Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Proposal: Move Bitcoin Dev List to a Neutral Competent Entity

From: Andy Schroder <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2015 01:50:16 -0400

Andy Schroder

On 06/14/2015 11:19 PM, Warren Togami Jr. wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 5:15 AM, Jeff Garzik <[email-masked] 
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
>     * ACK on moving away from SourceForge mailing lists - though only
>     once a community-welcomed replacement is up and running
>
>     * ACK on using LF as a mailing infrastructure provider
>
>     * Research secure mailing list models, for bitcoin-security.  The
>     list is not ultra high security - we all use PGP for that - but it
>     would perhaps be nice to find some spiffy cryptosystem where
>     mailing list participants individually hold keys & therefore access.
>
>
> While I agree this is a good idea, this should not be a precondition 
> for moving the public bitcoin-dev list.  The security team needs to 
> separately research/write tools needed for this.
>
>     <jgarzik> warren, wanna just go ahead and create
>     bitcoin-development @ LF? 
>
>
> *More Feedback?*  As for going ahead, perhaps we should wait to hear 
> from more of the other technical leaders?

I'd say just move forward with creating the new list. Once the new list 
is created, send an announcement encouraging people to join. The new 
list will be an opt in change, so you can encourage a transition date, 
but why require it? Maybe monitor the subscriber lists for each list and 
provide people regular updates as to what percentage of the people in 
the old list have subscribed to the new list. This will help inform 
people whether the new list will be adopted or not. People may also miss 
a single announcement e-mail. There are too many messages going through 
the list right now, and everyone doesn't read the list regularly.

>
> *_More Questions_*
>
> *List Name?*  Would people prefer "bitcoin-development" for he new 
> list name instead of a shorter name like "bitcoin-dev"?  I personally 
> like the shorter name, but either is fine. 
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo currently has 
> "sidechains-dev", and "lightning-dev" is moving there sometime soon.

I vote for "bitcoin-dev", only because of the consistency with the other 
projects that you mentioned, as well as the fact that I think there 
should be at least some name change to avoid confusion between the new 
and old lists.

>
> *Proposed Cut-Off Date?*  Then we also need to agree on a date to cut 
> off the old list..  Their sysadmin said we could have the new list 
> auto-post from the old list for a short while.  I wonder how well that 
> works ... if that will result in double posting if people write to the 
> new and CC the old list..  Needs a little research how well it would 
> behave to have both lists operating during a transition period.  I 
> think we should announce a cut-off date when posts to the old list is 
> shut off, July 15th, one month from now.  Thoughts?

I'd say move forward with the new list and subscribe it to the old list. 
That way the new list starts archiving the messages from here forward. 
There may be a little bit of a problem if someone joins the new list but 
not the old list, they may not be able to reply to a message sent to the 
old list? You probably would get a duplicate delivery if doing this, but 
you could encourage users who have joined the new list to turn off 
delivery on the old list (this is an option in the mailman settings page).

Once greater than 50% of the members of the old list are members of the 
new list, send out an announcement that the old list will be turned into 
read only mode in 3 weeks and to use the new list only after that time. 
This way you don't have to force use of the new list and a majority 
agreement is required before doing so and a technical leader is not 
required to enforce a change without a solid commitment from most of the 
members. Right before the old list is shut down, send one final 
announcement e-mail indicating it is closing and link to the new list 
(so that new subscribers will be aware if they are looking at an archive 
of some kind).

>
> *Moderators?*  Mailman on the new server allows having separate logins 
> for admins and moderators.  I think the admins of the old SF project 
> are gavin, jgarzik and sipa... they are kind of busy.  Perhaps we 
> should identify known trusted community members who can help with 
> moderation.  Usually this is dealing with "held" messages that are 
> flagged by the spam filter
>
> Warren Togami
>
>
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>
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