Open Stack

I also propose that we merge the interop-wg mailing list also,
as the volume on that list is small but topics posted to it are of
general interest to the community.

Chris Hoge
(Interop WG Secretary, amongst other things)

> On Aug 30, 2018, at 10:03 AM, Jeremy Stanley <fungi at yuggoth.org> 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
> -- 
> Jeremy Stanley
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> openstack-sigs at lists.openstack.org
> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-sigs