[Foundation-l] Re: new project mailing lists

Wed Nov 16 17:56:26 UTC 2005

On 11/14/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> Would it be useful to separate discussion of new projects (incl.
> languages) to a separate mailing list?  It's currently taking a

I would like that.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that
proliferation of mailing lists is a positive thing, when done the
right way... but that we do not currently do it the right way.

One model which has been successful for other large online communities
is to spin off smaller topical lists when an active topic arises
(especially when the same set of people are always responding to
threads on that topic), with some simple structure that passes
summaries back to a parent list.

Example : the list carries out initial discussing, produces summaries
of fixed-time topics, and periodically summarizes ongoing threads. 
Someone is responsible for passing summaries onto a parent list, and
for bringing discussions back to the parent list when they are more
relevant there -- e.g., when ther eis some discussion being made that
the whole community should take part in..

> disproportionate amount of general mailing list traffic (particularly
> wikipedia-l and foundation-l), so discussion of improving existing
> Wikipedias tends to get lost in the mess.  It's also a frequently

Right.  It would be useful to have a new- and minority-languages list.
 The people who chime in on those

> Of course, there is a danger that only a self-selecting and
> non-representative group would subscribe to such a mailing list, but

There is already that dnager -- only a self-selecting group bothers to
read the relevant threads, and sometimes people delete even important
new-language announceemnts or ideas because the occasional floods of
debate make them trigger happy.

> (I don't pretend this is an ideal solution either, especially since it
> adds to the proliferation of mailing lists, but the benefits seem to me

Starting discussions on a small, focused mailing lists can be
efficient; especially when there is at the same time too much traffic
on large lists (a common reason for unsubscribing), and too little
serious discussion of important topics (another common reason for
unsubscribing).

SJ