Talk:OpenSource-Dev
Mailing list etiquette?
As of this moment, there are 387 subscribers to the sldev mailing list. As you would expect with a big public mailing list, most of those people don't post to the list. Of course, a handful of people post a lot. That's ok; if you have something to say, you should say it. However, I also want to make sure that if someone has something to say that everyone needs to read, that it gets read. If there's too much to sort through, that might not happen.
We've discussed the idea that we should split off separate mailing lists. In particular, there are two different proposals:
- sldev-contributors - for those that have signed contribution agreements (MISC-30)
- sldev-policy - for legal and policy issues (MISC-44)
I've resisted going down that path, because I think that the groupings we want are going to be more fluid than is practical to keep up with (one day we'll want to split off policy, the next day we'll want to split off caching discussions, etc).
I'd like to keep things almost the way that they are, but introduce new guidelines:
- If a topic generates more than five replies in less than 24 hours, it's time to redirect that conversation to one of our other tools, either the wiki or the bug tracker.
- If the topic is not specifically a Second Life development-related topic (e.g. this email, or a licensing discussion), it should be redirected to the wiki or the bug tracker immediately. One post in 24 hours should be sufficient to bring it to everyone's attention.
- If after 48 hours, the topic seems to have died out on the alternate forum, it's ok to reraise the issue on this mailing list, summarizing the offlist conversation thusfar, and calling for further comment in the alternate forum.
I think this policy strikes a good balance between making sure that people have a large forum to raise and discuss a broad spectrum of issues, while at the same time ensuring that the list doesn't become overwhelmed with discussion on a single topic that may not be of interest to everyone on the list.
Thoughts? -- Rob Linden 10:26, 23 March 2007 (PDT)