Open Stack

Excerpts from Clint Byrum's message of 2017-03-01 10:03:34 -0800:
> Excerpts from Jonathan Bryce's message of 2017-03-01 11:49:38 -0600:
> > 
> > > On Feb 28, 2017, at 4:25 AM, Thierry Carrez <thierry at openstack.org> wrote:
> > > 
> > > Clint Byrum wrote:
> > >>>> So, I'll ask more generally: do you believe that the single openstack-dev
> > >>>> mailing list is working fine and we should change nothing? If not, what
> > >>>> problems has it created for you? 
> > >>> 
> > >>> As a person who sends a lot of process-driven email to this list,
> > >>> it is not working for my needs to communicate with others.
> > >>> 
> > >>> Over the past few cycles when I was the release PTL, I always had
> > >>> a couple of PTLs say there was too much email on this list for them
> > >>> to read, and that they had not read my instructions for managing
> > >>> releases. That resulted in us having to train folks at the last
> > >>> minute, remind them of deadlines, deal with them missing deadlines,
> > >>> and otherwise increased the release team's workload.
> > >>> 
> > >>> It is possible the situation will improve now that the automation
> > >>> work is mostly complete and we expect to see fewer significant
> > >>> changes in the release workflow. That still leaves quite a few
> > >>> people regularly surprised by deadlines, though.
> > >> 
> > >> The problem above is really the krux of it. Whether or not you can keep
> > >> up with the mailing list can be an unknown, unknown. Even now, those
> > >> who can't actually handle the mailing list traffic are in fact likely
> > >> missing this thread about whether or not people can handle the mailing
> > >> list traffic (credit fungi for pointing out this irony to me on IRC).
> > > 
> > > Right, the main issue (for me) is that there is no unique way to reach
> > > out to people that you're 100% sure they will read. For some the miracle
> > > solution will be a personal email, for some it will be an IRC ping, for
> > > some it will be a Twitter private message. There is no 100% sure
> > > solution, and everyone prioritizes differently. The burden of reaching
> > > out and making sure the message was acknowledged is on the person who
> > > sends the message, and that just doesn't scale past 50 teams. That
> > > includes release team communications to PTLs, but also things like
> > > election nomination deadlines and plenty of other things.
> > 
> > Clint asked if there were specific issues in the workflow, and one item both Thierry and Doug have identified is reaching ALL project leaders consistently with important notifications or requests. I have also seen some working group leaders and Foundation staff experience similar difficulties. Perhaps creating a business-oriented list for PTLs similar to docs/infra that could help with that particular problem.
> 
> Agreed. I think I may have even missed the krux of the reason for
> the business lists, which was more "how do we get an important signal
> through".
> 
> IMO this is where the announcement list would be useful. But that has
> become something else entirely with release notifications (or it hasn't,
> I don't know, I dropped it). But generally projects do have a low
> traffic higher-priority list for announcements.
> 

Release announcements have moved to a separate list (creatively named
"release-announce" --
http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/release-announce).

Doug

Doug