[Python-Dev] Issues with process and discussions (Re: Issues with Py3.1's new ipaddr)

[glyph at divmod.com]

On 05:42 pm, p.f.moore at gmail.com wrote:
>2009/6/3  <glyph at divmod.com>:
>>So, here are my recommendations:
>>
>> 1. Use the tracker for discussing tickets, so that it's easy to refer 
>>back
>>to a previous point in the discussion, and so that people working on 
>>those
>>tickets can easily find your commentary.
>> 2. Use the mailing list for drawing attention to these discussions if 
>>they
>>are of general interest, especially if the discussion is time- 
>>critical.  In
>>this case, an announcement "You have six weeks to review ipaddr now 
>>until
>>its inclusion is permanent, anyone interested please look at issue 
>>3959."
>> 3. If you have an opinion, put your +1/+0/-0/-1 on a line by itself 
>>at the
>>top of your message, so that it's easy for newcomers to the discussion 
>>to
>>get a general feel.
>
>Mostly, I agree, but I definitely disagree, I'm afraid, on the use of
>the tracker for discussions. To keep track of discussions on a ticket,
>I have to personally keep a list of the tickets I'm interested in,
>check back regularly to see if there's anything new, and keep a mental
>note of where I've read up to so I know what's new. RSS would make
>this simpler, certainly, but I'm not sure about how I'd use it (it's
>not how I currently use RSS, so I'd have to mess round with my current
>setup to make it appropriate).
>
>Email is delivered to me by default - I get anything new in my
>python-dev folder, and I can skip or read the discussion as I choose.
>I don't have to take action just to monitor things. (In other words,
>the default is for people to see the discussions, rather than the
>other way around.

A good point, but there are a couple of technical solutions to this 
problem, which, according to http://wiki.python.org/moin/TrackerDocs/, 
have already been implemented.

If you want to get email about new issues, subscribe to new-bugs- 
announce at mail.python.org.  If you want to know about every message on 
every issue, subscribe to python-bugs-list at mail.python.org.

But, frankly, I think it's a bad idea to subscribe to python-bugs-list 
for announcements.  The whole point here is that there is simply too 
much going on in python development for anyone to reasonably keep track 
of at a low level.  Guido himself has complained on numerous occasions 
of being too busy to monitor things closely.  A better model is to 
subscribe to new-bugs-announce and selectively pay attention to the bugs 
which are interesting to you; and, when a discussion you're involved in 
gets interesting and becomes of more general interest, raise it on 
python-dev.

(On the other hand, if you want to subscribe to get your own personal 
searchable archive, then by all means.)