Re: Recentish C-s M-y change

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Cc: ams@gnu.org, larsi@gnus.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org,
> 	drew.adams@oracle.com, juri@linkov.net
> Date: Sun, 03 Jan 2021 01:01:55 -0500
> 
>   > > I probably won't read a thread that discusses how to fix a bug.
>   > > I would not expect a decision about a change in features to be
>   > > made in such a thread.
> 
>   > That expectation is incorrect, both factually and in principle.
> 
> I think we are failing to communicate.  I described an expectation
> that I use to reduce the amount of work I have to do.  Whether it
> is ever mistaken is simply not the point.

Each one of us can and does choose the criteria by which he or she
reads the mailing lists.  But if those criteria don't fit the reality
of how and where changes of interest are being discussed, then some of
the messages one would like to read will be necessarily missed.

A criterion that discussions about fixing a bug couldn't possibly end
up discussing behavior changes or even new features is IMO and IME
mistaken, because such shifts in the discussion's focus happen quite
frequently, and are natural.

So I'm saying that by applying such a criterion you will miss messages
that are of interest to you.

> I expect that many other people on this list skip threads when
> the thread topic does not seem interesting.  They too need
> to find ways to reduce how much they have to read.

People who skip threads based on some simplistic criteria, like their
Subject or the fact that they discuss a bug fix, risk missing messages
they might be interested in.  I don't know how to fix that on the
sending end, as we are an informal community of people with very
different interests and different levels of writing capabilities.  I
don't think we have any practical way of enforcing some discipline
that would make such simplistic criteria of selecting threads work
reliably.  This can only be handled by sophisticated enough measures
on the receiving end: some sort of smart classification of messages,
keyword searches, etc.  (I don't use any of that because I simply read
everything on both lists.)