do you know enough about what (other) Bazaar developers are doing?

[Colin D Bennett]

On Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:28:27 +1000
Robert Collins <robertc at robertcollins.net> wrote:

> On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 16:14 -0400, Aaron Bentley wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> > 
> > James Westby wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 15:57 -0400, Aaron Bentley wrote:
> > >> 1. Maybe it's time to split the ML into development and user
> > >> lists. High traffic seems to be a common complaint.
> > > 
> > > I think we should hold off on this for as long as possible.
> > > Obviously when that point is up for debate, and it may be that
> > > we've reached it.
> > 
> > I agree with that principle, but I think we may have reached that
> > point.
> > 
> > I was sprinting last week, and it took me 'till today to catch up
> > with the list.  I've heard of people unsubscribing from the ML due
> > to its volume and now we hear from someone declaring "email
> > bankruptcy" and marking all messages "read".
> 
> On the other hand, dividing the lists *by intent* divides the
> community. I don't have a particularly strong feeling here whether a
> new list will help or hinder; but I will note that if all the
> developers do not subscribe to the new list, then we'll essentially
> be partitioning users off and not seeing what they need... and there
> will be on-ramp for users to see what is going on and get dragged
> into developing unless they explicitly join the developers list.
...
> if the users list got to the same volume as we
> have today would we fork it into 'users over 40 years old' and 'users
> under 41 years old' ?

I think that is not a valid comparison.  There is a clear difference in
topics addressed between "user" and "development" mailing lists.  If a
question pertains to using Bazaar, it is a "user" question.  If it's
developers working on internal code stuff that regular users don't
understand or even care to know about, then it is a "development" topic.

Dividing users by age is nonsensical because the topics addressed for
young and old people are not generally different in nature.  On the
other hand, topics addressed by users and developers *are* different in
nature.

Regards,
Colin