[arch-mirrors] [Announcement] Restructuring the arch-mirrors list

[Luchesar V. ILIEV]

On 01/02/16 19:15, Florian Pritz wrote:
> Some admins have told me that they are not interested in traffic
> regarding other mirrors. I tried to keep such traffic away from the
> mailing list, but I have the feeling that it would probably be better to
> simply split the list.
> 
> I propose the following two lists:
> 
>  - arch-mirrors: List that mirror admins should subscribe to. This will
> only accept mails from Arch Linux staff and will only be used if we need
> to contact all mirror admins.
> 
>  - arch-mirrors-discussion: General discussion list. Our users might be
> subscribed here. Mirror admins can use it to send mail regarding
> downtime or user facing changes. They will either be whitelisted or can
> subscribe and disable receiving mail (it's in the mailman user settings).
> 
> This should move approximately all of our current traffic on
> arch-mirrors to arch-mirrors-discussion, so mirror admins should get
> less boring mails. I am unsure if I should also split general discussion
> from downtime announcements, but it looks like there hardly was
> discussion in the past.
> 
> Given I do not know who actually reads this list and what they would
> like to see here, any feedback (from mirror admins or users) is welcome.
> 
> I plan to implement these changes next week or once the discussion is over.

Blame it on my FreeBSD past (and part present), but I actually prefer
the short generic name to be used for discussions (i.e. arch-mirrors@),
while the announcements-only list to be named accordingly (e.g.
arch-mirrors-announce@). This would perhaps also be more in line with
the general AL announcements list, arch-announce at .

Actually, trying to see the things from the users' perspective, I'd
probably expect the "announcements" list to be exactly for announcements
about the mirrors themselves (i.e. downtime notifications, etc.), while
the list that is intended for the mirror administrators might be more
aptly named arch-mirrors-admins at .

To summarize, if the number of mailing lists is not an issue on its own,
I'd imagine the mirror-related lists the following way:

arch-mirrors@
General discussions about the AL mirrors
Anyone can write to the list, anyone is free to subscribe if interested.

arch-mirrors-admins@
AL staff notifications to the mirror admins
Only AL staff can write, mirror admins are _required_ to subscribe.

arch-mirrors-announce@
Announcements about the various mirrors status
Only mirror admins can write, AL users are expected to subscribe.

Admittedly, three separate lists for an already quite a low traffic one
is an overkill, but on the other hand there would be a good separation
between the different types of messages with their different urgency.

Well, just my two cents, and thanks for raising the issue.

Cheers,
Luchesar
C.lab, University of Plovdiv
mirrors.uni-plovdiv.net