Multiple copies of messages

Multiple copies of messages

[mskala]

I wonder if there's a way we could either reduce the current cross-posting
of messages, or lessen its impact.  We have four discussion mailing lists
on SourceForge, as well as the one on sources.redhat.com.  Quite often a
given message will be relevant to two of the SourceForge lists, so it gets
crossposted to both of those, but then it'll also be crossposted to the
redhat.com list because lots of people haven't subscribed to the
SourceForge lists yet, and the lists are configured to encourage direct
CC:s of replies to the original poster, so if I've previously participated
in a discussion I'll probably be on the CC: list as well, and so the end
result is that I usually get three or four copies of every message.  I
have to manually skip the extra copies, and it seems quite likely that I
could miss seeing something important because I deleted it thinking it was
a duplicate of something else.

Is the CC:-to-original-poster thing really a good idea?  Do we still need
the sources.redhat.com mailing list?  Would it be possible to move the
subscriber list from sources.redhat.com to sourceforge, to lessen the
impact of closing the older list?  Is there a way to configure
SourceForge's mailing-list software to only send one copy of a given
message to one recipient, across mailing lists?
-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                    Embrace and defend.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/

Re: Multiple copies of messages

[Eric McDonald]

Hi Matthew, welcome back,

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca wrote:

> on SourceForge, as well as the one on sources.redhat.com.  Quite often a
> given message will be relevant to two of the SourceForge lists, so it gets
> crossposted to both of those, but then it'll also be crossposted to the
> redhat.com list because lots of people haven't subscribed to the
> SourceForge lists yet, and the lists are configured to encourage direct
> CC:s of replies to the original poster, so if I've previously participated
> in a discussion I'll probably be on the CC: list as well, and so the end
> result is that I usually get three or four copies of every message.  

I've been contemplating this same issue lately.
I'll look at the mailman settings for the lists tonight.

As far as CC'ing the Redhat list is concerned, I am willing to 
quit doing that any time now. The Sourceforge listserv has shown 
itself to just as reliable as the Redhat one, albeit with a 
slower turnaround time. There are/were two reasons for CC'ing the 
Redhat list: (1) As you mention, not everyone migrated. (2) This 
whole jaunt over at Sourceforge was just intended to be a test to 
see if SF.net could meet our needs. I believe that it has proven 
reliable so far. My only complaints are that they are not 
currently tracking CVS commits and adds, and that there is about 8 
hour lag time between a CVS commit, and when it propagates to the 
world-facing CVS pserver. However, I have no problems with CVS 
checkout or commit failures. But, back to the mailings lists__, I 
think Sourceforge has shown that it could be the "official" home 
of Xconq. If Stan gives his stamp of approval to this, I will 
forgo the 'xconq7' mailing list.

Stan, if you're reading this, can we make the official site of 
Xconq be at Sourceforge? Also, you are invited to be a project 
admin on the Sourceforge site; just let me know the SF user ID 
that should be added to the project.

> Would it be possible to move the
> subscriber list from sources.redhat.com to sourceforge, to lessen the
> impact of closing the older list?  

That is a possibility, though whoever has access to the Redhat 
mailing list manager would have to arrange for this. Also, it 
would probably be good to get a nod of general consent from those 
"affected" by the move.

Eric

P.S. It may be wondered why SF has 5 mailing lists (general, 
developers, hackers, players, and cvs), whereas 
sources.redhat.com only has 3 ([main list], cvs, and announce). I 
thought it might be nice to separate the general discussion from 
the developer and hacker discussions so as not to scare off Xconq 
newbies. The cross-posting problem did not seem to be a major 
problem in my mind when I was first structuring the lists.