[Mailman-Developers] GSoC discussion

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Richard Wackerbarth writes:

 > I appears that my communication was not as successful as I had hoped.

I don't know about your communication.  My point here is that the
*student's* communication was insufficient.

Posts to the list involve people who are not party to the conversion
on IRC and vice versa.  Details like the object of "filter" need to be
included.  "Look at" may be an obvious indication of "we're talking
about presentation" in context of a conversation, but it's not enough
in a post that summarizes that conversation to those not present.

As I wrote earlier, my criticisms are going to be severe, even harsh.
There's a good reason for that.  What we're doing here is quite
different from most uses of mailing lists, which are either much more
casual (conversational correspondence) or involve a group whose
members are all more or less up to speed on the content.

That's not going to be the case here.  Important decision-makers
(Terri and Barry) are currently not in the loop.  The students are
going to be very much focused on their own proposals, and will take
time to get up to speed on others'.  Posts need to avoid presuming
very much knowledge on the part of other subscribers, at least early
in threads.

There's another important point that hasn't been mentioned yet.  You
GSoC students are Mailman developers now.  It's not about your
proposal, it's about the Mailman project.  Your proposal is important
to us in the context of the project, not standing alone by itself.
You should help support the other students in their projects, too.
You may not have anything constructive to contribute to others' tasks
yet, but you *should* be able to ask questions about them.  That's
important for learning about how Mailman works overall.