Subject Lines on the Mailing list: [WAS: Looking for a NH mail list talking about Linux]

[Jon 'maddog' Hall]

> 
> (1) Where to draw the line?  Politics and everything else?  Technical
> and non-technical?  What's technical and what isn't?  Who decides?
> Social?  What about politics?  I might like hearing about opinions on
> TV shows others like, but want to avoid the ever-popular "evil
> gov'mint" discussions.

I do not think that the discussion of "politics" by itself is reasonable
in any gnhlug list.  From time to time an "aside" done in support of
some point about Linux, but nothing about "parties" and their people.
That should rapidly be rejected.

> 
> (1)(a) What about those who insist on ramming their personal agendas
> down everyone's throats?  And where do we draw the line *there*?  When
> does it stop being a preference and start being an agenda?

I think that we have been pretty good about having *really* personal
agendas "rammed down peoples throats".  The real sticking point is where
one half the group feels one way strongly and the other half feels the
other way (or neutral) strongly.  I think that should be put on
"discuss-social".

If people have strong technical views, I could read those almost the
entire day (and then ignore them later with the proper subject line).
> 
> (2) What about discussions which touch both subjects?  Where does that go?


Gentle guidance from the group.  Perhaps someone in the "social" group
could send private email to the "technical group" to see if they would
want to wade in.  That is one reason why we have digests.
> 
> And most of all:
> 
> (3) This requires just as much, if not more, discipline than changing
> the subject line.  If we can't get people to mind the subject line,
> how can we get them to manage this?

I think the subject line is something where the topic migrates slowly.
But starting out a "techical discussion" or a "social discussion" is the
arbitration of the person that first starts the discussion, and should
be picked as carefully as the first subject line.

By giving people a place to carry the discussion you may find that the
migration will be easier than you think, but with no place to take it
to, they stay on the one list.
> 
> > discuss-tech
> > discuss-social
> >
> > with "discuss" simply being the union of the two.

I should clarify this;

You could join just "discuss-tech" and only get technical emails.

You could join just "social" and just get "social" emails.

You could join "discuss" and get both.

"Announce" goes to everyone, as now.

As now, you could sign up or sign off as you want.
> 
>   I'm not sure how well that would work in practice, especially given
> the "reply all" and discipline problems previously described.  I
> suspect we'd see most threads ending up being cross-posted to both
> lists.
We could try it, and if it does not work what have we really lost?  We
can easily go back.

I am actually not that displeased with the current arrangement, although
I would like better subject line choice, for filtering.  But I am
concerned because there may be people who leave the "discuss" mailing
list because of the larger number of emails they get the whole day.

Other people's mileage may vary.

maddog