Re: Confused by y-or-n-p

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Cc: rudalics@gmx.at, larsi@gnus.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org,
>       drew.adams@oracle.com, juri@linkov.net
> Date: Wed, 06 Jan 2021 00:01:09 -0500
> 
>   > Users don't track emacs-devel, either.  In fact, most users nowadays
>   > don't like to use mailing lists at all.
> 
> You are right that most users don't pay attention to the work we are
> doing while we are doing it.  They will not comment on it.
> 
> Thus we have been talking, all along, about the users that do pay
> attention, and might comment on proposed changes.  The words you
> quoted above refer to them, too.

Then we are talking about some arbitrary sample of users on which we
have no control.  Thus, nothing prevents us from talking about another
arbitrary sample: those who track both emacs-devel and the bug list.

The life of the head maintainers is already complicated enough, so I
object to making it significantly more complicated and time-consuming
just because we want to save someone the trouble of reading another
mailing list.

>   >   So I don't see how forcing
>   > discussions to happen on emacs-devel will reach the goal of helping
>   > users notice important changes and object in time.
> 
> It will give help all the users who follow emacs-devel to take note
> of a proposed change.  That is what we presume will happen, but it isn't
> happening reliably.

I see no reason to believe that the users who read emacs-devel, but
don't read the bug list, are more important for getting feedback from
than those who read both.  I could make a case for the opposite, in
fact.

Btw, all the persons involved in the discussion of the y-or-n-p issue
read both lists, AFAIK.