On: Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:01:54 +0100, "Marcelo M. Garcia" marcelo.maia.garcia@googlemail.com wrote:

Karanbir Singh wrote:

...

One thing that we are often blamed for is trying to stifle conversations and to discourage people from commenting / contributing / encouraging conversations. And that cant be further from the truth, really. We are all pro-community ( and when I say we, I mean everyone - including the contributors, developers, admins, users, abusers and hey upstream too ).

However, one thing that does get in the way, often, and something that we all feel creates a higher 'noise' ratio is conversations on this list about semi-related stuff, but not something that directly contributes to the general users of CentOS. Conversations that specifically address four areas:

• technologies
• best practices
• deployment strategies and tools
• management strategies and tools

And to better cater to these conversations, as well as further encourage such content, we'd like to propose creating a 'centos-tech' list.

Over a period of time, we would like to see the CentOS list become a more user help and distro specific list, with generic conversations moving to the centos-tech list.

Hi

I understand the eagerness to lower the "noise" ratio, but I think creating another list is not the solution, it will simply create an extra work for the people in the list "centos" in the sense that you will have to keep reminding people to use the "tech" list, or saying to newcomers that should sign for the "tech" list.

Noise is the side effect of the success of the project CentOS. As the project grows, more people will be joining the list, and there will be more noise.

In my opinion there aren't much "off-topic"/noise in this list.

Regards

Marcelo

I too, see little problem with the current signal to noise ratio. Compared to some tech lists I subscribe too this one is pretty much always on the topic of some aspect of using CentOS effective and efficiently.

If some people really have problems with the degree of latitude extended to subjects here then perhaps an appropriate solution is to set up a list called centos-strict and allow those that have strong feelings on the matter of appropriateness, whatever that turns out to mean, to subscribe there.

Once a day a digest of the centos-strict list could be posted to this list, in a fashion similar to that done for CentOS announcements. So that topics of interest discussed there would still reach a wider audience.

The existing centos list is pretty much established as the first port of call for a new contributor. It seems to me counter-productive to create a new list to serve that purpose and then force new people to resubscribe to a different list, doubtless after receiving abuse from self-appointed moral managers for posting the wrong subjects here.

As a case in point, what does the creation of new mailing lists have to do with CentOS, exactly? What is deemed appropriate and on topic is really more a matter of taste than anything else.