Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 23 Feb 1999 12:24:42 +0000 (GMT) | From | Matthew Kirkwood <> | Subject | Re: [ANN] new mailing list |
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On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Rik van Riel wrote:
> Now there's a new list for the discussion of new and > still alpha-quality patches.
But this is what linux-kernel is for.
> > You're moving the wrong traffic off the list, Rik. > > Hmm, what do you think we could do to reduce the traffic > on linux-kernel? The way it is now it's so busy that it > actually hampers the debugging of the kernel and helping > people with problems.
Discipline. And listmasters less polite than DaveM or Matti :)
> It is clear that something has to be done in order to > avoid this list becoming so clogged up that nobody can > keep up anymore. If it were 'only' 2k messages/month, > I think a lot more people would be able to keep an eye > on the list, thus avoiding the repetetive FAQing when > a new bug is released...
The Frequently Reported Bugs (of which there were a few during 2.1) were responsible for a little extra traffic, but nothing too painful, and that was mostly because vger was backlogged and messages to the list were taking around 8 hours to get though. More traffic has been taken up with the "vger is slow" and "my_favourite_mta for vger" threads than with duplicate bug reports.
Now that they're taking <20 minutes[1], that's no longer a valid concern, in my opinion.
It's offtopic discussions like this which are responsible for a lot (I guess not much less than 25%) of the traffic.
I think that most people on this list would happily receive 300 messages a day, if all (or at least the /vast/ majority) of them were about technical things concerning the linux kernel.
What is required to get these lists (actually, just _this_ list, really) managable again is a little discipline, of the sort of which I'm demonstrating a lack by responding to this mail :)
People have to appreciate that there are other places to post information - if people are interested in the latest controversial/fawning writings by Messrs Stallman, Raymond, Perens, &c, then they'll follow gnu.misc.discuss, slashdot.org or www.gnu.org. Not starting or contributing to threads which don't relate pretty directly to kernel development is about the best way to make this list sane again. (Actually, merciless moderation is better, but who has /that/ much time? :)
Matthew.
[1] For me, anyway (but I'm on an exploder :)
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