Mailing lists

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Sun, Oct 03, 2004 at 11:12:42AM +0800, John wrote:

> I suggest a division along these lines. I don't think that these 
> categorisations are perfect and there is some room for debate on whether 
> these suggestions should be implemented, and if so, what lists are 
> desirable. Ultimately, the final decision rests with Canonical.
> 
> [getting started, settling in, folding and spiking, using, testing]

This seems like far too many mailing lists.  Each time we split part of the
community off into another list, it reduces the likelihood of new users
receiving answers to their questions, causes more confusion about which
lists to initially subscribe to, 

My feeling about an ubuntu-beginners list is that if we divide the lists
according to experience, it tends to discourage learning (after all, who
will answer the questions if only beginners subscribe to the list?), while
participation in a list with users who have differing experience levels
tends to provide learning opportunities for beginners.

There is room for dividing the lists by topic, but even with this we should
be cautious not to split every possible topic into a list.  We are currently
in the process of organizing Ubuntu development into teams (read the
community page for more information), which I think will provide a good
starting point for categorization discussions, especially since it fits
nicely with the relevant development work.

-- 
 - mdz