Sorry for the top post here. I want to address the chain as a whole. I think Edison's original email and Chip's reply presents two different set of problems.
The first set is mailing list is too verbose. I have heard this time and time again and it's been brought up on the list several times. To dismiss it is no longer acceptable to me. We need to address this whether it is to split up the list, introduce convention like ccing intended people, or some other means. Ccing is a good compromise to try so +1 from me. I also believe we should introduce new email tags that make sense. The second set is a responsibility problem. You are responsible for keeping track of the issues you want to discuss or you're interested in. You cannot ask others to remember that you started the traffic or responded in the thread and therefore cc you at all times. It makes no sense why that responsibility is pushed to the list. If others think your response is important, they can decide to cc you. But ultimately it is your responsibility to keep track of topics you want to keep track of. The same goes for tagged topics. Someone already went through the trouble to create a TAG so that you can easily determine if you have interest. If you don't read it that means you're not interested. If you are not reading emails with ACS41 tag, then you are not willing to participate in the 4.1 release. Even if we adopt ccing, it is a convention to get a more efficient traffic flow. It is not a must. It is your responsibility to adopt the conventions that have evolved on the list to make the list more efficient such as tagged topics and ccing. --Alex > -----Original Message----- > From: Sheng Yang [mailto:sh...@yasker.org] > Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 3:01 PM > To: cloudstack-dev@incubator.apache.org > Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Email etiquette CC or not CC > > On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 1:57 PM, Chip Childers > <chip.child...@sungard.com> wrote: > > On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 6:43 PM, Edison Su <edison...@citrix.com> wrote: > >> Hi all, > >> I am struggling to read all the emails on dev list everyday, it's > >> just so > many emails. Is it possible, that enable/allow/encourage us CC to somebody > if you think the topic he/she should take a look at? I think it will save > both of > us a lot of time. > > > > Edison, > > > > I'm fine with CC'ing someone specific when I know that I need their > > attention, but two caveats that I'm worried about are: > > > > 1 - I find myself often needing the whole community's attention, for > > VOTE threads or release planning updates, etc... I struggle to > > understand how folks want to see this. I thought that VOTE and ACS41 > > would be sufficient headers for people to actually pay attention to, > > but it appears to not be working. > > I believe the header should be sufficient in the most case, and that's > exactly what's mostly other community did. But as you feel that it's > not working well, that's probably means, people are lazy, in > nature(though I think it's may be improved with CC'ing someone > directly, but this should not be an issue even with our current > mailing list policy). > > > > 2 - If someone starts a thread, I would expect that they would > > actually pay attention to that thread! I've seen times when people > > start a thread, but don't respond to queries from others in the > > community. This is especially vexing when the thread is about a work > > that's in progress. > > That's exactly what we want to address. People are not intently drop > the thread, most of time, they just forgot. > > If you start e.g. 5 threads in a day, you maybe miss one or two of > them in the next day. Or you start a thread one week ago but only got > response 1 week later, you also may be miss it completely. And I > personally feel even I am intently to find back my thread, it would > take 10s even 30s to find my thread - it's very possible I missed it > when skim for the first time, then realize where is that thread? Then > check back again(that's what's happened to me this morning). That's > very annoying. I suppose we would deal with the mailing list based on > a priority, even we would skim them all. Of course on the top of > priority list is the threads I involved. But I cannot tell which one > it is with a glimpse in tens even hundreds of mails. What's we want, > is we can pay attention to our threads easily. > > LKML received hundreds of mail every day, I cannot image how can Linus > Torvalds or Andrew Morton survive if the mail is only sent to mailing > list, and they have to go through all the mails to find out which one > got their attention yesterday(though I also believe they got tons of > CC or TO mails as well). > > --Sheng > > > > > > Thoughts? > > > > -chip
