Open Stack

Tom Fifield wrote:
> I'd like to get your thoughts about the OpenStack-Announce list.
> 
> We describe the list as:
> 
> """
> Subscribe to this list to receive important announcements from the
> OpenStack Release Team and OpenStack Security Team.
> 
> This is a low-traffic, read-only list.
> """
> 
> Up until July 2015, it was used for the following:
> * Community Weekly Newsletter
> * Stable branch release notifications
> * Major (i.e. Six-monthly) release notifications
> * Important security advisories

Actually it's all security advisories, not just "important" ones.

> and had on average 5-10 messages per month.
> 
> After July 2015, the following was added:
> * Release notifications for clients and libraries (one email per
> library, includes contributor-focused projects)
> 
> resulting in an average of 70-80 messages per month.
> 
> Personally, I no longer consider this volume "low traffic" :)
> 
> In addition, I have been recently receiving feedback that users have
> been unsubscribing from or deleting without reading the list's posts.
> 
> That isn't good news, given this is supposed to be the place where we
> can make very important announcements and have them read.
> 
> One simple suggestion might be to batch the week's client/library
> release notifications into a single email. Another might be to look at
> the audience for the list, what kind of notifications they want, and
> chose the announcements differently.
> 
> What do you think we should do to ensure the announce list remains useful?

-announce was originally designed as an "all-hands" channel for
announcements affecting everyone. It then morphed into the place users
wanting to keep up with upstream news directly affecting them would
subscribe to. Since only the Release management team (back when it
included the VMT and stable maint) would post to it, it became a
"release announcement" mailing-list. So when we started to make
intermediary releases of "stuff" we just posted everything there.

Mailing-lists are not primarily defined by their topic, they are defined
by their audiences. The problem we have now with -announce is that we
forgot that and started to define it by topic. So we need to take a step
back and redefine it by audience, and then see which topics are appropriate.

We could definitely go back to "the place users wanting to keep up with
upstream news directly affecting them should subscribe to", and post only:

- user-facing service releases (type:service deliverables), on stable
branches or development branches
- security vulnerabilities and security notes
- weekly upstream development news (the one Mike compiles), and include
a digest of all library/ancillary services releases of the week in there

Library releases are not "directly affecting users", so not urgent news
for "users wanting to keep up with upstream news" and can wait to be
mentioned in the weekly digest.

The community weekly newsletter is not "upstream news directly affecting
users" but more of a general digest on openstack news & blogposts, and
would be posted on the openstack blog.

How does that sound ?

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)