[pypy-dev] Avoiding loving it to death

[Christian Tismer]

Bengt Richter wrote:
> I have a fear that we are going to love this project to death if
> we don't settle on how not to overwhelm the core people with
> pet ideas, well meant advice, musings, and war stories, etc.
> (of which I have my share, that I have to restrain myself not
> to contribute ;-)

Oh, thank you for your concern, but I don't
share it. The quality of submissions to this
list is not much lower than python-dev.
(and it will increase when I stop posting so much :-)

python-dev never needed an extra outlet, so we are fine.

> I'm wondering if it might not be good to have a private list for
> the core developers that could be cc:'d with only stuff that actually
> supplies something they specifically asked for, so when time is short
> they don't have to sift through so much to find what might be directly
> helpful in what they are actually doing on the project.

Well, I use private emails to discuss certain things
which I desparately need to know. The list gives
very good input, and I appreciate it very much.
But it will have a hard time to distract me from
things which I'm confident about, since I'm not
thinking of this stuff since yesterday.

[...]

> Then discussion can churn and occasionally emit a gem, but the core list
> would only get cc:'d with the really useful stuff. If the core people's
> original request is cc:'d to the core list, it would become a good archive
> reflecting progress in a focused way, without foregoing the benefits of
> freer discussion and banter on the main list. 

What I would like more is what Rocco suggested:
Let's have a decent person who is willing to
put together the relevant extract of this list
and who posts this weekly. I found this very
valuable for python-dev, since its posting
frequency turned very high, recently.

> BTW, I am never sure who would like to be CC:'d personally and who is
> satisfied to read the list or newsgroup. I would like some guidelines
> on that, to avoid unnecessary redundancies.

I always do a "reply all", because I think it is
not so hard to drop an unwanted duplicate message.
Personally, I like to have the duplicate, as a not
that I was included in a CC, meaning that I'm supposed
to reply.
One thing that I have to live with is, that some people
still use SPAM obfuscated email addresses which is
a PITA.

> I don't think the project would die from mailing list dilution, but
> I could see core people deciding to withdraw in order to make progress,
> and that would seem a shame, if there can be a way for us all to help
> without being more bother than its worth.

While I don't see such a danger, I'm very happy that
you are concerned that much about the progress of this
project, and I assure you I will try to help it as
much as I can, regardless of the SNR* of this list
(which is good, IMHO).

In other words: No way to get rid of me :-)

ciao - chris   (*) Signal to Noise Ratio

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