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Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:19:32 -0700
In-reply-to: <200810312043.01209.et@php.net>
To: Stefan Walk <et@php.net>
Cc: PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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 <490B5CC5.8040808@lerdorf.com> <200810312043.01209.et@php.net>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] keeping traffic on this list manageable
From: ron@Opus1.COM (Ronald Chmara)

On Oct 31, 2008, at 12:43 PM, Stefan Walk wrote:
>  There are cases where one user replied to
> multiple mails in a short time without fighting, just explaining and
> discussiong, and you don't want to block that - as well as it  
> wouldn't stop
> random people from suggesting dropping the $ from variables, making  
> the
> namespace separator configurable etc. IMO, it's the volume of  
> people, not the
> volume of messages, that is the main problem here.

As a semi-non-random person (though people who have become very  
active only in the last few years may not remember me at all), I'd  
like to put in my two cents, based on, oh, 8+ years of working with  
this list, and my 22+ years of dealing with various lists/groups  
(email goes back to 1961, FWIW, before I was born).

1. Having a fairly advanced MUA helps. If you don't know what an MUA  
(Mail User Agent) is, then you may not remember the days when it was  
easy to get 1,800-10,000 messages a day off of various lists. The way  
this "message overload" problem was typically solved was with message  
grouping, and mail rules. Don't want to read a thread? Delete whole  
threads, not messages. Don't think a user is contributing? Put them  
in the bit-bucket.

2. Random off-topic-ness happens. It cannot be dictated away,  
moderated away, or programmed away. Feel free to try, but some of the  
best minds in the world have worked on this issue for 47 (yes, 47)  
years. No silver bullets, I'm afraid.

3. The "super-seekrit serious chat only about X" lists (or CC:  
chains, or IRC meetings, or wiki pages, or whatever) already exist,  
and have always existed. If people knew about them, they wouldn't be  
"seekrit", and away from the riff-raff of a publicly available  
mailing list. Most F/OSS projects have these back channels. They are  
not made available for public use because, well, they're not supposed  
to be.

4. If you are a developer of sufficient merit/need/value, you will  
likely be on both public lists for a project, and have access to the  
private back-channels for some things as well. This is just the way  
the system works. Sure, we could make official rules, and another  
shibboleth list/channel/chat/wiki, for a given piece of a project,  
and add another layer... but to what end? We already have a plethora  
of such channels, indeed, as a project grows, said channels create  
themselves out of necessity.

So, to summarize, here's an example chain:
-php-general
-php-dev
-<redacted>, PHP sub-project "hidden/CC lists and chats"
-<redacted>, PHP core current C contributors and debuggers
-<NA> Zeev (or who ever's) cell phone

These layers already exist.

The problem is not that we (as a community) lack these levels of  
discussion, the problem is that every so often, folks want to  
escalate to another level, or find that they've outgrown the level  
they're in, and complain about the 'Riff-Raff". If you contribute to  
higher levels, if you work on a feature that impacts others at a  
higher level, and want to also be a part of that smaller community,  
well..... it already exists. It just doesn't always have a mailing  
list that *anybody* can join because they "think they're important".

-Bop