[Wine] Mailing list <-> forum gateway

[L. Rahyen]

On Monday March 3 2008 21:52:04 Dan Kegel wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 2:21 AM, Renaud (Ron) OLGIATI
>
> <renaud at olgiati-in-paraguay.org> wrote:
> >  Mailing list now getting clogged up with beginners questions.
> >
> >  For me that's it, I'm leaving, and you'll have to find new maintainers
> > for the apps I maintained.
>
> Hmm.  That's two people who are upset by the
> increase in newbie questions.
>
> I'm starting to think that perhaps we do need
> to map the existing forum to a wine-users-newbies list.

	I disagree. I can agree with idea to split up the list only if number of 
messages per day will be big (but currently it is small).
	If we decide in the future to split up the list, we shouldn't try to 
separate "advanced" users and "newbies" (it was already explained recently by 
someone why this is pointless). What should be done in such case is to 
separate discussions by topic (each topic will have its own list and proper 
forum link if the list is intended for typical users or no link at all if it 
isn't - wine-devel is good example of such list). But currently we have too 
small number of messages per day, so there is no need to split up, really.

	*	*	*

	Personally I don't understand these people. It is quite easy to skip messages 
or topics if you don't want to read them (or even use filters like Alan)... 
In fact this is how I read wine-bugs (it should be noted that I have very 
little free time) - if I see a message that might be useful for me I read it 
or skip it otherwise.
	Number of mail per day in wine-users is quite small, and people who maintain 
application(s) should be either interested in *some* newbie's questions who 
ask something related to programs they maintain or they should be interested 
in general user questions (if they are not why they are subscribed to this 
list?). Anyway, skipping newbie questions from the forum will take at worst 
1-3 minutes of *additional* time per day (or even almost a zero if you filter 
all messages from the forum) - I don't believe this is a problem for someone 
who want to *help* users at this list. And as we can see, all people who help 
users *actively* either like forum <-> mailing list link or at least agree 
that it is useful thing. It is obvious that this is good for WINE Project 
because by having a forum and supporting users there we are becoming more 
user-friendly. And if we are becoming more user-friendly, we will have more 
users and therefore more popularity; in "long run" that means more 
developers, bug-reporters, maintainers, etc.
	Anyway, I think it is obvious that wine-users list does exist for *users* who 
need help (and whose questions aren't suitable for wine-devel) and for people 
who want to *help* such users (of course there is some people who just read 
the list or major part of its messages without helping anyone - "just for 
fun", and either don't post at all or post very rarely).
	BTW, by definition, most users of WINE are newbies. For advanced 
questions/discussions (and not general user questions) we already have 
wine-devel list.

> I think that amount of segmentation might in fact
> be useful.
> - Dan

	Current traffic (for wine-users) is small. So personally I don't see any 
reason to create another list (especially just because of one or two people 
who write messages rarely and even more rarely actually helped users at this 
list in the past). Even if at some point in the future number of messages 
will be very big in this list, we may want create different lists for 
different topics (and link them with the forum accordingly) and leave 
wine-users for general questions/discussions.
	In other words, it is better separate discussions by topic than to blindly 
separate users by "type" ("newbie" or "advanced"). But currently there is no 
need to create more lists than we already have (IMO).
	BTW, we already have such system: wine-users, wine-patches, wine-bugs, 
wine-announce, wine-releases, wine-tests, wine-cvs, wine-tests  and 
wine-devel lists dedicated to completely different topics. It is easy to see 
how this approach can effectively sort all messages by topic (and give the 
ability to subscribers to choose what they want to receive to inbox).