gnats-prs, bug-gnats, and list proliferation

[Chad Walstrom]

Alex wrote:
> I think the problem is that you have gnats-prs and bug-gnats
> connected.  I can think of 2 solutions:
>  
> 1. Don't make bug-gnats messages trigger gnats submits. Instead make
> it a plain mailing list for bug discussions.
>  
> 2. Consolidate bug-gnats and gnats-prs. For instance get rid of
> gnats-prs and make the messages shown in bug-gnats be whatever the
> gnats-prs contains now (ie only have subjects in the category/number
> format)

I'm forwarding this to help-gnats, were most of our discussion
happens.  One of the problems with having so many lists is as you have
pointed out, it's confusing.  Here's what we've got so far:

GNU Conventionally Named Lists
------------------------------
help-gnats      User help and developer discussion.
bug-gnats       Entry point for GNATS bug-tracking system, currently
                at gnats.wookimus.net.
info-gnats      Read-only announcements list

GNATS Extra Lists
-----------------
gnats-commit    Read-only commit announcements list (which also sends
                CVS diffs, apparently)
gnats-diffs     Currently does nothing.  Intended for publishing CVS
                diffs.
gnats-prs       Read-only list of all traffic that goes through GNATS
                at gnats.wookimus.net.

I agree that bug-gnats seems like the logical place to discuss bugs
out-of-band with what is tracked in GNATS itself.  When I first
started working as the maintainer, I had made the same assumption.  I
believe I confused the whole issue a bit, and now the list is largely
unused except for GNATS report submission.  Perhaps it's time to
follow your first suggestion and disconnect that operation.

So, my question goes to the developers.  Would you prefer to use
bug-gnats for out-of-band discussions about bugs and development
topics and continue to use gnats-prs for read-only tracking of PR
submissions/changes?

I have just tweaked the mail format on the GNATS database at
gnats.wookimus.net so the "From" address is always listed as
address@hidden  This will simplify the list
approval/rejection rules and allow us to use meaningful
auto-acknowledgements for people that send directly to that list.  If
we decide to consolidate gnats-prs and bug-gnats, it would be fairly
simple to do.