subscription), initially we may optionally copy all subscribers from gentoo-dev so that they do not miss discussion, - archived, - but posting restricted to opt-in member group. Initially, the posting group would include active Gentoo developers only. Afterwards, we will deploy a small moderator team whose purpose would be controlling access to the list -- including both adding new members on request and removing existing members (including developers) if they misbehave. I don't think we need to precisely define the rules for admitting new members. I think the exact procedure would be at moderators' discretion and would depend on the current 'health' of candidates -- i.e. if things go calm they may just admit on request, and if people start abusing this they will force explicit moderation before whitelisting. Rationale ========= The purpose of gentoo-dev is to allow technical discussion between contributors to Gentoo, especially including making it possible for developers to send RFCs and discuss their ideas. Sadly, it is not uncommon for threads on that mailing list to turn into trollfests, get deranged or hijacked into completely different topics. Things are so bad that the mailing list stops serving its purpose. It involves a number of consequences: a. The developers lose time on the mailing lists instead of using it for constructive purposes. Even skimming through those mails in search of something remotely relevant is time-consuming. b. The developers and contributors become discouraged and unsubscribe from the mailing list. As a result, audience for reviews and RFCs becomes smaller and even less focused on the topic. c. The developers become discouraged and stop sending their ideas. Either they do less, use another media or work in complete isolation from other community members. d. Eventually, the developers become tired of the persisting issues and they retire (yes, it's a fact). Other ideas on solving those issues were pretty much rejected already: 1. Bans on persisting violators were rejected as they are easily worked around via subscribing from another e-mail address, and causing more noise than the original issue. 2. Full-scale moderation of mail on gentoo-dev was rejected because of technical limitations and the resulting high level of effort in handling the moderation, plus the social effect. 3. Making gentoo-dev@ opt-in (like the suggested new list) would make it much harder for users to contribute ideas, and would inevitably discourage some of the users from writing. All that considered, establishing a second mailing list with different characteristic seems like a reasonable solution. In particular: A. It gives a wider choice of tools for developers (and privileged contributors) -- they can choose either the open or restricted mailing list depending on the type of requested feedback. B. The gentoo-dev mailing list is still open for power users and contributors to submit their own ideas, and with no moderation the discussion can proceed naturally. C. The cost of moderation should be relatively low, and the methods can be dynamically adjusted to fit the needs. In particular, good behavior on gentoo-dev can be used to grant access to gentoo-dev-internal without further requirements. D. The restricted mailing list should be resilient to ban evasion since the access is opt-in, and the moderators team can enforce direct moderation of new members if there is a considerable risk. Your comments? -- Best regards, Michał Górny
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