At the last Ubuntu Developer Summit it was brought to the attention of the Ubuntu Community Council that lists.ubuntu.com had become quite crowded. There was concern that it was overwhelming for new contributors looking for a mailing lists to join and they may find it confusing or discouraging if they join lists which are inactive.
As a result, the Community Council has been working with Canonical IS to get activity details on mailing lists so we can do a more thorough review.
The following lists were identified as candidates for deletion, reasons in the parentheses:
- kernel-bugs (last post Nov 2010)
- locoteams-dev (last and only posts in Nov 2008)
- laptop-devel (last post Nov 2010)
- desktop-bugs (last post Nov 2007, wrongly marked “high volume”)
- ubuntu-server-arm (four posts total, in Oct 2011)
- ubuntu-tablet (no posts ever, launchpad.net/~ubuntu-tablet has a current mailing list)
- ubuntu-motu-p2p (last post dec 2009)
- ubuntu-motu-science (last post march 2010)
- ubuntu-security-patch (no posts ever)
- ubuntu-directory (last post 2009, appears to be off topic, previous last post 2007)
- ubuntu-event-planners (last post Oct 2010)
- ubuntu-training-community (last post Aug 2010)
- ubuntu-training-support (last post Sep 2008)
- ubuntu-bugsquad-announce (only two posts ever, both off topic)
- ubuntu-core-marketing (mostly spam)
- ubuntu-news-translations (last post 2008)
- ubuntu-screencasts (last post June 2011, very low activity prior to that)
- ubuntu-scribes (last post 2008)
- ubuntu-students (last post May 2010, two spamish mails in Oct 2011)
- xubuntu-bugs (no posts ever)
- ubuntu-patches (no posts ever)
- ubuntu-mirrors-announce (one post per year on average…)
- ubuntu-jobs (two posts per year)
The following emails (with $list and $reason filled out) have been sent to the list owners of these lists:
You are being contacted as the list owner for $list.
At the last Ubuntu Developer Summit it was brought to the attention of the Community Council that there were many mailing lists with little or no traffic whose presence on lists.ubuntu.com only served to discourage and confuse new contributors. Your mailing list was identified as one which we’d like to move forward with deletion because $reason.
Please reply to this email if you have any objections (quiet time in project? plans for it in the future?), otherwise we will be closing this list in approximately two weeks.
Thank you for your time.
Elizabeth Krumbach,
On behalf of the Community Council
If you are a member of any of these teams and wish to speak on behalf of the mailing list to prevent deletion, please contact the Community Council at community-council@lists.ubuntu.com within the next two weeks.
Please take note that this review is by no means a judgement on the teams who use these mailing lists or a withdrawl of support. If a team with a low-activity mailing list wishes to keep their list they can. We are simply seeking to make it easier for new contributors to get involved with active mailing lists they for projects they are interested in. Also note that LoCo Team and Translations mailing lists are exempt from this review as we understand that traffic on these fluctuates greatly over time.