We’re having another push to get new, better organised and spam-free Mozilla newsgroups set up. We have the hardware; we just need two things – someone to administer the server, and a definitive list of new groups.
We first made the list back in 2000 (believe it or not), when there was an extensive discussion. I updated it quietly myself in both 2003 and 2004, when we also sent out calls for an admin but for various reasons didn’t manage to make it happen. Since then I’ve been wary of re-opening the debate because I didn’t want to engender false hope. :-) Now, however, I believe there’s a real chance we can make it happen soon.
So, if you have news server admin experience, or know someone who does, get in touch. And please read the current list of suggested new groups and post your feedback.
mozilla.dev.apps.browser n.p.m.seamonkey
We risk to see users of FF and the suite coming there instead of on mozilla.users.mozilla-suite, etc.
Might be good if the “users” group are listed before the dev group, and the “dev” group look more explicitly dev only, no user.
Do we absolutly need the “dev.apps” level ? Couldn’t we change the “apps” part of the name to make it less users attractive ?
There’s no ‘toolkit’ group ? Is “dev.apps.browser” intended to mix FF and suite browsing upper layer discussion ? I don’t believe this is natural.
I’d see “i18n” under the “tech” level, it’d give the right hint about the distinction to do between l10n and i18n.
I’d prefer to have the new “Core” product (with its components) incorporated somewhere – i.e. have separate newsgroups for the front end coders and the back-end hackers.
In terms of “Core” product – I think that’s all covered by the various groups under .tech.
Group list looks ok to me, although there are a bunch of groups there that I can’t see being used much (with the result that they get only inappropriate messages). I’m not sure what the platform specific groups are going to be used for. Small-devices I can see, but is there really sufficient development discussion about cross-app/area OS-specific stuff that it needs its own set of groups?
Do we need an entire set of groups for web-developers? Unless they have active and useful discussion and are monitored by developers, they won’t keep anything out of the other groups. Most people are looking for expert answers to their questions. If they see experts in the .dev groups and not in the web-developer groups, then they’ll post in the .dev groups. If you’re looking for somewhere to deflect people to after they’ve posted inappropriately, then one group would do.
Which new proposed group is the one for roadmap discussion, tree schedules, meeting minutes, etc. as currently filled by n.p.m.seamonkey? mozilla.dev.general? If there’s a proposed newsgroup for this, it should be more clearly named. If there isn’t one, I’d suggest creating one.
Where are the dev newsgroups for Thunderbird, Firefox, Sunbird, Camino, and the other non-suite projects? Heck, you’re not even producing new versions of the suite, yet each component of it has its own group. Having a forum for development discussion for the new apps would help attract more developers, I believe, because the process would be more open and accessible than it is now.
Finally, please look at how active the current newsgroups are before you consider keeping them in some new hierarchy. Google Groups shows no non-test/non-spam messages in n.p.m.porkjockeys, for instance, since at least 2002. Do we really need to keep such newsgroups around?
More later if I come up with other things…
Why does F/OSS always have to reinvent the wheel. Why not put some moderators to the exisiting groups on USENET and weed out spam instead of starting it all over again. Comeon, Mozilla cries that its under string shoe budget, and abudance of bitrots.
1. Name user groups alphabetically near the top, then web-developer groups, and then the mozilla technology groups.
Since the Nov2000 discussions, one difference is that Mozilla produces products for end-users, not just core techlogy for other like Netscape to polish.
People new to the newsgroups are likely to start off as users, or web developers. (And happily there are more of them than mozilla developers. :) The newsgroup list is listed in alphabetical order in places such as the subscribe dialog or google groups. People often post to the first group that sounds on topic, rather than scanning several screens of groups and figuring out which is best. The ‘mozilla.users’ and ‘mozilla.web-developers’ names are unfortunately at the end of the alphabet, where many new users will not find them before the related mozilla developer groups.
Please rename the ‘users’ and ‘web-developer’ hierarchies to put them at the top. I suggest using
applications: ‘apps’ (was ‘users’)
‘mozilla.apps.*’
mozilla.apps.bugzilla,
mozilla.apps.firefox,
mozilla.apps.thunderbird,
…
authoring: ‘authoring’ (was ‘web-developers’)
(avoid ‘author’ so not confused with authority, authorization)
‘mozilla.authoring.*’
mozilla.authoring.css
mozilla.authoring.html
mozilla.authoring.scripting
mozilla.authoring.themes
mozilla.authoring.xml
These names will put them alphabetically before the ‘mozilla.dev’ technology developer groups with which they may be confused, such as
mozilla.dev.apps.firefox,
mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird,
mozilla.dev.tech.dom,
mozilla.dev.tech.style, etc.
2. Need groups for extension (users and) authoring.
(mozilla.apps.extensions)
mozilla.authoring.extensions
Since Nov2000, the extension community has grown, both publicly and with corporate intranet extensions. Extensions have particular concerns with installation, version compatibility, automatic updating, etc.
Thanks for posting this Gerv.
I assume mozilla.users.seamonkey will be renamed according to the new name of the seamonkey product? In any case, I think it’s best to use the product name instead of the project name, for user support groups.
Personally, I think the new list of suggested newsgroups are too crusty – i.e., they’re too adherent to the time when the main project was seamonkey. Now that Seamonkey is no longer the forefront of the Mozilla Foundation, it’s time to move on and revamp the newsgroup structure.
I can see keeping mozilla.dev.apps.browser the same since there are two browsers – Camino and Firefox. But there’s really no reason to keep mozilla.dev.apps.mail-news and mozilla.dev.apps.calendar. Rename them to mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird and mozilla.dev.apps.sunbird.
As for the platforms, I agree with michaell. I see no reason for any of them, save for mozilla.dev.platforms.small-devices.
I like the idea of the new web developers newsgroups, but they’re too numerous. Personally, I’d see mozilla.web-developers.general (a kind of combination of html, css, misc, and xml), mozilla.web-developers.plugin, mozilla.web-developers.rdf, and mozilla.web-developers.scripting.
Any way, these are just my suggestions. I’d really like to see the new newsgroups up and running though… the spam is what keeps me from participating now.
Are there any other real-time messaging projects underway for Mozilla, apart from ChatZilla? If not, what is the use of naming the newsgroup for it ‘mozilla.rt-messaging’. It’s a confusing abbreviation for newcomers, and calling it mozilla.irc would make more sense, to me at least.
(note that http://www.mozilla.org/projects/rt-messaging/ also only mentions chatzilla)
michaell wrote:
“In terms of “Core” product – I think that’s all covered by the various groups under .tech.”
I don’t think it’s covered – where would you post something about the Mail and News back-end components? Sure, there will be mozilla.dev.apps.mail-news – but IMHO it’s no use having XUL/CSS stuff on the one hand, and C++, IDL, build issues and related things mixed within the same newsgroup…
A separate XForms group would be great. IMHO it’s too big a fish to swim in the XML group.
There are some great ideas here guys, thanks. I’ll revamp the list soon. A few specific points for discussion:
That was the original idea. The dev.apps groups were app areas rather than specific products (this was the source of Jeff Walden‘s confusion). Perhaps it needs rethinking.
That’s what dev.tech.* is designed for.
Perhaps not. Should we get rid of most of these? I already trimmed the list down a bit from what there was before. But the current groups on these subjects seem to have a fair bit of traffic.
Last time we went through this, people thought it was a good idea. What’s the noise level from web developer questions these days?
mozilla.dev.general was the idea. Please suggest a better name :-)
Perhaps because it’s so randomly-named. I think an architecture newsgroup is a good thing.
It’s not just the spam, the names and organisation are all wrong. We’d had enough of newsgroup names with “netscape” in back in 2000!
ChrisI: I believe the new name for Seamonkey is Seamonkey. :-)
OK, I’ve done an update. Have another look :-)
Gerv
“mozilla.dev.mozilla-org – // Website/newsgroup etc. issues”
Just to make that clearer, how about mozilla.dev.www-mozilla-org?
I’m not sure if “.users.” is clear enough for the average user to understand. What do you think of something like “.userhelp.” or “.techsupport.” or maybe even just “.help.”
I agree with using mozilla.dev.general for things like roadmap discussion, meeting minutes, etc.; but if you’re looking for a name, how about mozilla.dev.organization?
If someone wanted to post a bounty, would that go to the jobs group?
What happened to all the mozilla.web-developers groups? A general group is good, but I think the others should be kept. n.p.m.style has had quite enough messages from web developers to justify at the very least a m.w-d.css group (until this past month, when there’s been a ton of spam that seems to have scared people off), and I’d expect that if it were clearly marked web-developers it would get even more. There were no groups marked for “html”, but if there were I’d bet they’d draw quite a number of posts too.
I prefer .apps instead of .proj. I think it’s clearer, and I don’t think people will confuse it as being a user-oriented group. If they /do/, I think a much better solution would be to rename .dev to .developers. You’d have to ask an expert on that, though, that’s just my intuition and preferences.
PS: for anyone who wants to see a diff (I know I did), try the CVS Log.
I agree with whoever it was that said sticking the groups for users at the bottom (alphabetically) is a Bad Idea™
I disagree with the name mozilla.dev.proj.sunbird. That group should also be for lightning and the other form of calendars as extensions. Those are not called sunbird, but are a calendar. So please move it back to .calendar.
Perhaps XML technologies can be grouped:
mozilla.dev.tech.xml.general, mozilla.dev.tech.xml.svg, mozilla.dev.tech.xml.xforms, mozilla.dev.tech.xml.xslt, mozilla.dev.tech.xml.xul, mozilla.dev.tech.xml.xbl, mozilla.dev.tech.xml.rdf (although RDF is not necessarily XML of course), etc.
Looks much better, Gerv! I think you pretty much nailed it.
I hope the new newsservers will be SSL (like secnews.netscape.com) – at least the non-user ones. :-)
No doubt mozilla.dev.usability refers to end-user useability issues.
I’ve advocated for some time that Mozilla should be a tool that’s easy for app developers to use. I hope that the newsgroup re-org can provide a forum where ease-of-use issues and forward-planning for the app developer audience can be discussed.
Since “useability” is taken, perhaps
mozilla.developer.platform
or
mozilla.developer.app-use
DevMo is a strategy for making Mozilla as it is easier for app developers to engage with. There should be a place where we can discuss how Mozilla can made an even more useable application development environment in the future.
– N.
Because it’s not just for the website. :-)
There should be one newsgroup for each project, dealing with project-specific issues – if lightning want one, we can make one, now or later.
Sounds about right.
What would be the gain? Making the hierarchy five levels deep seems bad to me. But I’ll do it if there’s a good reason.