Open Stack

Excerpts from Luigi Toscano's message of 2017-02-27 03:02:45 -0500:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> > Excerpts from Shamail Tahir's message of 2017-02-27 00:44:44 -0500:
> > > Hi Clint,
> > > 
> > > On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 12:25 AM, Clint Byrum <clint at fewbar.com> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Excerpts from Matt Riedemann's message of 2017-02-26 19:48:50 -0600:
> > > > > On 2/26/2017 6:52 PM, Clint Byrum wrote:
> > > > > > During some productive discussions in the Stewardship Working Group
> > > > > > PTG
> > > > > > room, the subject of the mailing list came up. The usual questions
> > > > > > around whether or not we should have per-project lists came up and
> > > > > > the
> > > > > > reasons we don't were re-affirmed. To recap those reasons:
> > > > > >
> > > > > >   * Cross posting is the pits
> > > > > >   * People don't always know at the beginning of a thread that a
> > > > > >     discussion will need to go wider, leading to silos and confusion.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > So we turned to ways to help reduce peoples' load while reading
> > > > > > e-mail,
> > > > > > since many (most?) tend to opt out of reading openstack-dev.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > There are a number of ways that we can help, including teaching
> > > > > > people
> > > > > > to have more efficient workflows and use specific mail reading tools
> > > > > > (don't worry, we're not adding an NNTP gateway.. yet). But one that
> > > > > > received positive feedback from the room was to have moderated
> > > > > > business-only mailing lists for each project.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Basically, there are things that we _do_ know will not go wider when
> > > > > > the thread begins. Just running through the threads on the February
> > > > > > thread index, there are a few obvious classes:
> > > > > >
> > > > > >   * Mascots
> > > > > >   * Social meetups
> > > > > >   * Meeting logistics
> > > > > >   * Core team membership
> > > > > >
> > > >
> > > I'm curious as to how much of the traffic (such as the examples given)
> > > generates message fatigue on new users but I do appreciate that we are
> > > trying to find solutions to make it easier to enter into the mailing lists
> > > around OpenStack without having to resort to digests.
> > > 
> > 
> > I think it's worth analyzing it, if somebody has time. I do not. My wild
> > ass guess is between 1 and 5 percent of all messages, but probably more
> > like 5-10 percent of threads, as a lot of them are the shorter, less
> > interesting threads.
> > 
> > These seem like small numbers, but cognitive load is not linear and the
> > number of threads people end up reading varies whether or not they use
> > tags.
> 
> I share the feeling too that those messages are the minority of the total amount of real discussions, so moving them away won't address the problem and lead to more complication to the rest of the world.
> 

Not every solution is a force multiplier. Some things are just fine
tuning. And again, cognitive load is not linear. If you are in a single
project silo, sure, these are easy to tune out. If you are trying to
work cross-project, you have to spend more time on each thread, even if
it is obvious.

> > 
> > > > > There are likely others. The idea is that these messages would go into
> > > > > a
> > > > > > ${project}-business at lists.openstack.org. Said list would be moderated
> > > > by
> > > > > > a team of the PTL's choosing, and we would admonish moderators to
> > > > reject
> > > > > > soundly any threads not obviously single project business related.
> > > >
> > > In this approach, we could send messages that fall within the ${
> > > project}-business at lists.openstack.org to the dev ML as well.  This would
> > > allow people who want only the ${project}-business news to get the content
> > > without having to get all messages from the dev ML but at the same time
> > > allow threads to be available to both subscribers (dev and
> > > ${project}-business}.
> > > 
> > > I hope we still advocate for subscribing to the openstack-dev mailing list
> > > even if a contributor is only starting with a single project (and not
> > > interested in cross-project things) because it allows for people to see
> > > conversations they might have expertise in or find a new project they want
> > > to contribute to based on learning something new about it.
> > > 
> > 
> > Wow, I must have failed in my wording ,sorry about that, because you
> > got it 100% backwards. The idea is that everyone stays in openstack-dev
> > for _all_ discussions (single-project as well). Only the most mundane
> > but necessary emails go on per-project "business lists". So there would
> > be zero point in ever subscribing to the business lists without also
> > subscribing to openstack-dev, and likewise, republishing business lists
> > to openstack-dev would defeat the entire point.
> 
> But why not educate people about the *topic* filtering that you can enable on mailman directly?
> You don't need filters on your client, just go to your mailman page and select the topics.
>

This is not for users who only want to see some projects. That is a well
understood space and the mailman filtering does handle it. This is for
those who want to monitor the overall health of the community, address
issues with cross-project specs, or participate in so many projects it
makes little sense to spend time filtering.