[Foundation-l] Re: An other attempt for Announce-l; central info about wikimedia tech status and info

Thu Aug 18 00:39:10 UTC 2005

On 8/18/05, Delphine Ménard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/18/05, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> 
> > Sending a clear notice to an central point to inform the users of a
> > system about the status is so normal that it should not be something to
> > discuss about.
> 
> Completely agreed. Wheter it is a mailing list that people can
> subscribe to, or a blog (there is one I think, but maybe not
> advertised enough?) or an info page...

The problem at the moment isn't that these things don't exist. It's
that too many of them exist. If someone does notify a mailing list,
they get complaints about why they didn't also notify half a dozen
other mailing lists, or the village pump, or the blog, or goings-on,
or IRC, or meta, or ...

Is another mailing list actually going to solve this? Are people going
to accept that there is one place for this information? What about
those who don't want to be on a mailing list and feel this information
should be on the wiki? Where are translations going to occur? If the
list is aimed to be low-traffic, sending dozens of translations every
time something is posted isn't going to be too popular. If the aim is
to get information out in a timely way, waiting until a message is
translated won't really help to meet that requirement. If every
language has a separate announcements list, it won't help to meet the
goal of having one central point of information.

I'm not saying I oppose the idea. I don't, and I think something like
this is very much needed. I'm just concerned the solution isn't as
easy as simply creating a new mailing list.

Angela.