[all] One month with openstack-discuss (a progress report)
First, I want to thank everyone here for the remarkably smooth transition to openstack-discuss at the end of November. It's been exactly one month today since we shuttered the old openstack, openstack-dev, openstack-operators and openstack-sigs mailing lists and forwarded all subsequent posts for them to the new list address instead. The number of posts from non-subscribers has dwindled to the point where it's now only a few each day (many of whom also subscribe immediately after receiving the moderation autoresponse). As of this moment, we're up to 708 subscribers. Unfortunately it's hard to compare raw subscriber counts because the longer a list is in existence the more dead addresses it accumulates. Mailman does its best to unsubscribe addresses which explicitly reject/bounce multiple messages in a row, but these days many E-mail addresses grow defunct without triggering any NDRs (perhaps because they've simply been abandoned, or because their MTAs just blackhole new messages for deleted accounts). Instead, it's a lot more concrete to analyze active participants on mailing lists, especially since ours are consistently configured to require a subscription if you want to avoid your messages getting stuck in the moderation queue. Over the course of 2018 (at least until the lists were closed on December 3) there were 1075 unique E-mail addresses posting to one of more of the openstack, openstack-dev, openstack-operators and openstack-sigs mailing lists. Now, a lot of those people sent one or maybe a handful of messages to ask some question they had, and then disappeared again... they didn't really follow ongoing discussions, so probably won't subscribe to openstack-discuss until they have something new to bring up. On the other hand, if we look at addresses which sent 10 or more messages in 2018 (an arbitrary threshold admittedly), there were 245. Comparing those to the list of addresses subscribed to openstack-discuss today, there are 173 matches. That means we now have *at least* 70% of the people who sent 10 or more messages to the old lists subscribed to the new one. I say "at least" because we don't have an easy way to track address changes, and even if we did that's never going to get us to 100% because there are always going to be people who leave the lists abruptly for various reasons (perhaps even disappearing from our community entirely). Seems like a good place to be after only one month, especially considering the number of folks who may not have even been paying attention at all during end-of-year holidays. As for message volume, we had a total of 912 posts to openstack-discuss in the month of December; comparing to the 1033 posts in total we saw to the four old lists in December of 2017, that's a 12% drop. Consider, though, that right at 10% of the messages on the old lists were duplicates from cross-posting, so that's really more like a 2% drop in actual (deduplicated) posting volume. It's far less of a reduction than I would have anticipated based on year-over-year comparisons (for example, December of 2016 had 1564 posts across those four lists). I think based on this, it's safe to say the transition to openstack-discuss hasn't hampered discussion, at least for its first full month in use. -- Jeremy Stanley
Thanks for the update on this, Jeremy! I was curious about the details behind those numbers :)
Jeremy Stanley <mailto:fungi@yuggoth.org> January 3, 2019 at 1:41 PM First, I want to thank everyone here for the remarkably smooth transition to openstack-discuss at the end of November. It's been exactly one month today since we shuttered the old openstack, openstack-dev, openstack-operators and openstack-sigs mailing lists and forwarded all subsequent posts for them to the new list address instead. The number of posts from non-subscribers has dwindled to the point where it's now only a few each day (many of whom also subscribe immediately after receiving the moderation autoresponse).
As of this moment, we're up to 708 subscribers. Unfortunately it's hard to compare raw subscriber counts because the longer a list is in existence the more dead addresses it accumulates. Mailman does its best to unsubscribe addresses which explicitly reject/bounce multiple messages in a row, but these days many E-mail addresses grow defunct without triggering any NDRs (perhaps because they've simply been abandoned, or because their MTAs just blackhole new messages for deleted accounts). Instead, it's a lot more concrete to analyze active participants on mailing lists, especially since ours are consistently configured to require a subscription if you want to avoid your messages getting stuck in the moderation queue.
Over the course of 2018 (at least until the lists were closed on December 3) there were 1075 unique E-mail addresses posting to one of more of the openstack, openstack-dev, openstack-operators and openstack-sigs mailing lists. Now, a lot of those people sent one or maybe a handful of messages to ask some question they had, and then disappeared again... they didn't really follow ongoing discussions, so probably won't subscribe to openstack-discuss until they have something new to bring up.
On the other hand, if we look at addresses which sent 10 or more messages in 2018 (an arbitrary threshold admittedly), there were 245. Comparing those to the list of addresses subscribed to openstack-discuss today, there are 173 matches. That means we now have *at least* 70% of the people who sent 10 or more messages to the old lists subscribed to the new one. I say "at least" because we don't have an easy way to track address changes, and even if we did that's never going to get us to 100% because there are always going to be people who leave the lists abruptly for various reasons (perhaps even disappearing from our community entirely). Seems like a good place to be after only one month, especially considering the number of folks who may not have even been paying attention at all during end-of-year holidays.
As for message volume, we had a total of 912 posts to openstack-discuss in the month of December; comparing to the 1033 posts in total we saw to the four old lists in December of 2017, that's a 12% drop. Consider, though, that right at 10% of the messages on the old lists were duplicates from cross-posting, so that's really more like a 2% drop in actual (deduplicated) posting volume. It's far less of a reduction than I would have anticipated based on year-over-year comparisons (for example, December of 2016 had 1564 posts across those four lists). I think based on this, it's safe to say the transition to openstack-discuss hasn't hampered discussion, at least for its first full month in use.
On Thu, Jan 3, 2019 at 2:47 PM Jimmy McArthur <jimmy@openstack.org> wrote:
Thanks for the update on this, Jeremy! I was curious about the details behind those numbers :)
seconded, i really appreciate the update and all the work that went into the transition. it's been completely smooth and painless on my end. kudos peace o/
Jeremy Stanley <fungi@yuggoth.org> writes:
First, I want to thank everyone here for the remarkably smooth transition to openstack-discuss at the end of November. It's been exactly one month today since we shuttered the old openstack, openstack-dev, openstack-operators and openstack-sigs mailing lists and forwarded all subsequent posts for them to the new list address instead. The number of posts from non-subscribers has dwindled to the point where it's now only a few each day (many of whom also subscribe immediately after receiving the moderation autoresponse).
As of this moment, we're up to 708 subscribers. Unfortunately it's hard to compare raw subscriber counts because the longer a list is in existence the more dead addresses it accumulates. Mailman does its best to unsubscribe addresses which explicitly reject/bounce multiple messages in a row, but these days many E-mail addresses grow defunct without triggering any NDRs (perhaps because they've simply been abandoned, or because their MTAs just blackhole new messages for deleted accounts). Instead, it's a lot more concrete to analyze active participants on mailing lists, especially since ours are consistently configured to require a subscription if you want to avoid your messages getting stuck in the moderation queue.
Over the course of 2018 (at least until the lists were closed on December 3) there were 1075 unique E-mail addresses posting to one of more of the openstack, openstack-dev, openstack-operators and openstack-sigs mailing lists. Now, a lot of those people sent one or maybe a handful of messages to ask some question they had, and then disappeared again... they didn't really follow ongoing discussions, so probably won't subscribe to openstack-discuss until they have something new to bring up.
On the other hand, if we look at addresses which sent 10 or more messages in 2018 (an arbitrary threshold admittedly), there were 245. Comparing those to the list of addresses subscribed to openstack-discuss today, there are 173 matches. That means we now have *at least* 70% of the people who sent 10 or more messages to the old lists subscribed to the new one. I say "at least" because we don't have an easy way to track address changes, and even if we did that's never going to get us to 100% because there are always going to be people who leave the lists abruptly for various reasons (perhaps even disappearing from our community entirely). Seems like a good place to be after only one month, especially considering the number of folks who may not have even been paying attention at all during end-of-year holidays.
As for message volume, we had a total of 912 posts to openstack-discuss in the month of December; comparing to the 1033 posts in total we saw to the four old lists in December of 2017, that's a 12% drop. Consider, though, that right at 10% of the messages on the old lists were duplicates from cross-posting, so that's really more like a 2% drop in actual (deduplicated) posting volume. It's far less of a reduction than I would have anticipated based on year-over-year comparisons (for example, December of 2016 had 1564 posts across those four lists). I think based on this, it's safe to say the transition to openstack-discuss hasn't hampered discussion, at least for its first full month in use. -- Jeremy Stanley
Thank you, Jeremy, both for producing those reassuring stats and for managing the transition. The change has been much less disruptive than I was worried it would be (even though I considered it necessary from the start) and much of the credit for that goes to you for the careful way you have planned and implemented the merge. Nice job! -- Doug
Yes Jeremy actually did an amazing job, agree with all the positive comments above. Chris On Fri, Jan 4, 2019 at 9:50 AM Doug Hellmann <doug@doughellmann.com> wrote:
Jeremy Stanley <fungi@yuggoth.org> writes:
First, I want to thank everyone here for the remarkably smooth transition to openstack-discuss at the end of November. It's been exactly one month today since we shuttered the old openstack, openstack-dev, openstack-operators and openstack-sigs mailing lists and forwarded all subsequent posts for them to the new list address instead. The number of posts from non-subscribers has dwindled to the point where it's now only a few each day (many of whom also subscribe immediately after receiving the moderation autoresponse).
As of this moment, we're up to 708 subscribers. Unfortunately it's hard to compare raw subscriber counts because the longer a list is in existence the more dead addresses it accumulates. Mailman does its best to unsubscribe addresses which explicitly reject/bounce multiple messages in a row, but these days many E-mail addresses grow defunct without triggering any NDRs (perhaps because they've simply been abandoned, or because their MTAs just blackhole new messages for deleted accounts). Instead, it's a lot more concrete to analyze active participants on mailing lists, especially since ours are consistently configured to require a subscription if you want to avoid your messages getting stuck in the moderation queue.
Over the course of 2018 (at least until the lists were closed on December 3) there were 1075 unique E-mail addresses posting to one of more of the openstack, openstack-dev, openstack-operators and openstack-sigs mailing lists. Now, a lot of those people sent one or maybe a handful of messages to ask some question they had, and then disappeared again... they didn't really follow ongoing discussions, so probably won't subscribe to openstack-discuss until they have something new to bring up.
On the other hand, if we look at addresses which sent 10 or more messages in 2018 (an arbitrary threshold admittedly), there were 245. Comparing those to the list of addresses subscribed to openstack-discuss today, there are 173 matches. That means we now have *at least* 70% of the people who sent 10 or more messages to the old lists subscribed to the new one. I say "at least" because we don't have an easy way to track address changes, and even if we did that's never going to get us to 100% because there are always going to be people who leave the lists abruptly for various reasons (perhaps even disappearing from our community entirely). Seems like a good place to be after only one month, especially considering the number of folks who may not have even been paying attention at all during end-of-year holidays.
As for message volume, we had a total of 912 posts to openstack-discuss in the month of December; comparing to the 1033 posts in total we saw to the four old lists in December of 2017, that's a 12% drop. Consider, though, that right at 10% of the messages on the old lists were duplicates from cross-posting, so that's really more like a 2% drop in actual (deduplicated) posting volume. It's far less of a reduction than I would have anticipated based on year-over-year comparisons (for example, December of 2016 had 1564 posts across those four lists). I think based on this, it's safe to say the transition to openstack-discuss hasn't hampered discussion, at least for its first full month in use. -- Jeremy Stanley
Thank you, Jeremy, both for producing those reassuring stats and for managing the transition. The change has been much less disruptive than I was worried it would be (even though I considered it necessary from the start) and much of the credit for that goes to you for the careful way you have planned and implemented the merge. Nice job!
-- Doug
-- Chris Morgan <mihalis68@gmail.com>
participants (5)
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Chris Morgan
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Doug Hellmann
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Jeremy Stanley
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Jimmy McArthur
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Michael McCune