Mak++ If it's a members only opt-in thing as described, I'm all for it.
That being said... I'll still ask questions in IRC ;) Nathan T. Wild Ralph Brown Community Centre Inc. -----Original Message----- From: Mak Kolybabi <[email protected]> Sender: [email protected]: Sun, 7 Apr 2013 19:17:32 To: <[email protected]> Reply-To: [email protected] Subject: [SkullSpace-Discuss] Proposal for a new mailing list I was talking with some people today and it made me think about the ridiculous diversity of skilled members we have at SkullSpace. This resulted in mulling over the idea of creating a new mailing list dedicated to technical questions and opinions. Now, wait, before you grab your pitchforks or casually push me into traffic, let me give a few more (proposed) details that make it sound like this may end up being less of a ridiculous gong show... 1) The mailing list would be *private*, meaning that only people subscribed to the mailing list could see the questions and answers. There would be no public archive. 2) Only SkullSpace *members* would be eligible to subscribe, preventing the inevitable "Hey, there's a hackerspace in town that does tech support, we should get *them* to fix all our shit!" 3) The sort of people that are likely to be on this list would be members of SkullSpace, meaning that you would hope for some minimal amount of research/Googling of a question first. Fine, yeah, I know that's a delusion. Stop crushing my hopes and dreams. 4) A small group of highly technical subscribers might result in higher-quality, quicker answers to questions. As those in the IRC channel can tell you, we're quick to respond with the exact link someone needs in response to a question, followed by a snide remark about how the asker should "Learn to Internet." 5) Librarians know this better than most: people often have *no* idea what they really want to know when they ask a question. I'm sure we've all had the experience of having to ask someone a dozen questions before we pin down what a person's question *should* be. How many times have you asked a question on IRC and had someone respond with what you needed because they chose a single different word in their Google query? 6) We never want these sort of questions on discuss@, in my opinion. That's all the arguments I have in favour of a new mailing list. The most obvious argument against it is that there are a million different forums, IRC channels, FAQs, and mailing lists that already exist on the Internet for this. My only counter-argument would be that people should (hopefully) check those first. Still dreaming, I know. There, I've proposed my mad scheme, let the lambasting begin. -- Mak Kolybabi <[email protected]> () ASCII Ribbon Campaign | Against HTML e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org | Against proprietary extensions _______________________________________________ SkullSpace Discuss Mailing List Help: http://www.skullspace.ca/wiki/index.php/Mailing_List#Discuss Archive: https://groups.google.com/group/skullspace-discuss-archive/ _______________________________________________ SkullSpace Discuss Mailing List Help: http://www.skullspace.ca/wiki/index.php/Mailing_List#Discuss Archive: https://groups.google.com/group/skullspace-discuss-archive/
