communications and community [was Re: Lack of response about sponsorship]

[Adam Williamson]

On Fri, 2013-10-25 at 21:43 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Oct 2013 10:40:28 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
> 
> > Ever since I've joined,
> > which is ohgod nearly five years ago now, the split has seemed
> > reasonably clear and non-controversial, and I really can't recall anyone
> > being particularly confused about it, so perhaps this is a problem which
> > is still current in your mind but obsolete in cold unfeeling reality? :)
> 
> This is no real basis for trying to improve anything. I'm not here to fight
> for anything. If you put it as if I'm the only one, who thinks that the
> many lists and their purpose is confusing, well, then let's stop.

Well, I don't know which perspective is true for sure, just offering the
possibility.

> To have two lists about Rawhide (even for the build reports) is the most
> fundamental mistake already.

Neither list is really 'about' Rawhide. test is about testing, devel is
about development. Obviously, both are going to *involve* Rawhide at
some point. But our lists are not per-product lists; we don't have a
Rawhide list and an F20 list and an F19 list. They're about topic areas.
I'm sure the docs team talks about stuff in Rawhide occasionally too;
that doesn't mean their topics should be on the same list as development
topics that involve Rawhide and QA topics that involve Rawhide and
artwork topics that involve Rawhide...

> > I think we wind up with more posts that we think would be appropriate
> > for users@ than devel at .
> > 
> > To me, at least, test@ has a very clear and specific purpose which is
> > quite different from devel@, 
> 
> So "very clear" that "qa-devel" has been split off early this year, after
> the Fedora QA trac notifications had caused a flood of posts to "test" list.

Well, yes? The purpose of the test@ list clearly didn't include those
mails, so they were moved. They are clearly also not appropriate for
devel@, because they're about QA tooling development.

> > and I'd fight with tooth and claw any
> > proposal to 'merge' them. Merging them would be a flat-out disaster for
> > QA work: we have a different atmosphere and much lower traffic on test@,
> > if all our useful and productive QA mails got drowned in the devel@
> > noise it would have a significant negative impact on our ability to do
> > useful stuff.
> 
> Moving all Rawhide topics, build failures, build report, package version
> upgrade annoucements, ABI breakage announcements, Branched report, Rawhide
> report, from devel to test list would be the way to go.

Well, no it wouldn't, because most of those mails are relevant to
*developers* (or rather, packagers), not testers. Which is why they're
sent to devel at . Build failures are fixed by packagers. ABI bumps are
fixed by packagers. The errors identified on the Branched and Rawhide
reports are fixed by packagers.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net