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

[mike ledoux]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2007 at 01:50:56PM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> basically, IMHO, the GNHLUG is low volume enough that it probably would
> not need to be split into 3 lists, as Maddog suggested, though it would
> not be difficult to create the 2 additional lists, and use the main
> discuss list as a target of both. 

Say you have three sub-lists: gnhlug-chat, gnhlug-politics, and
gnhlug-tech. If gnhlug-discuss is subscribed to all three, postings
to any of the lists also get posted to -discuss.  All of these lists
are restricted to only allow posting from subscribed addresses, to
cut down on abuse.  So far, so good, that *seems* to be what we
want.

Joe User finds GNHLUG, and decides that he wants to read all of the
mail, so he takes the shortcut and subscribes only to -discuss

Ben posts a message to gnhlug-tech.  Joe User tries to reply to
list.  One of two things happens:

  Joe's mail client reply to gnhlug-discuss.  Ben never sees
  Joe's reply, because Ben is only subscribed to gnhlug-tech.

  Joe's mail client tries to reply to gnhlug-tech.  Ben never sees
  Joe's reply, because Joe's mail is stuck in an approval queue for
  unsubscribed postings.

Joe has a question, which he posts to gnhlug-discuss since that
is what he has subscribed to.  Unfortunately for Joe, most of the
GNHLUG community never sees his question as they have subscribed to
the sub-lists they are interested in.

Everyone loses.

If we are going to break up gnhlug-discuss into smaller lists,
we need to just do it, and make everyone subscribe to whatever
lists they want.  Trying to have it both ways with sub-lists and a
combined list is just a recipe for disaster.

-- 
mwl+gnhlug at alumni.unh.edu          OpenPGP KeyID 0x57C3430B
Holder of Past Knowledge           CS, O-
"Profanity is the inevitable linguistic crutch of the inarticulate
 motherfucker."  Bruce Sherrod