[asterisk-dev] Mailing List Future

[Joshua C. Colp]

On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 9:21 AM <asterisk at phreaknet.org> wrote:

> On 12/13/2023 7:55 AM, Joshua C. Colp wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 8:45 AM Jonathan Simpson
> > <jsimpson at jdsnetwork.com <mailto:jsimpson at jdsnetwork.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     The mixed content is useful.
> >
> >     Learning about stir shaken updates, useful. Would that have been
> >     in a github notification? Would the subject line be parsable?
> >
> >
> > My inquiry was strictly regarding release notifications and security
> > advisories. If discussions were done in GitHub then it would have been
> > a GitHub notification and parseable if you opted to receive them.
>
> I'll point out another issue with this as well. This assumes we're just
> talking about the "asterisk" repo here, and friends, but the
> asterisk-dev list has become the catch-all list for most discussion of
> anything development related in the entire Asterisk family of software,
> particularly as most of the other lists died a long time ago.
>

Some people have turned it into that, yes.


>
> For example, in what repo should discussion of wanpipe take place? Some
> of us might want to discuss issues with or trade patches[1], but there
> isn't a wanpipe repo since it's not an "open source project". Or general
> discussions that might cross over into multiple repos at once, like
> something that affects both Asterisk and DAHDI Linux, or both DAHDI
> Linux and DAHDI Tools? Should everyone now watch the asterisk-test-suite
> repo too? There are a lot of edge cases this doesn't handle well.


> I think it's also worth pointing out that, while I'm not one of these
> individuals, there are a number of people that don't have a GitHub
> account (and perhaps might not want one) that would be excluded if all
> discussion was happening there. This very point came out when the
> project moved away from Atlassian and there were comments to that effect
> *on this list*. These people would have been completely unheard if
> discussion had also moved to GitHub prior to that. Do you want to
> intentionally exclude them now?
>
> Some people I've noticed also subscribe to the digest version of this
> list. I could be wrong but I doubt GitHub discussion has a "digest"
> mechanism... because it isn't a real mailing list with all the options
> of a real mailing list.
>
> Sometimes people see something on the mailing list and reply privately
> to the OP to continue a specific point of discussion off-list. On GitHub
> discussions, where everyone is identified by their GitHub usernames and
> not real names or email addresses, getting in touch with someone could
> be considerably more difficult, particularly for people who might just
> be looking at the discussion online.
>
> And frankly, I think expecting 2100 people to reply to this thread is
> downright unrealistic. On no mailing list ever does everybody
> participate. The majority of mailing lists are dominated by the
> discussion of a few while the rest sit back and listen (which is
> perfectly fine), maybe 5% of posters generating 95% of the posts. Some
> people don't want to contribute, but they do want to read. Nobody has
> come out and said he or she wants the mailing list to go away or give
> way to another format, and lack of a response is *not* tacit approval of
> doing so. All the stakeholders that have spoken out are against the
> decision.
>

I'm not expecting 2100 people to reply. What I'm trying to get is more
people to respond with how THEY use the mailing lists. Your opinion is
yours, and is how you want to use the mailing list and what you want get
out of it. It's a factor in things but you don't speak for everyone.
Everyone is different and understanding what people are actually expecting
out of the mailing lists is important. So far what I'm seeing is people
using it for announcement type stuff, with the odd discussion here and
there, and as a way to get some insight into development.

So hypothetically speaking if a new mailing list were to be created but the
existing subscriber list could not be preserved, would people sign up again?

-- 
Joshua C. Colp
Asterisk Project Lead
Sangoma Technologies
Check us out at www.sangoma.com and www.asterisk.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-dev/attachments/20231213/8eae5bc6/attachment-0001.html>