[SAC] Naming of several mailing lists

Mon Jan 8 11:13:11 EST 2007

I agree that a cleanup is needed.

One more thing I would suggest is to pick a convention for naming lists, 
document it somewhere, and make sure it is followed when new lists are 
created (that would include things like listing valid prefix/suffix, 
when to use them or not, characters to use as separators for 
prefix/suffix, etc.) This is more or less implied in Frank's proposal, 
but for instance we still have a mix of "-" and "_" as separator in list 
names (e.g. gdal-announce vs Fdo_announce). Personally I have a 
preference for "-" over "_" but as long as we pick one I'll be happy.

Daniel

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,

-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/