[geeklog-users] Much ado about nothing?

[Dirk Haun]

Okay, I just have to post something about the unexpected stir that has
been caused by the decision to have a closed list for the Geeklog
developers only.

First of all, I have to say that a few people have blown this completely
out of proportion. I mean, it's not that we're discussing our secret
plans for world domination in there or something. Take, for example, that
comment on the current poll on geeklog.net accusing the developers of
being "a bunch of elitists". Erm, excuse me?

We're trying to separate support requests and discussions related to
development, so that's why the original geeklog-devel list has now been
split into geeklog-users and the new geeklog-devel list. And from my
experience on Usenet, I know exactly that this will not stop some people
from posting their support questions to the devel list "since it's more
likely that the developers read it then". Hence the decision for closing
the devel list. Both Tony and I are subscribed to the geeklog-users list,
btw, and I'm sure the other developers will follow shortly.

Obviously, there's demand for a place for other development-related
discussions, which we hadn't expected. No problem with this, we're
creating yet another list for this (tentatively named geeklog-devtalk).

Historically, there has been a closed mailing list for the core
developers for some time now. It was introduced when the security issues
were found that led to the Geeklog 1.3.5sr1 and sr2 releases. So
obviously we, the developers, also need our own little place to discuss
issues like that.

This is also the reason why the archives for the (new) geeklog-devel list
are not currently available. There's a post on that list about someone's
site not being secured properly.

As Tony already wrote over on the old geeklog-devel list, we're going to
make the archives of geeklog-devel available (and/or post daily digests
of it). We're not trying to hide anything related to the development of
Geeklog - that was never the intention of closing the devel list.

We just need places were
a) the people involved in the development can discuss technical things
like design decisions, implementation details, etc. without those posts
being intersparsed with support requests
b) things like security issues or other sensitive information can be posted

So far, this all happened on the above-mentioned closed core development
list. Looks like we need yet another list for sensitive posts then.

I can't believe I wrote such a long post about such a minor issue ...
Let's hope it helped to dismiss the conspiracy theories.

Now, if you would please give us a couple of days to resolve the last
issues with setting up all those new lists properly? Then we can all go
back to using, developing and supporting Geeklog like we always did.

bye, Dirk


-- 
http://www.haun-online.de/
http://geeklog.info/