Mailing List Archive

[all] Bringing the community together (combine the lists!)
The openstack, openstack-dev, openstack-sigs and openstack-operators
mailing lists on lists.openstack.org see an increasing amount of
cross-posting and thread fragmentation as conversants attempt to
reach various corners of our community with topics of interest to
one or more (and sometimes all) of those overlapping groups of
subscribers. For some time we've been discussing and trying ways to
bring our developers, distributors, operators and end users together
into a less isolated, more cohesive community. An option which keeps
coming up is to combine these different but overlapping mailing
lists into one single discussion list. As we covered[1] in Vancouver
at the last Forum there are a lot of potential up-sides:

1. People with questions are no longer asking them in a different
place than many of the people who have the answers to those
questions (the "not for usage questions" in the openstack-dev ML
title only serves to drive the wedge between developers and users
deeper).

2. The openstack-sigs mailing list hasn't seem much uptake (an order
of magnitude fewer subscribers and posts) compared to the other
three lists, yet it was intended to bridge the communication gap
between them; combining those lists would have been a better
solution to the problem than adding yet another turned out to be.

3. At least one out of every ten messages to any of these lists is
cross-posted to one or more of the others, because we have topics
that span across these divided groups yet nobody is quite sure which
one is the best venue for them; combining would eliminate the
fragmented/duplicative/divergent discussion which results from
participants following up on the different subsets of lists to which
they're subscribed,

4. Half of the people who are actively posting to at least one of
the four lists subscribe to two or more, and a quarter to three if
not all four; they would no longer be receiving multiple copies of
the various cross-posts if these lists were combined.

The proposal is simple: create a new openstack-discuss mailing list
to cover all the above sorts of discussion and stop using the other
four. As the OpenStack ecosystem continues to mature and its
software and services stabilize, the nature of our discourse is
changing (becoming increasingly focused with fewer heated debates,
distilling to a more manageable volume), so this option is looking
much more attractive than in the past. That's not to say it's quiet
(we're looking at roughly 40 messages a day across them on average,
after deduplicating the cross-posts), but we've grown accustomed to
tagging the subjects of these messages to make it easier for other
participants to quickly filter topics which are relevant to them and
so would want a good set of guidelines on how to do so for the
combined list (a suggested set is already being brainstormed[2]).
None of this is set in stone of course, and I expect a lot of
continued discussion across these lists (oh, the irony) while we try
to settle on a plan, so definitely please follow up with your
questions, concerns, ideas, et cetera.

As an aside, some of you have probably also seen me talking about
experiments I've been doing with Mailman 3... I'm hoping new
features in its Hyperkitty and Postorius WebUIs make some of this
easier or more accessible to casual participants (particularly in
light of the combined list scenario), but none of the plan above
hinges on MM3 and should be entirely doable with the MM2 version
we're currently using.

Also, in case you were wondering, no the irony of cross-posting this
message to four mailing lists is not lost on me. ;)

[1] https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/YVR-ops-devs-one-community
[2] https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/common-openstack-ml-topics
--
Jeremy Stanley
Re: [Openstack-sigs] [all] Bringing the community together (combine the lists!) [ In reply to ]
Excerpts from Jeremy Stanley's message of 2018-08-30 17:03:50 +0000:
> The openstack, openstack-dev, openstack-sigs and openstack-operators
> mailing lists on lists.openstack.org see an increasing amount of
> cross-posting and thread fragmentation as conversants attempt to
> reach various corners of our community with topics of interest to
> one or more (and sometimes all) of those overlapping groups of
> subscribers. For some time we've been discussing and trying ways to
> bring our developers, distributors, operators and end users together
> into a less isolated, more cohesive community. An option which keeps
> coming up is to combine these different but overlapping mailing
> lists into one single discussion list. As we covered[1] in Vancouver
> at the last Forum there are a lot of potential up-sides:
>
> 1. People with questions are no longer asking them in a different
> place than many of the people who have the answers to those
> questions (the "not for usage questions" in the openstack-dev ML
> title only serves to drive the wedge between developers and users
> deeper).
>
> 2. The openstack-sigs mailing list hasn't seem much uptake (an order
> of magnitude fewer subscribers and posts) compared to the other
> three lists, yet it was intended to bridge the communication gap
> between them; combining those lists would have been a better
> solution to the problem than adding yet another turned out to be.
>
> 3. At least one out of every ten messages to any of these lists is
> cross-posted to one or more of the others, because we have topics
> that span across these divided groups yet nobody is quite sure which
> one is the best venue for them; combining would eliminate the
> fragmented/duplicative/divergent discussion which results from
> participants following up on the different subsets of lists to which
> they're subscribed,
>
> 4. Half of the people who are actively posting to at least one of
> the four lists subscribe to two or more, and a quarter to three if
> not all four; they would no longer be receiving multiple copies of
> the various cross-posts if these lists were combined.
>
> The proposal is simple: create a new openstack-discuss mailing list
> to cover all the above sorts of discussion and stop using the other
> four. As the OpenStack ecosystem continues to mature and its
> software and services stabilize, the nature of our discourse is
> changing (becoming increasingly focused with fewer heated debates,
> distilling to a more manageable volume), so this option is looking
> much more attractive than in the past. That's not to say it's quiet
> (we're looking at roughly 40 messages a day across them on average,
> after deduplicating the cross-posts), but we've grown accustomed to
> tagging the subjects of these messages to make it easier for other
> participants to quickly filter topics which are relevant to them and
> so would want a good set of guidelines on how to do so for the
> combined list (a suggested set is already being brainstormed[2]).
> None of this is set in stone of course, and I expect a lot of
> continued discussion across these lists (oh, the irony) while we try
> to settle on a plan, so definitely please follow up with your
> questions, concerns, ideas, et cetera.
>
> As an aside, some of you have probably also seen me talking about
> experiments I've been doing with Mailman 3... I'm hoping new
> features in its Hyperkitty and Postorius WebUIs make some of this
> easier or more accessible to casual participants (particularly in
> light of the combined list scenario), but none of the plan above
> hinges on MM3 and should be entirely doable with the MM2 version
> we're currently using.
>
> Also, in case you were wondering, no the irony of cross-posting this
> message to four mailing lists is not lost on me. ;)
>
> [1] https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/YVR-ops-devs-one-community
> [2] https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/common-openstack-ml-topics

I fully support the idea of merging the lists.

Doug

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Re: [openstack-dev] [all] Bringing the community together (combine the lists!) [ In reply to ]
Absolutely support merging.

Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> The openstack, openstack-dev, openstack-sigs and openstack-operators
> mailing lists on lists.openstack.org see an increasing amount of
> cross-posting and thread fragmentation as conversants attempt to
> reach various corners of our community with topics of interest to
> one or more (and sometimes all) of those overlapping groups of
> subscribers. For some time we've been discussing and trying ways to
> bring our developers, distributors, operators and end users together
> into a less isolated, more cohesive community. An option which keeps
> coming up is to combine these different but overlapping mailing
> lists into one single discussion list. As we covered[1] in Vancouver
> at the last Forum there are a lot of potential up-sides:
>
> 1. People with questions are no longer asking them in a different
> place than many of the people who have the answers to those
> questions (the "not for usage questions" in the openstack-dev ML
> title only serves to drive the wedge between developers and users
> deeper).
>
> 2. The openstack-sigs mailing list hasn't seem much uptake (an order
> of magnitude fewer subscribers and posts) compared to the other
> three lists, yet it was intended to bridge the communication gap
> between them; combining those lists would have been a better
> solution to the problem than adding yet another turned out to be.
>
> 3. At least one out of every ten messages to any of these lists is
> cross-posted to one or more of the others, because we have topics
> that span across these divided groups yet nobody is quite sure which
> one is the best venue for them; combining would eliminate the
> fragmented/duplicative/divergent discussion which results from
> participants following up on the different subsets of lists to which
> they're subscribed,
>
> 4. Half of the people who are actively posting to at least one of
> the four lists subscribe to two or more, and a quarter to three if
> not all four; they would no longer be receiving multiple copies of
> the various cross-posts if these lists were combined.
>
> The proposal is simple: create a new openstack-discuss mailing list
> to cover all the above sorts of discussion and stop using the other
> four. As the OpenStack ecosystem continues to mature and its
> software and services stabilize, the nature of our discourse is
> changing (becoming increasingly focused with fewer heated debates,
> distilling to a more manageable volume), so this option is looking
> much more attractive than in the past. That's not to say it's quiet
> (we're looking at roughly 40 messages a day across them on average,
> after deduplicating the cross-posts), but we've grown accustomed to
> tagging the subjects of these messages to make it easier for other
> participants to quickly filter topics which are relevant to them and
> so would want a good set of guidelines on how to do so for the
> combined list (a suggested set is already being brainstormed[2]).
> None of this is set in stone of course, and I expect a lot of
> continued discussion across these lists (oh, the irony) while we try
> to settle on a plan, so definitely please follow up with your
> questions, concerns, ideas, et cetera.
>
> As an aside, some of you have probably also seen me talking about
> experiments I've been doing with Mailman 3... I'm hoping new
> features in its Hyperkitty and Postorius WebUIs make some of this
> easier or more accessible to casual participants (particularly in
> light of the combined list scenario), but none of the plan above
> hinges on MM3 and should be entirely doable with the MM2 version
> we're currently using.
>
> Also, in case you were wondering, no the irony of cross-posting this
> message to four mailing lists is not lost on me. ;)
>
> [1] https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/YVR-ops-devs-one-community
> [2] https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/common-openstack-ml-topics
> __________________________________________________________________________
> OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions)
> Unsubscribe: OpenStack-dev-request@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe
> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev


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Re: [openstack-dev] [all] Bringing the community together (combine the lists!) [ In reply to ]
On 08/30/2018 11:03 AM, Jeremy Stanley wrote:

> The proposal is simple: create a new openstack-discuss mailing list
> to cover all the above sorts of discussion and stop using the other
> four.

Do we want to merge usage and development onto one list? That could be a busy
list for someone who's just asking a simple usage question.

Alternately, if we are going to merge everything then why not just use the
"openstack" mailing list since it already exists and there are references to it
on the web.

(Or do you want to force people to move to something new to make them recognize
that something has changed?)

Chris

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Re: [Openstack-sigs] [all] Bringing the community together (combine the lists!) [ In reply to ]
On 2018-08-31 01:13:58 +0800 (+0800), Rico Lin wrote:
[...]
> What needs to be done for this is full topic categories support
> under `options` page so people get to filter emails properly.
[...]

Unfortunately, topic filtering is one of the MM2 features the
Mailman community decided nobody used (or at least not enough to
warrant preserving it in MM3). I do think we need to be consistent
about tagging subjects to make client-side filtering more effective
for people who want that, but if we _do_ want to be able to upgrade
we shouldn't continue to rely on server-side filtering support in
Mailman unless we can somehow work with them to help in
reimplementing it.
--
Jeremy Stanley
Re: [openstack-dev] [all] Bringing the community together (combine the lists!) [ In reply to ]
On 2018-08-30 12:57:31 -0600 (-0600), Chris Friesen wrote:
[...]
> Do we want to merge usage and development onto one list? That
> could be a busy list for someone who's just asking a simple usage
> question.

A counterargument though... projecting the number of unique posts to
all four lists combined for this year (both based on trending for
the past several years and also simply scaling the count of messages
this year so far based on how many days are left) comes out roughly
equal to the number of posts which were made to the general
openstack mailing list in 2012.

> Alternately, if we are going to merge everything then why not just
> use the "openstack" mailing list since it already exists and there
> are references to it on the web.

This was an option we discussed in the "One Community" forum session
as well. There seemed to be a slight preference for making a new
-disscuss list and retiring the old general one. I see either as an
potential solution here.

> (Or do you want to force people to move to something new to make them
> recognize that something has changed?)

That was one of the arguments made. Also I believe we have a *lot*
of "black hole" subscribers who aren't actually following that list
but whose addresses aren't bouncing new posts we send them for any
of a number of possible reasons.
--
Jeremy Stanley
Re: [Openstack-sigs] [all] Bringing the community together (combine the lists!) [ In reply to ]
On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 09:12:57PM +0000, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> On 2018-08-31 01:13:58 +0800 (+0800), Rico Lin wrote:
> [...]
> > What needs to be done for this is full topic categories support
> > under `options` page so people get to filter emails properly.
> [...]
>
> Unfortunately, topic filtering is one of the MM2 features the
> Mailman community decided nobody used (or at least not enough to
> warrant preserving it in MM3). I do think we need to be consistent
> about tagging subjects to make client-side filtering more effective
> for people who want that, but if we _do_ want to be able to upgrade
> we shouldn't continue to rely on server-side filtering support in
> Mailman unless we can somehow work with them to help in
> reimplementing it.

The suggestion is to implement it as a 3rd party plugin or work with the
mm community to implement:
https://wiki.mailman.psf.io/DEV/Dynamic%20Sublists

So if we decide we really want that in mm3 we have options.

Yours Tony.
Re: [all] Bringing the community together (combine the lists!) [ In reply to ]
On 2018-08-31 14:02:23 +0200 (+0200), Thomas Goirand wrote:
[...]
> I'm coming from the time when OpenStack had a list on launchpad
> where everything was mixed. We did the split because it was really
> annoying to have everything mixed.
[...]

These days (just running stats for this calendar year) we've been
averaging 4 messages a day on the general openstack@lists.o.o ML, so
if it's volume you're worried about most of it would be the current
-operators and -dev ML discussions anyway (many of which are general
questions from users already, because as you also pointed out we
don't usually tell them to take their questions elsewhere any more).
--
Jeremy Stanley