[SAC] Naming of several mailing lists

[Allan Doyle]

+1 on all of this

I agree that the issue is to do this as painlessly as possible, and  
taking a little extra effort to transition things by setting up  
aliases might help.

Just remember, the pain of transitioning now is probably less than  
the long-term pain of keeping things looking muddled.

	Allan

On Jan 7, 2007, at 12:28, Frank Warmerdam wrote:

>
> 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
>
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> Sac at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/sac

-- 
Allan Doyle
+1.781.433.2695
adoyle at eogeo.org