Simon Marlow wrote:
My main concern here is that the remit for the new list is not clear
enough. I can see a potential need for two lists:
* a list for discussion related to teaching Haskell;
* a list devoted to those learning Haskell, with a less research-
oriented feel than haskell-cafe.
it's not obvious to me that both of those needs should be served by a
single list. I believe it's important that the mailing lists served
by haskell.org should have clear non-overlapping topics.
So I suggest that we add haskell-edu for the purposes of discussing
the use and teaching of Haskell in education. For the second point
above, I'd be inclined not to add a new list, but I don't feel that
strongly - if there's a concensus in favour of adding
haskell-beginners (for example), that would be fine.
Cheers,
Simon
Using Simon's names, I think that there is a greater need for
haskell-beginners than for haskell-edu. Despite the friendly people on
haskell-cafe, it is very intimidating, and very busy (sadly, I've mostly
stopped reading it for the latter reason). I don't think that
haskell-cafe serves well at all as a forum for beginners, whereas it
might serve just fine as a forum for instructors.
In any case, these are two distinct purposes, and I agree with Simon
that it's probably unwise to have a single mailing list for both. I
would vote for starting a haskell-beginners list and see how it goes. I
think that a decent number of experienced people will chip in to answer
questions (they don't have to be experts -- just good at explaining
things), and in my experience beginners like to help fellow beginners --
i.e. it will sustain itself.
I would also be interested in a haskell-edu list, but as I said before I
don't think the demand for it is as great as that for haskell-beginners.
By the way, the haskell-art mailing list is not very active, but it has
served a useful role. I wonder if it would help to have a description
of it (and any new lists that we create) to the descriptions at:
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Mailing_lists
-Paul Hudak
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