Traffic reports (was Re: The road to UBZ)

[Jane Silber]

Hi -

>>As a pie in the sky wish (it's obviously extremely time consuming work
>>:), someone could resurrect ubuntu-traffic.
>>
>>    
>>
>that someone could be you! :)
>
>Seriously, it died when Ubuntu became much more popular sometimes
>between Warty and Hoary, and Mako couldn't do it, probably due to large
>volume of emails on the mailing lists.
>
Yes, the amount of list activity made it impossible for one person to 
keep up with it.  Traffic reports are valuable though, and I know they 
would be greatly appreciated by a large number of people  if we can find 
a way to revive them.  As a starter, here's some food for thought on 
this topic:

- think about which lists should be the priority for traffic reports.  
To get it started it will be necessary to prioritise and focus.  I 
suspect that once it gets started for a small number of lists, people 
will want their favorite list to have a traffic report too and the team 
will grow.

- So, what's the most valuable? Traffic on devel related lists (e.g., 
u-d, e-d, k-d, x-d)? Traffic on community team related lists (e.g., doc, 
marketing, art, translators, loco teams)? Traffic on ubuntu-users?   Or 
should prioritisation be based on the amount of list traffic (ie., do 
the highest volume first on the theory that most people won't have time 
to read those)? 

- Should the initial goal be to create a team/structure/system to accept 
traffic reports from others and then publish them (i.e., the "build it 
and they will come" approach)?  Or to pick a list or lists and actually 
start generating the reports (i.e., the "just do it" approach)? [I 
personally think it should be the latter, but some may disagree]

- Note that there are traffic scripts/tools available to help in this.  
They don't do all the work, but it would be silly to try to replicate 
them. I'm not sure where to find them, but if someone pings Mako I'm 
sure he can provide a pointer.

Cheers,
Jane