[Haskell-cafe] Maintaining the community

[Ian Lynagh]

On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 09:35:09AM +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
> 
> Yes, the sheer volume of posts is definitely becoming a problem (for me,
> at least).

The Haskell lists are quite peculiarly named; the haskell@ list is
pretty much what would be haskell-announce@ anywhere else, and
haskell-cafe@ what would be haskell@ elsewhere. A haskell-cafe@ list
elsewhere would probably be where the haskell@ people discuss things
which aren't actually related to Haskell (like e.g. the demon.local
newsgroup). I think the number of posts in the wrong place would be
lower if these were more conventionally named (although there aren't a
lot of them anyway).

I think it would make sense to:

* Rename haskell@ to haskell-announce@, and redirect mails from haskell@
  to haskell-announce@ for some period.

* After that, rename haskell-cafe@ to haskell@ in a similar manner.

* At any point, create haskell-new-users at .
  This would have the advantage that people might not be so intimidated
  at making their first post here, and posts wouldn't be answered with
  category theory or scary type extensions.
  The disadvantages are that it makes an artificial barrier (when is
  someone ready to post to haskell@ instead?) and it doesn't split the
  discussion up by topic (if you want to see all the discussion about X,
  you need to follow both lists so you have the same amount of mail to
  read).
  I'm not sure if this is a good idea.

* At any point, create topic-specific lists, e.g. a list for discussion
  type system extensions (not sure if that's a good one, as often an
  extension is the /answer/ to a question "how do I do foo?").
  This needs people to work out which lists would allow us to make a
  significant dent to the haskell-cafe traffic.


Thanks
Ian, also drowning