Bugzilla – Full Text Bug Listing
| Summary: | Please make the AC mailing list open | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | Community | Reporter: | Thomas Hallgren <thomas> |
| Component: | Architecture Council | Assignee: | eclipse.org-architecture-council |
| Status: | CLOSED MOVED | QA Contact: | |
| Severity: | normal | ||
| Priority: | P3 | CC: | caniszczyk, daniel_megert, Ed.Merks, gunnar, irbull, jarthana, kim.moir, mober.at+eclipse, overholt, pascal, remy.suen |
| Version: | unspecified | ||
| Target Milestone: | --- | ||
| Hardware: | All | ||
| OS: | All | ||
| Whiteboard: | stalebug | ||
|
Description
Thomas Hallgren
+1 I agree it should be open You can already read it with a RSS reader so this isn't really closed. http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/eclipse.org-architecture-council/maillist.rss +1, we should be approachable as much as possible -1 If this list is open to everyone, then there is no interesting distinction between this list and the cross-project-issues list. Having two separate lists for cross-project architectural discussions just makes it harder for everyone to follow and find discussions. How would people decide which list to use for a given discussion? I suspect people would just end up cross-posting to both lists and create more spam for those subscribed to both. I think the AC-list should mainly be used for the business of the council: arranging meetings, posting meeting topics and minutes, voting on new members, etc. Interesting technical discussions of a wide cross-project nature should be held on cross-project-issues where everyone in the community can participate. Looking through our archives, I think this is what it has mainly been used for. I understand the openness argument, but on the other hand our meetings are closed, and if we make everything open then there is no longer any distinction to being on the council. The council itself is a meritocratic body with a carefully defined membership, and I think there needs to be a communication mechanism for the council to "talk amongst themselves" when needed. Having said that, I think we should strive to use the most open communication channels possible for a given topic, such as the cross-project list for wide-impact technical discussions, so everyone can participate. -1 I agree with John. Even for the AC council we've pushed to have discussions in bugzilla to reduce amount of mail that gets shoved into everyone's mailboxes. We already have the cross projects list for all-inclusive discussions so I'm not sure we need yet another way to communicate more openly. I fail to see how the openness of a list can qualify as a "interesting distinction". Anyone can listen in on the discussions that takes place on this list through RSS feeds. What differs it from others, is that only a selected few has the right to post an entry. I don't buy Ed's argument that there would be too much mails. Instead, I think that whoever will post (like Ian did earlier today) actually has something that he wants to convey. As AC members, we should be willing to listen to that and not require that people writes formal bugzillas for everything. Chances are that the vibrancy around the AC will suffer from that kind of bureaucracy. If the AC has no clear responsibility that clearly differentiates it from what is discussed and decided on the cross-project mailing list, what is it that motivates its existence? One might argue, why have an AC at all? Everyone can discuss everything already anyway. Perhaps we can resolve this like we did the committers mailing list, i.e., posts (from non-members) are moderated. Kim, Chris and Thomas thanks for giving your support to this issue. Some background: After the "Ask the AC" panel at EclipseCon, I was talking to Jeff and he mentioned some issues that were discussed on the AC List. His tone indicated that I should have read those e-mails. Later that day I attempted to subscribe to the list, only to find out this was not possible. ** I think Ed's solution is a good middle ground. In my case I really just want to "follow" the discussions. If there is something I can do to help (create a small p2 app to scan features for example), then I'm sure someone will accept my post to the list. ** As Kim mentioned I could use an RSS reader to follow the list, but I currently don't use an RSS reader for my day-to-day work. If this really is the desired way to follow lists, then I can change my workflow, but having all my mailing lists in one place is nice. How about opening the list and give the community the benefit of a doubt? We can always add moderation later if we discover that a lot of irrelevant posts starts to come in. I think that's a sound approach since it will give us a very valid argument for the moderation, should it ever be needed. We discussed this in our meeting on http://wiki.eclipse.org/Architecture_Council/Meetings/June_10_2010 and decided that we'd want to convert the AC mailing list into a mailing list that's available for everyone to subscribe to, and moderated for non-AC-members. At least this is our desire pending technical feasibility. The rationale for the change: - The AC does want to be open for reading, and de facto we are open already: - All relevant discussions happen in confcalls which are all documented on the Wiki, and on bugzilla which is open for everyone to follow (just follow eclipse.org-architecture-council@eclipse.org in your bugzilla E-Mail Preferences). - The mailing list can be read via RSS already. - Why moderated: - We deliberately chose bugzilla as our technical discussion medium since it provides opt-in functionality for those that are interested in a topic, as well as better search/follow-up capabilities after the fact. New AC bugs are announced automatically on the mailing list to inform all list members, and allow for opt-in joining the rest of discussions. - We want to avoid discussion outbreak on the mailing list but redirect people onto bugzilla, such that list member's inboxes aren't spammed by discussions that people aren't interested in. Interested people are expected to opt-in / CC on Bugzilla. - On the moderated list, everybody can post, but in most cases moderators will ask submitters to just file a bug instead since that's our preferred way of getting in touch. In fact we could also change the current E-Mail autoresponder's text asking people to file a bug, since the freshly filed bug will be announced on the mailing list and thus have the same effect but automatic without a moderator having to write back. So I think that making the mailing list subscription-open/moderated, we are not going to change our business nor our openness (we are open already), but we are just making this openness more consistent and making it easier for the Community to listen or make submissions. Regarding the "duplication" concern voiced by John, we agreed in the meeting that (a) there is some distinction with cross-project being focused on the release train and AC being broader, and (b) that relevant discussions should be redirected to bugzilla anyways so with respect to following a discussion there should be no difference where a discussion is initiated. Thomas, can you live with this resolution? Could you also live with the variant of a list open for subscription but closed for submission, where an autoresponder text would instruct you to file an AC bug instead (including a hyperlink for immediate filing) ? (In reply to comment #9) > Thomas, can you live with this resolution? > Yes, but I find it odd that a list should be moderated as a precaution. I think moderation is a tool that should be used with great care in an open source community and only be used when a real need exists. In this case, that would be when subscribers to the list complain about too much traffic. > Could you also live with the variant of a list open for subscription but closed > for submission, where an autoresponder text would instruct you to file an AC > bug instead (including a hyperlink for immediate filing) No, for the same reasons as above. Well the point is that some 2 years ago, AC mailing list members complained about too much traffic caused by the AC members themselves (when the list was totally closed). That's when we invented the bugzilla opt-in system, where a new bug automatically informs the mailing list but the discussion is then moved off to bugzilla. It would seem odd to me if we wouldn't apply this bugzilla principle (that has worked very well for AC members) for AC non-members as well. Essentially, AC members have to play by some rules (that they know); we expect non-members to play by the same rules (but apprently they don't know the rules right away, so we'd have to tell them the rules). In fact, any form of submissions to the AC should come in the form of bugzilla's. I don't think that this is making us "closed" -- it's just our preferred channel for submissions, since this channel is opt-in, trackable and has a state. Yes this does impose (very minimal) additional effort on the submitter, but I think that's worth it. Does that make sense? And if not, why do you think that it's important to be able and directly send to the mailing list rather than filing a bug (via a hyperlink that you'd get from an autoresponder)? Note that having a state (open, assigned, worksforme, fixed...) associated with a submission is in the best interest of the submitter. When the AC members complained about too much traffic, they agreed to move more discussions to the bugzilla. That worked out well without any moderation and without closing the list for the people who actually posted to it. Similar discussions has taken place on many other lists with similar results. None of the list I know use has any moderation in place nor any auto-reply telling the user what to do. Yet, they seem to have a reached a good balance between bugzillas and discussions. How is this list different? To me it's a matter of principle. Things can be done either by being slightly paranoid and start with all fences up and then reluctantly removing them when there's a need for it, or you can start without fences and raise them as needed. I'm very much in favor of the latter and I think it's proven to work very well in most cases. Another point is that if you are interested in what's going on with the AC, you will need piggy-back on eclipse.org-architecture-council@eclipse.org anyway, so moving the discussions to the bugzilla is not the same as getting rid of the discussions in your inbox. (In reply to comment #12) I still don't see what's so problematic in clicking a hyperlink to enter your discussion topic on bugzilla. The effort is small, isn't it? And gives value to everyone. I just fail to see why that would be perceived as a fence. We really want those discussions in bugzilla and not on the list. Regardless who initiates the discussions. So why not have an autoresponder instruct people what we want, rather than having us type this manually again and again. > That worked out well without any moderation and without closing the list It actually could have worked better, because still an average 70% of the time we need to remind ourselves to please file a bug for starting a discussion. Why not have an autoresponder instruct people to start with a bug right away. > Another point is that if you are interested in what's going on with the AC, you > will need piggy-back on eclipse.org-architecture-council@eclipse.org anyway, so > moving the discussions to the bugzilla is not the same as getting rid of the > discussions in your inbox. I don't understand what you mean by this. Being subscribed to the mailing list is sufficient for me to know all that's going on. And we're going to open the list for subscription. (In reply to comment #13) > I don't understand what you mean by this. Being subscribed to the mailing list > is sufficient for me to know all that's going on. Is it? How do you get notified that someone initiated an interesting discussion with a new bugzilla? (In reply to comment #9) > Could you also live with the variant of a list open for subscription but closed > for submission, where an autoresponder text would instruct you to file an AC > bug instead (including a hyperlink for immediate filing) ? Closed for posting as a precaution is fine by me. For the record, I agree with Thomas's position here, but I'm not on the council so I obviously cannot comment on the amount of traffic / spam / questions you guys get. Closed entirely for submission, this seems odd. If we look back at the original problem: 1. Jeff posted a problem / concern to the AC List (and the cross project list). 2. I had a solution to the problem and tried to follow up 3. Because I'm not on the AC, I wasn't able to reply Now, if I received a auto-reply that told me to open a bug so I could communicate with the AC -- well, this just seems like red-tape to me. 1. Now, you could argue that Jeff should have opened a bug instead of posting to the AC list (but he also needed to CC cross-project, so I'm not sure how that would work). 2. You could also argue that since I'm not on the AC I had no business investigating the problem. (The problem was presented to the AC, it's the AC's job to handle it). In the end, I would just like to follow the comings and goings of the Architecture Council. If you open the list to read-only subscription then I can do this. If you completely close the list to non-member posts, and I need to reply to something, I'll likely do the same thing I did this time -- ask somebody to post the note on my behalf. (In reply to comment #14) > Is it? How do you get notified that someone initiated an interesting > discussion with a new bugzilla? The mailing list is notified automatically. See the Jun 11 posting here for example: http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/eclipse.org-architecture-council/ (In reply to comment #15) The cross-posting / reply argument is an interesting one, and I think there's two aspects of it: cross-posting: Is IMO OK to notify more people than would usually get a notification, but it's not a good thing for follow-ups. It not only spams lists, but there is also risk in losing parties as the discussion goes on. replying: This is a point to consider. Clearly, as we open the list for subscription and non-AC members get notified of some business, they may be interested in replying. I agree that not being able to do so directly appears awkward at first sight. But on the other hand, when do we think an issue is ready to move from "just mailing list replies" into a bugzilla discussion. In the end I think the point is, that bugzilla is slightly more heaviweight than "just mailinglist", but also provides more value in the longer term. I agree that there are, in general, a couple of small questions that could be closed quickly by E-Mail reply only. But is this the typical kind of business that the AC should be involved with? I doubt so; the existing cross-project or eclipse-dev or eclipse.org-committers lists may be more adequate for things like this. If we want to generally prefer involving the AC with "harder" problems that we do expect to take some discussion, bugzilla seems more adequate to me, and that's why I'm in general interested in driving discussions into bugzilla. But I don't have a very strong opinion on this, and I don't want to be the only one to decide this, so I'd like to solicit other's opinions. Here are our options, taking for granted that we do want to open the list for subscription: 1. Closed for submission with autoresponder: + no work for any moderators, drive submissions into bugzilla - quick e-mail question / reply / lightweight discussion not possible 2. Moderated list + compromise that allows quick question / reply but still avoids spam - some work needed by moderators 3. Completely open list + quick question / reply / lightweight discussion possible - "soft moderation" needed by list members to turn submissions into bugs I have not yet made up my own mind completely, so I'd like to hear others opinions. Let's please just moderate the list just as we've done for the cross projects list for the same reason. This bug hasn't had any activity in quite some time. Maybe the problem got resolved, was a duplicate of something else, or became less pressing for some reason - or maybe it's still relevant but just hasn't been looked at yet. If you have further information on the current state of the bug, please add it. The information can be, for example, that the problem still occurs, that you still want the feature, that more information is needed, or that the bug is (for whatever reason) no longer relevant. -- The automated Eclipse Genie. This bug hasn't had any activity in quite some time. Maybe the problem got resolved, was a duplicate of something else, or became less pressing for some reason - or maybe it's still relevant but just hasn't been looked at yet. If you have further information on the current state of the bug, please add it. The information can be, for example, that the problem still occurs, that you still want the feature, that more information is needed, or that the bug is (for whatever reason) no longer relevant. -- The automated Eclipse Genie. No matter how we resolve this bug, something needs to be done. Jay from my team wanted to post some information regarding Java 9. He was able to register to the list, got an e-mail that he needs to confirm and got this back:
---
The results of your email command are provided below. Attached is your
original message.
- Results:
Ignoring non-text/plain MIME parts
Your request has been forwarded to the list moderator for approval.
- Done.
---
And after that silence.
==> Either subscribing should not be allowed, or the system must send a correct note to the subscriber.
This bug hasn't had any activity in quite some time. Maybe the problem got resolved, was a duplicate of something else, or became less pressing for some reason - or maybe it's still relevant but just hasn't been looked at yet. If you have further information on the current state of the bug, please add it. The information can be, for example, that the problem still occurs, that you still want the feature, that more information is needed, or that the bug is (for whatever reason) no longer relevant. -- The automated Eclipse Genie. I presume the issue mentioned in comment 20 is not resolved. This bug hasn't had any activity in quite some time. Maybe the problem got resolved, was a duplicate of something else, or became less pressing for some reason - or maybe it's still relevant but just hasn't been looked at yet. If you have further information on the current state of the bug, please add it. The information can be, for example, that the problem still occurs, that you still want the feature, that more information is needed, or that the bug is (for whatever reason) no longer relevant. -- The automated Eclipse Genie. This issue has been migrated to https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/issues/132. |