Grant Rettke wrote: > On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 6:48 AM, Matt Jadud <[email protected]> wrote: >> Which subset of potential committee members will do the most to build >> the Scheme community? > > The ones who would do the most to *enable* everyone else to contribute > and participate. > > That is true if communities are indeed built in this manner; which > certainly seems to be the case.
Investing some effort in community-building would be very valuable, and in fact essential if the Steering Committee (and any other relevant groups) are to have regular ongoing dialog with the community. Scheme is in the paradoxical position of enjoying multiple strong implementations, but having its community somewhat balkanized as a result of that. One of the first discussions the Steering Committee should have with the community is what's needed in this area. On the technical side, this mailing list has been quite useful during this election, and during the development of R6RS, but for ongoing dialog on multiple subjects, something more partitioned might be useful, to make it easier for people to tune out discussion they're not interested in. How about a web-based forum with a gateway to mailing lists, for example? Is that overkill, or something that enough people would appreciate to make it worthwhile? On the human side, healthy communities require a certain amount of care. Here's an interesting collection of notes on that subject (via the Haskell wiki - I'd like to a Scheme-oriented resource like this, but I don't know of one, which perhaps underscores the point): http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Protect_the_community Anton _______________________________________________ r6rs-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.r6rs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/r6rs-discuss
