Doing something about signal:noise complaints

[Emmet Hikory]

(``-_-´´) -- BUGabundo wrote:
> On Thursday 22 January 2009 16:27:42 Emmet Hikory wrote:
>> * Point of contact for Ubuntu users to reach Ubuntu developers
>>
>>     There are lots of reasons that users want to reach developers.
>> For many of them, there are more specific fora.  Bugs should be reported
>> to the bug tracker (2).  Suggestions for features that would benefit
>> from discussion and voting should be posted to brainstorm (3) (although
>> a post to this list pointing at the brainstorm entry is not entirely
>> bad).  Posts specific to a certain area of Ubuntu may be better
>> discussed on more specific mailing lists (see the list (4).  Requests
>> for assistance or support most specifically belong on the ubuntu-users@
>> list.  I'm likely missing lots of other specific fora, but in summary,
>> such a general list as ubuntu-devel-discuss@ is probably best used when
>> either it's not clear which  forum may be more appropriate, when it's
>> something that isn't specific enough to fit in another forum, or when a
>> specific forum for the topic in question doesn't exist.
> 
> Well my POV on this is that you may have missed a valid use case:
> Discussion of problems on a development branch.
> From my experience, ubuntu-users@ is mainly toward to stable releases, and usually an user like my self (alpha/beta tester) gets really poor support there. At least on this list I expect to get some extra help to either fix my/our problem, or be pointed in the right direction, even if that is simply the case to go to LP and report it.
> Basicly I expect the same treatment as I get on IRC support channels (ubuntu+1 and ubuntu-bugs).

    I think "Discussion of problems on a development branch" falls into
a few categories, as follows:

A) Sharing of experiences with the current development branch
B) Technical questions about new features in the development branch
C) Bugs in the development branch

    I believe A and B are in the charter for this list, and I've covered
them at length in the email to which you reply.  I don't think case C
belongs on this list, but rather in the bug tracker.  I also don't think
this list serves as a useful point of escalation for bugs already filed.

    My rationale is that those with interest or knowledge in specific
packages often are either subscribed to bugs in those packages, or
review them periodically (this includes both developers and
knowledgeable non-developers).  These people are those with whom one is
most likely to have a useful discussion regarding any given discovered
issue.  This list has a much more general audience, and, depending on
the bug, it may well be that the majority of subscribers do not
experience the bug, are not familiar with the affected component, or
have nothing to add to the discussion.

    Further, creating an environment where bugs are escalated to this
mailing list as a means of solution may well result in an increasingly
high number of bug reports coming to the mailing list, as there are a
large number of fairly important bugs that are discovered during any
given development cycle.

    Lastly, I believe that those of us who choose to use development
releases for regular work have accepted the "when it breaks, you get to
keep both parts" guarantee, and so are expected to either be able to
solve the problems ourselves, or usefully interact with the bug tracker
to ensure that there is sufficient information that they can be solved
by others.

-- 
Emmet HIKORY