gnome@ is swamped in @freebsd robot noise, deterring human activity.

[Julian H. Stacey]

"Julian H. Stacey" wrote:
> > From: Ben Woods <woodsb02 at gmail.com>
> > Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2015 06:33:49 +0800
> > To: FreeBSD ports <freebsd-ports at freebsd.org>, freebsd-gnome at freebsd.org
> > Subject: Update editors/abiword
> 
> > The maintainer timeout has long since passed, and I have not been able to
> > get any feedback from freebsd-gnome at .
> 
> gnome at freebsd feedback is unlikely, it's dieing from @freebsd robot noise !
> 	http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-gnome/2015-May/author.html
> 	http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-gnome/2015-June/author.html
> robots are:
> 	bugzilla-noreply
> 	pkg-fallout 
> 	portscout
> 	linimon (aka broken ports robot)
> real mails from humans are rare! 2 in May, 5 in June so far.  + spam.
> 
> Compare traffic with 10 years back:
> 	http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-gnome/2005-June/author.html
> Lots of humans used gnome@ to co-operate back then.
> 
> Robot owners should reduce frequency of robot excretions,
> which swamp gnome@, contravening list definition:
> 	http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-gnome
> 	This is a forum for discussions related to bring the GNOME
> 	environment to FreeBSD.

Some ports Makefiles could have an optional variable defined in bsd.port.mk

Alternate # 1: 
	MAINTAINER_TYPE= 
	[unset] or "" or "person"
		Default (as before):
		MAINTAINER is an individual also willing to
		receive robot detections of problems.
	"list"
		MAINTAINER is a mail list address [with many ports].
		Robots should not flood human discussion forum,
		detering list membership.

Alternate # 2:
	MAINTAINER_FOR_ROBOTS=
	mail at address 
		For robots to write to instead of spamming MAINTAINER list.
		(Also individuals  to support robots, one per port,
		 without spamming everyone in a list for every port in group).
	"null"
		Prevent robot spamming MAINTAINER list.
		(null could be a switch, or crontab truncated mail box)
Alternate # 3 (expansion of #2)
	MAINTAINER_FOR_BROKEN	(automatic reports from linimon@ ) 
	MAINTAINER_FOR_BUGZILLA
	MAINTAINER_FOR_PKG-FALLOUT 
	MAINTAINER_FOR_PORTSCOUT
		All default to unset. If set could be one per robot,
		email addresses to write, with the the option of "null"

I ask portmgr at FreeBSD.org to consider which might be best ? I suggest # 2.

Cheers,
Julian
--
Julian Stacey, BSD Linux Unix C Sys Eng Consultant Munich http://berklix.com
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