Dividing The List Considered Harmful [Was: Re: Subject Lines on the Mailing list: [WAS: Looking for a NH mail list talking about Linux]]

[Mark E. Mallett]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2007 at 12:45:49PM -0400, mike ledoux wrote:
> 
> I have been through this a few times in the past, with different
> groups, where the decision was eventually made to fragment the list
> into multiple lists with more focused charters.  I have, to date,
> never seen it work well.  With one exception, all of the mailing
> lists I have seen fragmented this way have either reverted back to
> a single main list (sometimes with a separate, often moderated list
> for announcments, like we have), or gone away entirely.
> 
> That one exception had strongly focused charters, very clear lines
> on what topics were appropriate on which lists, and a large team of
> volunteer list-cops (over 50 when I was in charge of managing them)
> to keep things on track and ban chronic offenders.

Possibly true for dividing a list into specialty lists.  OTOH for just
the narrowly focused goal of trying to contain chitchat, I've seen it it
work well, and I'm on lists now where it works well.  "it" being:
there's a main list (or perhaps one or more lists) for on-topic stuff,
and an "off-topic" list for chitchat and jabber.  But I think I'll agree
with you that it only works well if it's made to work.  One component is
that it's reasonably easy to tell what's off-topic for a non-chat list
(like, say, "how do I address this issue at the shell prompt?").  And
really, a lot of off-topic stuff is easy to spot, even when being
on-topic is hard to specify.  Another component is having the list-mom
make the call, step in and say "take it to off-topic or else" -- it
might take a short while to train everyone, but smart people can deal
with it.

mailman "[topics]" are a substitute; I don't care for that, but really,
it's just a different way to separate traffic, and at least with topics
you don't get some of the overlap issues that you get with separate
lists.  If you've already got separate specialized lists, topics are
less useful.

Subscribing one list to another is, IMHO, not a good idea.

Oh, and back to a previous subject... simply changing the subject text
isn't really enough.  When a threat mutates, you really want a new one,
which means getting rid of the "References" links.  Threading mail
readers don't care about the subject text, they link threads together by
those references.  Not everyone cares, but for those who do, it makes a
huge difference whether you simply change the subject or start a new
thread.

mm  (my opinionated.info)