Break up mailing list archive by months

[Martin Pool]

On 27 Jul 2006, John Arbash Meinel <john at arbash-meinel.com> wrote:
> There was a bug request opened here:
> https://launchpad.net/products/bzr/+bug/50528
> 
> Which requests that we split the mailing list archive by month, instead
> of by quarter.
> 
> For June I counted around 1500 emails, and so far in July we are at 1000.
> 
> I think an archive folder size of around 1000 is a pretty good target size.

I think that'd be good.  I think we can change the configuration but
then the admins need to kick off a re-build of the existing archives.

> Robert said we need to submit an 'rt' request. But I'm not aware of how
> to do it, and we should discuss a little bit if we do/don't want to do it.

I sent John details off line, but we should decide first before asking
the sysadmins.

There are two other list changes we might want to consider doing at the
same time (or maybe separately):

 - Shifting to calling the project just Bazaar, as we've done on the new
   web site

   This implies probably forwarding the old address, copying the
   archives, copying across the subscriber list.  It may cause some
   disruption for users who e.g. filter mail depending on the list name.

 - Creating separate user and developer lists

The first makes sense but perhaps isn't worth the disruption in its own
right.  (Plenty of lists have historical names.)  But perhaps it's time
to do the second - the developer traffic is so high that it's probably
pretty hard for people just using the system to subscribe, and there do
seem to be a number of people who'll answer user questions but might not
want to read every code review.

So I propose that, next month:

  - create new lists bazaar-users and bazaar-devel @lists.ubuntu.com
    (those suffixes are consistent with other lists there; no
    bikeshedding please) 

  - both use monthly archives, but otherwise have similar policies

  - non-subscriber posts will be manually moderated, as at present -
    which seems like a reasosnable spam/time/openness tradeoff

  - all existing subscribers are subscribed to both and get a mail
    explaining it

  - the bazaar-ng archives are used to populate bazaar-devel's archive
    (if possible)

  - the web site's updated to explain this

  - bazaar-ng forwards to bazaar-devel

  - tell gmane about this

-- 
Martin