My experience of various communities over the last decade suggests Ross is exactly right here. Don't start new mailing lists until we've used the proposed list names as subject-line tags and measured the traffic using them. Once we know there is enough traffic under a specific tag, it's then good to create a list with that name if everyone agrees.
S. On 8 Aug 2011, at 13:27, Ross Gardler wrote: > On 8 August 2011 12:45, Rob Weir <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 7:00 AM, Wolf Halton <[email protected]> wrote: >>> I would like to propose breaking out a couple more mailing lists > > Be careful about splitting lists too early. I realise that traffic is > very high right now but it will die down. Splitting lists splits the > community, at this stage we are trying to build community. > > There are better techniques than splitting the community up. For > example, the list should adopt a practice of tagging subject lines so > that people can filter appropriately. Sorry rather then a "Web > Content" list mails in this topic are should have subjects of the form > "[web] foo". > >> I certainly see the need here. But I wonder if we can make it a >> general "sysops" or "operations" list and have it be the place for >> admins/moderators of the wiki, the phpBB forums, Bugzilla, etc., to >> coordinate. I think we want to encourage these groups to stay in close >> contact with each other. > > Generally the pull requirements for forums are less effective for > community building than the push of mailing lists, at least where we > are talking about technical users. EMail clients are very powerful, > forums are not. Email works offline, forums do not. etc. > >> Why? Because we can easily see the >> advantages of linking these systems together in advanced ways. For >> example: >> >> 1) Easy way to promote a support forum question into a bugzilla issue > > No advantage over mail lists. > >> 2) Easy way to initiate a search of the documentation before entering >> a support forum post > > Can be useful for user focussed resources but the initial proposal is > for "administering the > wiki daily operations would go, and documentation of versions of OOo". > Are you really going to force admins to do this, or are you going to > trust them? > >> 3) Content analytics performed on support forum to identify new >> candidates for FAQ items > > No advantage over mail lists. > > Ross
