This page is part FAQ, part infomercial, part humor, part snark, and all reality...


Why aren't there dedicated lists for each ONAP project?

Mailing list management is not uniform across all Linux Foundation projects.  Some Projects handle it with many small mailing lists and others Projects opt for fewer lists and rely on tagging of email that can be filtered by their email client.  The decision the ONAP Project made was to use email tagging rather than numerous small lists.  Lists were to be created only for the main discuss list, the TSC and for any sub-committees. This was done to lower the pure administrative, and physical cost in true budget terms, but also due to the overhead for the Community created by a proliferation of mailing lists and the possibility for communication lapses when messages and replies are cross posted to lists someone is not a member of.  

Dude, that's stupid. Over in <insert open source project name here> we do it this way....

Gentle Community member, Miss Manners is very pleased to hear that it works for you over there.

#hashtagging Your Messages Is Fun! 

OK, maybe it isn't fun, but doing so is likely to make you more popular with your fellow Community members as it gives them a way to focus on the emails that are of importance to them...  even it it means that it is your project team's emails they want to ignore.
Groups.io uses #hashtags for topic (or ONAP project team thread) management. You tag a message by including a #hashtag within or at the end of the subject line of the message.  Only the onap-discuss list is set up with a set list of hashtags. A complete list of tags can befound here: https://lists.onap.org/g/onap-discuss/hashtags 

How do we get a new #hashtag or get a #hashtag on a different list than onap-discuss?

Please use support.linuxfoundation.org and ask for one.

I REALLY want a dedicated mailing list for my ONAP project. 

If an individual ONAP project Community decides that a truly dedicated list is absolutely necessary, you must first get buy in from Moderators of the onap-discuss, onap-tsc and any of the subcommittee lists.  There is a high likelihood that your new list will generate extra work for them due to cross posting and they simply may not be OK with that. This is an all-or-nothing requirement. 

Once you can provide proof of sign-off, the following rules apply:

  • Any new list must be fully self-policing by members of the Community.
  • LF support will be limited to configuration of the list only 
  • All list Moderation support is the full responsibility of the Community - The LF will not provide any list Moderator services whatsoever.
  • A minimum of 3 members from the Community are required as Moderators for the who are completely responsible for approving or rejecting new subscription requests and the disposition of held messages, including messages cross posted from other ONAP lists, messages posted by non-members and messages that exceed globally defined thresholds for message size, number of recipients and/or content type. 
  • If the number of Moderators ever falls below 3 the list will be locked and made read only
  • Moderators are not granted permissions to modify any list configuration variables.  If reasonable adjustments to the configuration are needed after the list has been operational for a few weeks, please open a ticket with onap-helpdesk.
  • The selection of list Moderators is not governed by the TSC; how you decide upon that is completely up to the Community. 

If all of those provisions are acceptable,  please open a ticket via support.linuxfoundation.org including all supporting documentation, including the approvals of the other list Moderators,  the list name, email addresses of the Moderators and the email of the initial membership list.

Those rules suck. Can I set a list on my own? 

Of course you can. HOWEVER, It will not be part of the groups.io ONAP Project hierarchy and the LF isn't responsible for any of it

I created my own groups.io list. Can I get help moving it under the ONAP hierarchy?

Bless your little heart.  I bet the rules about the "LF not being responsible for any of it" are going to suck for you a lot more than the original set of rules would have sucked?   

Please re-read the I REALLY want a dedicated mailing list for my ONAP project section and then open a ticket support.linuxfoundation.org which includes all of the requested info and an explanation of your current list and what additional help you are requesting.




3 Comments

  1. Regarding the mailing list discussion https://lists.onap.org/g/onap-discuss/topic/24157225 and how it relates to "I REALLY want a dedicated mailing list for my ONAP project.", I think there should be some thresholds defined for combining/splitting mailing lists based on the amount of traffic they receive, e.g.

    • if the total message traffic on all lists is less than X msg/day, then everyone should use onap-discuss list
    • if the message traffic on onap-discuss list goes over Y msg/day, then split it into another sub-group
    • if the message traffic on a sub-group goes under Z msg/day, then re-combine it back with onap-discuss list

    Then the community can vote on setting the thresholds for X, Y and Z as appropriate to balance the concerns, i.e.

    • receiving too many messages
    • annoying too many people with messages
    • finding relevant topics amongst the messages
    • administering multiple sub-groups and lists
    • the amount of cross-posting to many sub-groups
    1. sounds like a good topic for the TSC :-D