If ports@ list continues to be used as substitute for GNATS, I'm unsubscribing

[Anton Shterenlikht]

On mar, 17 d<E9>c 2013, John Marino wrote:

> Over the months I've seen several ports users copy a failure log and
> mail it to ports@, usually without even saying "hello".  I've tried to
> discourage that behavior but other members of this mail list encourage
> this method of bypassing writing PRs.  One user even proudly boasted
> that sending email to ports@ is faster than writing a PR so of course he
> was going to do that instead.
> 
> If this kind of post is acceptable to the rest of the people here, and
> I'm alone in not only finding it very rude, but also making the volume
> of ports@ too high, then please tell me that the problem is with me.
> 
> If nothing is going to change, I am going to unsubscribe from ports@
> list.  The gcc developers on gcc at gcc.gnu.org always tell a poster when a
> post in appropriate for that list and as a result and as a result the
> posters usually only make a mistake once.  I'd like to see something
> closer to that, but if the list isn't going to be policed then it's too
> noisy for me.
> 
> John

I might be one such user, so..

Over the years I've learnt not to bother with "hellos", because
I very rarely got greetings in return (which is completely
fine by me), but many times just a couple of words, or
a link or RTFM (which is also fine, as long as it is relevant).

Many reports reaching ports@ are copies of what is sent to
maintainers directly.

I send some reports to ports@ when, in my judgement, the
issue is of interest to many users, e.g. posts of the sort
"is anybody else seeing this?".

In my experience, a useful hint, or a complete solution,
might come from another fellow user, not from a committer
or a maintainer. This user is unlikely to pour over the
unassigned or assigned PRs.

Moreover, seeing failuries reported by other users in ports@
does help me, because many are due to common mistakes or
problems, which affect many users. If all this goes straight
to PRs, it will be harder for me to see what's going on.

Also, this will likely results in many more duplicate PRs. 

We all know that this is volunteer project, and I fully
understand that my post might be ignored due to a multitude
of reasons, so I don't have any expectations.

That said, I don't see many really rude posts, e.g.
along the lines "hey you guys, fix this at once!"

Finally, I believe, the volume has been higher than
normal lately due to tremendous changes coming
with pkg, affecting more and more users, now that
10 is stable.

In conclusion: PRs are important, and the users are
strongly encouraged to keep submiting them. Discussions
of build failures, mis-configurations, etc. in ports@
are also important.

Thanks

Anton