Benjamin L.Russell wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]: Although this name definitely captures the flavor of the mailing list and also conveys a sense of community (with the addition of the 's,' thanks to Dan Licata), the double-n is easy to mistake for beginners, and a new user would probably have difficulty remembering whether the name was "beginner" or "beginners" if a sudden question arose after six months of absence from the mailing list.
I don't think the usability of the email address is that important, given that most computer users are quite happy with near-random hard-to-spell email addresses they find cool, and mail clients help with address management. Maybe technical measures could be taken to handle misaddressed mails if there is a need for it?
Much more important seems the semantic (exactly: pragmatic) content of the list name, which should both invite a new haskeller to join the list, and spring to mind in typical usage scenarios like having questions or wondering about Haskell.
Since this new list is about beginner issues for Haskell, a functional programming language, ideally, the name should simultaneously be short, easy to remember, academic, suggest general beginner issues, and, if possible, suggest a sense of community. The best alternatives that I have come up with are the following:
I disagree with the goal that the name should be academic. An academic name could create an entrance barrier both for non-academic beginners and non-topgrade students who search for [EMAIL PROTECTED], not [EMAIL PROTECTED] As another source of confusion, alpha is not only used for the beginning, but also for leaders (see [1]).
A quick web search revealed that quite a number of programming languages have [EMAIL PROTECTED] lists. Interestingly, their description invariantly includes the term "a friendly place", which may be nice for a beginner to read before subscribing, but is somewhat misleading in the case of the Haskell community, which is a big friendly place in itself.
Tillmann [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_%28biology%29 _______________________________________________ Haskell mailing list [email protected] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
