[asterisk-dev] [policy] Discussion on IRC - how to make -dev more useful

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Wednesday 04 June 2008 09:53:36 Matthew Fredrickson wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 03, 2008 at 08:39:20AM -0500, John Lange wrote:
> >> I'm not opposed to anyone trying to make improvements but my honest
> >> feeling is it won't work.
> >
> > Concur, based on 25 years experience on mailing lists...
> >
> >> First, this seems like a solution without a problem. The -dev list
> >> really is not that busy. I don't find it all that hard to scan subject
> >> lines and read messages that interest me while ignoring or skimming over
> >> ones that seem less relevant.
> >>
> >> Secondly, how are you going to enforce subject line compliance? The
> >> "correct" way to do this would be to split the list into separate lists
> >> but my experience with this is it never works. You just end up with
> >> people cross posting to every list because they always want their posts
> >> to reach the maximum number of readers.
> >
> > The worst problems with the idea, though, are these:
> >
> > 1) it pushes the labor onto the posters, when the people who care are
> > the readers, and probably not all of them.
> >
> > 2) it pushes the *actual* subject line even further off the screen,
> > which is painful, even if you *don't* use mutt in an xterm, as I do.
> >
> > And indeed, as John points out, -dev really is not that high traffic a
> > mailing list.  If you want to see a high traffic mailing list, go
> > subscribe to LMKL for a day or two.
>
> Not to be Mr. Negativity here, but I concur as well.  Asterisk-dev is
> not a high traffic list at all (LKML is a great example of a high
> traffic list), and any solution that puts the load on the posters is
> going to have major trouble gaining traction.

People who don't want to call extra attention to their proposals are free
to ignore it.  Those of us who _want_ to draw attention and discussion from
the list will use the tags.  Quite simple, really.  I think I've already used
the [policy] tag once before, and it's nice to have a formal proposal, so that
we all know what the various tags mean.

-- 
Tilghman