[SAC] Naming of several mailing lists

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

A discussion of mailing list names came up on the Board list, and I'm trying
to migrate it here for action.   The original request was from Markus, with
a reply from Tyler, followed by my opinion at the end.

I am putting this discussion here because I consider SAC responsible
for mailing list administration.

 > ----- Original Message -----
 > From: Markus Neteler <neteler.osgeo at gmail.com>
 > Date: Saturday, January 6, 2007 11:13 am
 > Subject: Naming of several mailing lists
 >
 >> Dear all,
 >>
 >> looking at
 >> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo
 >>
 >> I see a couple of inconsistencies and strange names
 >> for the new lists. Maybe already too late, but maybe
 >> better now than never:
 >>
 >> The following lists have an obscure "Mail_" prefix:
 >>  Mail_africa  	[no description available]
 >>  Mail_announce 	OSGeo Announcements
 >>  Mail_commits 	[no description available]
 >>  Mail_discuss 	OSGeo Foundation Discuss List
 >>  Mail_francophone 	[no description available]
 >>  Mail_mse-users 	[no description available]
 >>  Mail_webmap-discuss 	[no description available]
 >>
 >> while there are the more reasonable:
 >>  Africa  	Africa local chapter discussions
 >>  Brasil_commits 	[no description available]
 >>  Brasil_cvs 	[no description available]
 >>  Brasil_issues 	[no description available]
 >>
 >> - What's the difference between "Mail_africa" and "Africa"?
 >> - "Mail_announce" could simply be "announce"
 >> - "Mail_discuss" could simply be "discuss"
 >> - "Mail_francophone" could simply be "francophone"
 >> and so forth.
 >>
 >> The veeery long names are also a bit unfortunate:
 >>  Visibilitycommittee_announce  	[no description available]
 >>  Visibilitycommittee_dev 	Visibility Committee Discussion List
 >>  Visibilitycommittee_discuss-de 	Deutschsprachiges OSGeo Marketing
 >>  Webcommittee_announce 	[no description available]
 >>  Webcommittee_commits 	[no description available]
 >>  Webcommittee_dev 	Discussion and development of OSGeo's web presence
 >>  Webcommittee_issues 	[no description available]
 >>
 >> -> Webcom_ and Viscom_? But above "Mail_" prefixes are worse.
 >>
 >> Finally: Simplyfy this one:
 >>  Www_international-discuss 	Discussion on how to improve
 >> international networking
 >> to "intl-discuss" as before?
 >>
 >> And:
 >> Www_news-item
 >> and
 >> News_commits
 >> should probably be made more similar?
 >>
 >> Sorry for bothering,
 >> Markus

Tyler Mitchell wrote:
> I agree your assessment Markus. What is the best way to change and improve this?  I'm sure Shawn could breeze through this somehow and make a batch of changes.
> 
> Just as a brief bit of background, the import process scripts for list archives used CN's subdomain + mailing list name to make everything unique.  Hence the "discuss" list that was managed by CN's "Mail" project/subdomain.  Obviously ones like Mapguide_user ended up being a bit more intuitive.
> 
> What is the best way to change/improve this?  Is mailman scriptable so we can make some bulk changes and re-send out subscription information?  From talking with Shawn it sounds like you create a new list, import the old lists archives, and then re-subscribe everyone.
> 
> Are the only problems that:
> 1) the address to send mail to changes (so people have to update address books, etc)
> 2) and the address it arrives from changes (so people need to update their filter rules where applicable).
> 
> Are there any other issues?
> This renaming has come up in several forums, and there was one suggestion that "OSGeo" be part of list names as well.
> 
> What is the best way to address the overall problem?  Can someone put together a list of what the new list names could be and then we can debate it with list owners and/or SAC/WebCom?  
> 
> Happy to help improve this - is there consensus to change and should a couple of us just put together a list for discussion and go from there?

So I would second Markus' concern and suggest that we make the following
specific changes:

1) Remove all _issues and _commits lists that aren't actually being used.
    This would definately include the Mail_ and Webcommittee_ versions.  Project
    owners for stuff like Brazil should be queried to verify they don't need
    these lists though I think the only ones for which they are actually useful
    are Mapguide, fdo and mapbender.

2) Rename Webcommittee_dev list to "webcom at lists.osgeo.org".

3) Delete webcommittee_announce - unused as far as I know.

4) Delete all "news" related mailing lists.  The only news related thing
    we need is the news_item at osgeo.org address which is an alias, not a
    mailing list.

5) Rename visibilitycommittee_dev to viscom at lists.osgeo.org and
    visibilitycommittee_discuss-de to viscom-de at lists.osgeo.org.  I think
    the other viscom lists are junk and should be removed - check with
    Michael.

6) Determine which of the Africa lists is "real" and get rid of the other.
    Presumably the real list should end up named africa at lists.osgeo.org.

7) Rename Mail_announce to announce, Mail_discuss to discuss, and
    Mail_francophone to francophone.

Most of the lists are have relatively few members, and a bit of disruption
is not a big issue.  But I would like to stress that the current
Mail_announce and Mail_discuss lists have a lot of members, and that every
reasonable effort should be made to avoid unnecessary disruption during
a translation.  This might include adding an alias from the old name pointing
to the new name, trying to preserve mailman settings (like digest/nomail)
from anyone who has set them and so forth.

Folks on these two lists are our loosely affiliated community and we don't
want to lose them by jerking them around unnecessarily.  I would appreciate
Shawn verifying that the above 7 items are all reasonable doable, and i'd
appreciate members of SAC and other interested parties indicating support
or anti-support for the above plan (via +1, -1, etc).  If we have SAC support
and Shawn indicates it is doable then I'd like it to proceed later in the
week to get this settled.

The deletions should be easy to execute.  The renamings will likely require
more work.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org