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Message-ID: <200811010345.48823.larry@garfieldtech.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] keeping traffic on this list manageable
From: larry@garfieldtech.com (Larry Garfield)

On Friday 31 October 2008 1:23:12 pm Lukas Kahwe Smith wrote:

> Here I come to the key part of my idea. We would allow every PHP
> usergroup to also appoint one person that gets unmoderated access to
> the list. This enables members of the usergroup to feed their ideas
> via that person directly to the list, taking load of the list
> moderators and ensuring that things a given UG deem important are not
> lost in this process. Furthermore this intermediate step would serve
> to throttle the traffic and make the numbers of posters (their writing
> style and expertise) more easily transparent to other posters (but
> more importantly to the readers). I am sure this will help reduce
> misunderstandings and more importantly result in a more friendly tone
> (its just natural for people to feel overwhelmed by too large a crowd).

My concern here is that an UG is not necessarily a good=20
representative "constituency".  As an example, I don't think there's anyone=
=20
else from the Chicago UG on this list right now; certainly no one I=20
recognize.  Most of the local PHPers aren't interested in internals as far =
as=20
I'm aware, for whatever reason. =20

However, my main activity is with the Drupal project.  More than half of th=
e=20
posts I make are related to how Drupal could potentially leverage new=20
features down the road.  If I were to "represent" any particular group=20
and "ensure that things [it] deem[s] important", it would be Drupal, not=20
Chicago, and I think I'm one of only 2 Drupal core devs on this list.  But=
=20
Drupal isn't an UG, so that wouldn't qualify as a constituency.  I'm sure=20
there's some other definition of constituency besides regional UG and proje=
ct=20
that makes just as much sense, too.

=46rom my mostly-outsider POV, most of the "noise" I see on this list is ei=
ther=20
bikeshedding (which is hardly a PHP-specific problem) or people that seem t=
o=20
know each other well so I assume are core folks talking past each other,=20
whether maliciously or not.  I don't see anything that "keep out the=20
riff-raff" would inherently fix.  Except for the recent namespace separator=
=20
thread-of-doom, this list is generally much slower paced than, say,=20
php-general.

=2D-=20
Larry Garfield
larry@garfieldtech.com