ubuntu-fridge team mailing list archive

[Jordan Mantha <mantha@xxxxxxxxxx>]

/me crawls out from under a rock strangely shaped in the form of a
dissertation draft.

Joey Stanford wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to reopen the discussion of the Fridge and News Mailing lists
> now that LP mailing lists are out of beta.

Please let's get something done here. Having 2 emails for everything is
getting a bit annoying, there are more pressing matters IMO, and I think
it's time we just did something rather than bikeshedding.

> To rehash:
> 
> 1) We want one list where folks can send news items to that services
> the Fridge, UWN, and other areas (e.g. Full Circle).
>   * There's a LP team for this https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-news
> which can have it's own mailing list however only team members can
> post.
>   * We had wanted a list where anyone can submit articles.

Does it really make sense to make it a mailing list? Mailing lists in
general are designed around two-way communication whereas almost all of
the new submission work would be one-way (i.e. submitter files a
submission). Mailing lists are also not the natural form of website
submissions. Generally submissions happen via a form on the site itself.
I can't help but think that we're compensating for a flaw in Fridge's
design/implementation. News and event submissions should be handled via
Fridge and/or other relevant sites. However, there is much to be said
about having a central place for news submissions to go. An article
submitted to Fridge may be more appropriate for UWN or Full Circle. So I
see three practical solutions:

  1) Have a contact form on Fridge for submissions that then goes into a
queue for editors to look at. Everything is handled entirely within
Fridge. No mailing lists.

  2) Have a contact form on Fridge (and other news sites) that sends the
submission as an email to an ubuntu-news mailing list. This list is not
open and is just a repository of news submissions.

  3) Run Fridge digg/slashdot style where people are contributing
content and the editors are just trying to manage the chaos. No mailing
list necessary here.

The basic requirements I see for "good" solutions:
 * The submitter never should have to interact with a mailing list
 * Where possible the submitter should interact with Fridge rather than
external resources. The idea being that you should be submitting stuff
where you would be reading it.
 * Does not bottleneck the news process. News gets outdated really
quickly (sometimes within hours) so the slowest step should actually be
in the content creation, not the mechanics of getting submitted material
on the site.

> 2) I want to shutdown fridge-devel (which is private but I don't
> recognize several of the subscribers) for fridge editor discussions
> and use the LP list (ubuntu-fridge) for all editor discussions.
> ubuntu-fridge discussions can be viewed by the public however posting
> is restricted to team members..  This list is driven by our LP team:
> https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-fridge  which will (in 2-3 months) also
> drive ACL access on the fridge itself.  So, I'd like to center
> everything around it. It makes administration of our team much easier.

+1 I think it should be ok for everybody to use, including Vid, which is
important.

> I think executing #2 above is dependent upon finding a solution for
> #1.  A proposal for #1 was submitted as
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuNews

I like the goal of the UbuntuNews spec but somehow it just feels like a
workaround for not being able to submit content directly through Fridge
(and other news sites). I feel like a good compromise would be solution
2) that I outlined above where the ubuntu-new-submissions list (and it
shouldn't be a LP list) would be hijacked to only take content submitted
via Fridge and other news sites.

Am I being too ambitious here?

-Jordan