Re: meta-proposal

[Graham Percival]

On Tue, Jun 02, 2009 at 12:42:27PM -0300, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 11:58 AM, Graham Percival
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> > What do people think about adding an extra mailing list:
> > lilypond-proposals?
> 
> I agree with Werner; I think it is overkill.  If you want to have more
> process, we could try add [PROPOSAL] or RFD: to the subject line of
> the mails discussing things.

This mainly came from three considerations:
1)  it might gather more people looking at proposals.  For
example, I don't think that Trevor Baca reads -devel, but he's the
world expert on tuplets in lilypond. :)   When we revisit the
\times -> \tuplet change, his comments could be extremely
valuable.
Granted, in this case there's a specific person in mind, so I
could just CC him on the emails... but in general, a place where
advanced users + developers discuss specific ideas might be good.


2)  Politics.  Yes, the -devel list is completely open, but some
users feel that we don't consult with them, particularly for
syntax changes.  Quite apart from specific individuals, such a
list might attract people who don't read either -devel or -user...
I keep on discovering uses of lilypond that I've never heard of
from the mailists (the most recent was "lilypond-in-Max").  I
mean, people like Torsten Anders (of the Strasheela constraint
programming score creation project) might read a -proposals list,
but wouldn't be interested in the high-volume -devel list (even
with filtering).

Granted, I haven't asked him about it.  If the Reports were being
read by more people than the mailist, we could try adding a poll
to the next one ("would you read a -proposals mailist?"), but I'm
not certain what the readership is high enough for such a poll to
matter.


3)  Standardizing proposals.  I often get the feeling that not
enough people notice current proposals... for example, the
attempts to discuss crescendi syntax didn't gather nearly as many
people as I thought it should.  Ditto for the ly/*.ly -> ly/*.ily
proposal.  And for Reinhold's PHP search-box thingie.

Granted, #3 doesn't require a separate mailist.  We could just say
that a [RFD] email has one week for discussion, and if nobody has
complained (or if the complaints aren't sufficient), then we can
go ahead and make the change.


None of these are vital considerations; I'm content to drop the
idea.

Cheers,
- Graham