Mailing lists

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There are two mailing lists to discuss issues related to Haskell in general, and several additional mailing lists for more detailed discussion topics, including one for each particular implementation of Haskell.

Mailing lists in detail

haskell@haskell.org (read & search via gmane)
Announcements, discussion openers, technical questions
haskell-cafe@haskell.org (read & search via gmane)
New-to-Haskell, i.e. elementary, Haskell questions; extended discussions.
In Simon Peyton Jones' words: "forum in which it's acceptable to ask anything, no matter how naive, and get polite replies."

Mailing list tone

The division of the general list was introduced for people who want to stay in touch with what's happening in the Haskell world, but who don't want to be swamped with mail. Discussions of any kind can start on 'haskell', but should transfer to 'haskell-cafe' if they go beyond a few 'rounds'. If you are new to Haskell, please ask your first questions on the haskell-cafe list.

In practice, 'haskell' tends to be devoted mainly to announcements, whereas 'haskell-cafe' tends to be devoted mainly to research-oriented Haskell language issues. When posting to 'haskell-cafe', please keep in mind the following pointers:

  • Avoid inflammatory or obscene language. This is a civil discussion forum. Name-calling, in particular, will not be tolerated, and offenders may be subject to moderation (banning).
  • Avoid sarcasm. Ideally, posts should focus on research issues, and be devoid of any kind of non-strictly-relevant emotion.
  • Avoid irrelevant jokes. This is a discussion forum for serious, research-oriented issues on the language Haskell.
  • Avoid discussion of tangential or orthogonal issues. For example, discussing the language Haskell itself is relevant, but discussing, say, how to implement graphics routines whose screen resolution is determined by precision of computation of prime numbers in an algorithm that may be implemented in Haskell is tangential. Tangential issues tend to be frowned upon. Try to stick to discussing the Haskell language itself, as opposed to issues that are merely related to topics loosely connected with Haskell.
  • Avoid content-free posts. For example, do not post an article consisting merely of the phrase "+1." Remember that researchers regularly read 'haskell-cafe' to discuss their research, and that the phrase '+1' does not, by itself, assist research. Try to post issues that contribute to research discussion on the language Haskell.

Subscription information

Haskell mailing lists are managed by mailman - each list has a web interface. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view the archives of a list visit the home page of the list, such as the Haskell mailing list home page or the Haskell Cafe mailing list home page.

Archiving

mail-archive.com provides an archive of all messages sent to the haskell list since March 1997. This includes messages from before the list was converted to mailman. You may search these archives: haskell archive, haskell-cafe archive.

Also, the archives of the Haskell mailing list from September 1990 until 2006, before and after the list was converted to mailman, are hosted here (and as a tar file). Related to this is the archives of comp.lang.functional going back to 1990.

You may also search the mailing list using the Google Coop Haskell Search Engine.

Archives

In short, we have the following archives:

haskell

haskell-cafe

Any problems with the two mailing lists should be reported to haskell-admin@haskell.org.

More specific lists

There are mailing lists for each implementation of Haskell, and for more detailed discussion topics. Questions, comments, and bug reports regarding a specific implementation should be sent directly to the appropriate list instead of the entire Haskell community. Separate topics such as documentation tools, the common FFI, and libraries, also have a list of their own.

Outside haskell.org

There are also Haskell related mailing lists that are not hosted at haskell.org.