Hi,

Currently all replies to sponsorship-request bugs that are exclusively
TO or CC private emails, bug-silent, and/or bug-submitter addresses
are forwarded to debian-mentors@l.d.org.  I hypothesise that the
rationale for the current behaviour is supposed to encourage
peer-review of sponsorship-request feedback; however, is this really
occurring?  Is it really the case that *every* reply is important
enough for everyone subscribed to debian-mentors to need a copy?

The time I used to spend on (infrequent) reviews is now spent on email
management, and I wonder if this might be the case for other potential
sponsors.  Everyone wants to provide a balance between the best
on-boarding experience for new contributors and mentees.  Is it still
the consensus that forwarding/CCing everyone is the best way to
achieve this?

If now, please consider allowing opting-out of forwarding replies to
debian-mentors.

Regards,
Nicholas

I'm not even a sponsor—I'm a sponsee—and I had to learn how to create a mail filter in Evolution to get around this. I'm subscribed for the sake of discussion with other newer contributors, for threads that aren't associated with sponsorship requests at all. (Admittedly there's few of those, but I think all of the other noise that would drown it out deters informal discussion such as that.) This is a function that should be distinguished.
Another model for handling this situation is the weekly "Work-needing packages report" that's sent to debian-devel about WNPP bugs. That style is much more concise and nice—sponsors likely know if they're in a position to review based on a package's name and synopsis info. That format also makes it easy to see what bugs have gotten little attention. In fact, you could even say just-submitted sponsorship request bugs and replies are the ones least needy of publicity.