Subject: can not send e-mail to bug-gnu-emacs without it being assigned a bug number

From: Joe Wells <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:23:15 +0100

It is no longer possible to send e-mail to bug-gnu-emacs without it
being assigned a bug number.

It appears that if e-mail to bug-gnu-emacs contains “bug#XYZ” in the
subject, it is added to the bug log for bug number XYZ, while
otherwise a fresh bug number is allocated and the e-mail is added to
the bug log for the new bug report.

It appears that bug-gnu-emacs (a.k.a. the gnu.emacs.bug newsgroup) has
been taken over completely by the bug tracking system.  The
bug-gnu-emacs mailing list can no longer be used for meta-level
discussions about bug handling.

Is this a feature or a bug?

Should it still be possible for bug-gnu-emacs to be used as an
ordinary mailing list (and newsgroup)?

I don't think the new way is necessarily bad, but it seems to have
happened without much community discussion.

Please discuss this.

-- 
Joe

-- 
Heriot-Watt University is a Scottish charity
registered under charity number SC000278.