Thread:Talk:Development process improvement/Communications recommendations/Mailing list renaming/reply (6)

I chatted with RobLa about this last week and uncritically agreed with him. Perhaps I was in an overly agreeable mood that day. :)

Thinking about things a bit more,I'm a fan of putting more things into the docs and having less adhocumentation on the mailing lists.

Every time that someone can answer a question by pointing to a URL, a few good things happen:
 * the contents at the URL can be updated over time. Mailing content goes stale fast and can lead people very far astray.
 * more link love goes to the right URL in the docs, not to the mailing list archives.
 * the list readers learn about the docs and how to read them.
 * the listies get feedback when the docs suck.

All these things make it so that there are way better returns on updating content.

Lists are still really important and something discussions in a list can't be captured easily in documentation. However, most of those discussion aren't really documentation fare.