[RFC] Bazaar Localisation Team

[Ian Clatworthy]

John Arbash Meinel wrote:

> I just feel that we went from 1 probably too-full list, to having it
> split with merge-proposals, and now you've introduced 5 or so mini-lists
> that I don't think many people even realize they exist. Maybe I'm wrong,
> are the subscription rates high?

Jono Bacon covers this issue nicely in his "Art of Community" book. It's
freely available online[1]. The advantages of sub-teams include:

* better signal-to-noise ratio for community members only interested
  in selected areas
* less intimating than a huge list for new contributors.

The big disadvantage of having too many lists/forums is users being
unsure of which team to post questions too. For larger projects, he
effectively recommends sub-teams based on skills:

* users
* developers
* documentors
* translators
* qa (bug triage and testing).

I agree with poolie than user vs developer lists isn't appropriate for
Bazaar. The other teams sounds useful to me though I agree we ought to
consider each one on a case by case basis. I don't want to create teams
without a clear purpose for each. Nor do I want teams that fade away. I
hope our bzr-mac and bzr-windows teams get a bit more lively as we
approach the 2.1 release. :-)

In the case of translations/localisation, it's worth noting that I got a
much better response with my "Call for Explorer translations" to
launchpad-users than I did with the main Bazaar list. So my expectation
is that we'd have people join that team who would never subscribe to our
main mailing list.

My 2c,
Ian C.

[1]
http://www.artofcommunityonline.org/2009/09/18/the-art-of-community-now-available-for-free-download/