Re: [pgsql-advocacy] PostgreSQL Certification - Mailing list pgsql-general

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

> On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 12:31:05 -0600
> Erik Jones <erik@myemma.com> wrote:
>
>> The sole argument I'd have against that, and I think it's a good
>> one, is that just seeing the plethora of different topics moving
>> through pgsql-general has been a key factor to exposing me to new
>> topics as well as having already seen the solutions to issues well
>> before I've encountered them.
>
> Right, I believe that is a valid argument. I think the real
> problem is that as a community we are not diligent in pushing people to
> the contextually specific lists we already have.

Well a) it usually would take more bandwidth to do that than it would save.
and b) I'm not sure what the point is since it's basically the same set of
people on all the lists. Also c) it sounds like you're agreeing with him and
then you're suggesting the polar opposite. The same argument holds for
-hackers at a higher level. Man issues, even those which are not technical
hacker issues, can be important for everyone to be aware of.

I think the only purpose having many lists is serving is to allow people to
act as "gatekeepers". In this case, "I only want to discuss it with a small
number of people who are more likely to agree with me".

I think we would be better served by the USENET model[*] of forking only when
experience shows it's necessary, rather than in anticipation of traffic which
may never materialize and may in fact not be of interest to all. I mean
seriously, do we really have 20 different groups of people involved here? (and
that's *not* counting the regional groups or the "inactive" lists.)

I would junk pgsql-sql, pgsql-ports, pgsql-performance, pgsql-novice and
redirect them all to pgsql-general and pgsql-docs, pgsql-interfaces, and
pgsql-bugs and send them all to -hackers.

I would also suggest junking pgsql-advocacy and pgsql-www as well. They're
mostly noise but they're noise we should be at least peripherally aware of and
not allow to slip under the radar because it happens in a corner where not
everyone is subscribed. That's what happened recently on another topic and it
seems to be what's happening now with this certification stuff.

By all means, involve only the people you want but you should have to conduct
yourselves out in the open where others have a chance to speak up and shout
stop if you're doing something on their behalf that they don't like.

[*] "New newsgroups are formed not on The Field Of Dreams theory- "if you
    build it, they will come"- but on the Brooklyn Dodgers theory- "dammit,
    there's too many teams in this city: someone move out!"--Charles Seaton

--
  Gregory Stark
  EnterpriseDB          http://www.enterprisedb.com
  Ask me about EnterpriseDB's On-Demand Production Tuning