I haven't been using this list long enough to know what the impact is for conference announcements on the amount of traffic on this list but I have been using email lists long enough (probably about 30 years) to have an opinion.
Typically, a companion "-announce" mailing list is often used for related conference announcements, new release announcements, and essentially the types of posts which are not intended to produce discussions. For example, for about 8 years I was very actively engaged with an open source for higher education community (JASIG) and for one if it's projects there was a uportal-users, uportal-announce, and uportal-dev (for developers of the uportal product) list. However, if the mailing list does not get a lot of traffic (and this list seems to get a fair amount) here's how I see it. If the "Call for Papers" or other type of conference announcement is being made by someone that is already actively participating in the list I would not tend to object. However, if it's coming from someone that is just looking for as many mailing lists as possible to post to in an attempt to attract conference attendees and isn't going to stick around to followup any questions that might be asked, I'd prefer that the didn't use the list as there are usually plenty of other places to discover the conference. BTW, I was also on all three of those uportal maliing lists and on the JASIG conference planning committee for five consecutive conferences. We'd post frequent announcements to the "-announce" list and only occasionally to the -users list but never to the -dev list. > -----Original Message----- > From: Damian Steer [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 6:18 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Question for the community: Do you want calls for papers etc? > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hi all, > > As one of the moderators for this list I get to approve or reject > incoming messages from unsubscribed senders. > > Subscribers to the old list, or indeed any established semweb / linked > data / ontology related forum will be familiar with the periodic "call > for papers" and similar messages from academic sources. As a > relatively new list we haven't been part of that distribution route so > far, but recently I've seen a couple of messages come in for approval. > And there they sit currently. > > What do people think? Would you prefer to keep them off this list, or > are you not bothered? > > (Note: there are, alas, some dubious "conference" calls which are > clearly just spam. They will be rejected of course.) > > Damian > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ > > iEYEARECAAYFAk8pH2IACgkQAyLCB+mTtymi7QCgoGg+Vjzr7Nzisco34OMI+qw4 > IFoAoMa/1pNyd2wZR2Mhk1mqmXXPvTZc > =TyLF > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
