Re: Managing communities and emails (was Re: [PROPOSAL] Jakarta Language Components)

[Torsten Curdt]

i like the idea of tagging emails better: a single list with cool server side filtering and metrics. we don't have the technology for this yet so

i'm willing to see the mailing lists split so long as people would be
willing to consider coming back if it every arrives...

I was just considering proposing exactly this!

A joke turns into something serious ...but I am all with you guys.
As I said: the more I think about it - the more I like the idea!

The another really cool feature with this tagging approach
would be that cross-posting would no longer need to be banned
- it would just not exist.

A set of checkboxes would allow a user to "subscribe" to various lists, or to virtual groupings such as "jakarta commons" which would implicitly

subscribe to the list for every project that is tagged as being a

(ie one for each project); the problems of partitioning the subscriber
base too much is avoided by the existence of the groupings.

jakarta-commons project. Of course this implies fine-grained email lists

Yepp!

This system would allow overlapping groups to occur; for example
commons-digester can be filed under both "commons" and "xml" virtual
groups; someone subscribing to *either* group would receive
digester-related emails. It also allows projects to move from one PMC

of people receiving emails).

to another without destroying the existing community (which *is* the set

Great possibilites

Groups also allow new projects to be created and added to the group; all

people subscribed to the group would then automatically get emails
related to that new project.

Any list which has less than 3 subscribers would automatically forward
its emails to the PMC list (or similar) for purposes of oversight.

interesting

Any person subscribed to 3 or more projects associated with "commons"
would automatically be subscribed to the whole commons group (or maybe
just sent a weekly nag email recommending they do so). That hopefully
allows casual commons developers to get just postings for one or two
projects, without destroying the useful commons-wide community that
exists now.


with something that regularly frustrates me: suspending subscription
when I'm away on holiday. Currently, I need to unsubscribe to
half-a-dozen lists then resubscribe on return.

Having a single point for managing subscriptions would also help greatly

Yepp!

Another thing that would be awesome is to integrate it with a
powerful archive system ...and then provide feeds for all the
different tag combinations - and even individual threads!
Man - that would be awesome!

This sort of functionality probably already exists in one of the

as far as I can see.

open-source mailing list management packages; it isn't anything radical

Now we only have to find such a project and then convince infrastructure

...regarding the forums - naaaaa. What does that help?
I hate the fact I always have to subscribe to forums and
never liked the interfaces.

cheers
--
Torsten

smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature