Proposal: Mailing List Cull

Brian Goetz brian.goetz at oracle.com
Wed Mar 13 13:18:16 UTC 2019


Without commenting on the specific proposal, I agree that having a lot of “dead” mailing lists both (a) could give off the appearance of being a ghost town and (b) makes it harder to find where the active discussion is. Given that many lists are for projects that are no longer active (some just ran off the road, others completed their mission and should be wound down), some move to guide users to the active lists while preserving the history of the inactive lists would be good.  

Note that Proposal 3 is really a separate question from the “how do we display mailing lists” question; it is really about creating a “start here” page, which is orthogonal to how the mailing lists are organized and displayed.

The next steps can be taken in parallel:

- Determine a course of action for dealing with dead / dormant lists (this is mostly a discussion task);
- Determine the actual deadness / dormancy status of the lists that you identified.  This is a research task.  The place to start here is to go to the project leads for the owning projects or the group leads for the owning groups, and ask them if there is some reason they are more active than they appear.  

> On Mar 13, 2019, at 8:27 AM, Adam Farley8 <adam.farley at uk.ibm.com> wrote:
> 
> (Preface: I may be sending this to the wrong list, so advice on the 
> correct list would be appreciated.)
> 
> Hey All,
> 
> There's a lot of mailing lists here, including a few that've been dead for 
> 5 years, and I think it's making it hard for contributors to find the 
> right list.
> 
> Here's a list of mailing lists seeing no/minimal use, and a set of 
> proposals to go with them.
> 
> Proposal 1: Cull (archive) one or more of these mailing list groups, with 
> exceptions made for lists anyone still wants, or actively monitors.
> Why? Because having 151 non-archived mailing lists makes it harder for 
> people to find the right one. Also makes it easier to find black holes 
> (non-monitored lists) to drop valid bugs into.
> 
> Proposal 2: Hide the archived mailing lists on the primary "mailing lists" 
> view.
> Why? Because it dilutes the list of active lists and makes finding the 
> right one harder.
> 
> Proposal 3: Create a short list of the most useful channels to the casual 
> contributor, making it easier to find the primary hotspot, JCL, docs 
> lists, etc.
> Why? Ease of use. Ability to contribute should be based on knowledge of 
> the code base, not knowledge of the mailing lists,
> 
> Proposal 4: Hide the mailing lists whose sole purpose is to display 
> automated messages when a project has been committed to.
> 
> Proposal 4: Make Proposals 2, 3, and 4 the default view when you click on 
> "Mailing lists" from the main page.
> Why? Ease of use again. One form this could take is: the user clicks on 
> "mailing lists" on the primary openjdk page, and sees a minimal list of 
> mailing lists, with toggles to show the lists hidden by 2, 3, and 4.
> 
> Constructive opinions welcome. :)
> 
> Best Regards
> 
> Adam Farley 
> IBM Runtimes
> 
> P.S. Spam and "hep please" don't count as emails.
> 
> -- Appendix list:
> 1: Lists with no emails in 2 years or more. (Dead)
> 2: Lists with no emails inside the last 6 months. (Presumed Dead)
> 3: Lists with less than 2 emails (average) per month for the past year 
> (Rosebud)
> 
> -- Appendix 1: (Dead)
> anno-pipeline-dev
> btrace-dev
> compiler-grammar-dev
> cvmi-dev
> friday-stats-dev
> graphics-rasterizer-dev
> guide-discuss
> icedtea-changes
> java-se-8-spec-comments
> java-se-8-spec-experts
> java-se-8-spec-observers
> java-se-9-spec-comments
> java-se-9-spec-experts
> java-se-mr-spec-comments
> javadoc-next-dev
> jep-changes
> kona-dev
> lambda-libs-spec-comments
> lambda-libs-spec-experts
> lambda-libs-spec-observers
> penrose-dev
> penrose-discuss
> tiered-attrib-dev
> type-annotations-dev
> type-annotations-spec-comments
> type-annotations-spec-experts
> type-annotations-spec-observers
> xrender-dev
> 
> -- Appendix 2: (Presumed Dead)
> detroit-dev
> dio-dev
> duke-dev
> graal-changes
> haiku-port-dev
> harfbuzz-dev
> icedtea-test
> java-se-9-spec-observers
> java-se-spec-comments
> jdk-hs-changes
> jmm-dev
> nb-projects-dev
> nio-discuss
> panama-spec-experts
> sandbox-changes
> sctp-dev
> sumatra-dev
> valhalla-spec-comments
> 
> -- Appendix 3: (Rosebud)
> asmtools-dev
> caciocavallo-dev
> conformance-discuss
> doccheck-dev
> jmx-dev
> jol-dev
> lambda-spec-comments
> lambda-spec-experts
> lambda-spec-observers
> macosx-port-dev
> metropolis-dev
> mips-port
> platform-jep-discuss
> 
> 
> 
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