robert burrell donkin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > one of the continual battles we've had at jakarta is policing the > mailing list and general in particular. > > people wanting to join a mailing list from the jakarta list have to go > through two pages to get the actual lists in order to try to reduce > the need for people to police the list guidelines. but this doesn't > seem to be enough. we still get people posting who haven't taken the > time or effort to read what's been created to help them. > > jon started taking a lot of the responsibility for policing very soon > after the change from [EMAIL PROTECTED] to [EMAIL PROTECTED] he started off > with elan and humour but over the years his responses got shorter and > more curt as it became a chore. hence the jon.html which had to be > used when people took it too personally. > > one problem which has become apparent over the last year or so is that > jakarta lists are very widely mirrored - including onto news. this > means that people post to our lists never having read the list > guidelines or (as has happened in a couple of cases) not even > realizing that they are on a mailing list.
Thanks alot for taking the time to dispassionately explain the situation *such as it is*. It's exactly the kind of answer I was hoping for. Unfortunately I don't know what sort of magic is required to make everybody happy, but I do know there are other online developer communities that have experienced similar growing pains. It might not hurt to survey some prior art; IME perl's p5p developer list is exceptionally well-managed. I don't have first-hand experience with the php developer community, but from my distant vantage point, they seem to be managing their growth pretty well (at least angst-free). -- Joe Schaefer
