Subject: Re: PGSQL-WINDOWS mailing list?

From: "Dave Page" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 09:31:21 +0100

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Josh Berkus [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: 11 August 2004 17:30
> To: Dave Page; PostgreSQL www
> Subject: Re: [pgsql-www] PGSQL-WINDOWS mailing list?
> 
>
> Well, unfortunately, at least 70% of the Windows users can be 
> counted on not to differentiate platform-specific issues from 
> general ones.  

I think the same applies to many *nix users these days now that it's so
easy to get a copy of Linux and give it a try. Mind you, I don't know
that it would be 70% any more than you do ;-)

> And given the flakyness of the platform, I 
> expect there to be continuous issues. 

Have you used any well admin'ed 2K/2K3 servers? I have roughly equal
numbers of Linux and Windows 2K/2K3 servers here and get roughly equal
reliability from both. I get far more hardware problems than OS, and
they don't care what you're running. Windows may still be riddled with
security holes, but it is pretty stable these days.

> Also, I'd really 
> rather not have a 25-post thread on PGSQL-SQL discussing how XP-SP3 
> breaks PostgreSQL.   

Nor would I want to see one in there about how ext-3 is horribly borked
on Linux 2.6.66. I hardly think it's fair to assume that all Windows
users are too stupid to post in the right place, but *nix users aren't.
Even if it does look that way in the future, it may well just be because
there end up being far more Windows users, but with a constant
percentage of plonkers.

I think I agree with Tom on this one - lets wait and see. It may be that
a wholesale re-organisation of the lists will be the best option.

Regards, dave.

---

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 09:37:59 -0700

Dave,

> that it would be 70% any more than you do ;-)

Well, it's a very rough estimate.  ;-)
Based mostly on my clients who use Windows.

> security holes, but it is pretty stable these days.

Yes, but unfortunately there are a great number of *badly* adminned Windows 
machines out there, and those are the ones I'm talking about.   

> on Linux 2.6.66. 

Yeah, that belongs on -performance ;-)

> I hardly think it's fair to assume that all Windows

Oh, I was basing my suggestions on the current number of Linux/BSD/OSX users 
we get who have no idea where to go and, for example, post basic SQL 
questions to -Hackers and connection problems to -sql. 

> there end up being far more Windows users, but with a constant

Yep.

> a wholesale re-organisation of the lists will be the best option.

If that's the way you feel.   However, I don't want this list to lose sight of 
the fact that *us* recieving 50-100 extra email/day on some list or another 
is a qualitatively different thing from a newbie signing up on NOVICE and 
immediately getting hit with 200 e-mails in the first 12 hours.   You and I 
will wade through that amount of e-mail regardless, because we subscribe to 
most of the lists, but for a new user with a Yahoo account on dial-up, its a 
fundamentally different thing.

-- 
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

---

From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 17:44:08 -0400

Josh Berkus <[email-masked]> writes:
> However, I don't want this list to lose sight of the fact that *us*
> recieving 50-100 extra email/day on some list or another is a
> qualitatively different thing from a newbie signing up on NOVICE and
> immediately getting hit with 200 e-mails in the first 12 hours.

I hear you, but is it going to help much to split -novice into -novice
and -novice-windows?  If we get overwhelmed with new novices, they'll
all be in the latter list and they'll *still* have an unreasonable
amount of traffic.  What's more, they won't be getting any help from the
not-quite-so-novice-anymore denizens of the older list.

I think Dave's probably got the right idea: what we really need to be
looking for is a way to shift some of the support load away from the
mailing lists entirely.  We're all accustomed to mailing lists as The
Way To Have A Community, but there's a limit to how far the concept
will scale.

			regards, tom lane