I loved reading the different responses, it's like a cross section of the
attitudes a working manager sees on her or his lists.
(My favorite was Chuq's "this list is a rotting sinkhole," etc, because I
just had a troublemaker use the same kind of line on a very healthy list...
it's a reminder that while we may be in charge Out There, we're just
members here, and member perceptions can be strong and weird! Personally I
think we're a spring-fresh fragrant sinkhole...)
The primary reason Majordomo@Greatcircle is a blizzard of activity compared
to this one is that Majordomo has a blizzard of problems, bugs and issues
guaranteed to give you something to talk about. The secondary reason is
that there's an active mechanism pointing new and upgrading Mj admins to
join that list, so it stays perkin'.
Paradoxically, because this list isn't "marketed" or widely advertised, you
have to be in possession of something like a clue to find and join it,
therefore it is not flooded with misdirected, peabrain or irrelevant
postings. Almost everybody here is too busy running lists to play
children's games or otherwise waste energy. We come here when there's a
real problem or issue, we deal, we get back to work.
There is a misconception that if a list isn't constantly flowing with
chitchat, it isn't working. That's true for "environment lists" like
CoolKidsPlayhouse-L where the raison d'etre is just to have a bunch of
people talking about stuff so that members don't feel lonely. It is not
necessarily true for "topic lists" like RadioTelescopeRepair-L, which are
often just one of a dozen lists each member is on, and which exist for a
specific purpose. Someone's cryogenic receiver breaks, the call goes out
and six experts give help, then all is quiet for a couple of weeks. That's
perfectly natural, and those are the kind of lists where posting a cake
recipe *will* get you flamed because overworked people *need to be able to
be on that list without worrying about noise*.
The culture clash on specialized lists is sometimes between people who are
on several (or many) lists, and who just need each one to stick to its
low-noise core topic so they can afford to read without going insane,
versus people who just join that ONE list like it's their "club" and don't
see why they shouldn't use it to talk about anything and everything.
Neither approach is "wrong" but it can be hard for both kinds of members to
co-exist.
All of the above being said, there are probably list managers out there who
could benefit from membership here and who don't know about us. One
targeted way to reach the potential community would be to monitor NEW-LIST
and send each new list's moderator an announcement about List-Managers, how
to join etc. I bet the response rate would be quite high.
We could also approach the maintainers of the Majordomo and Listserv home
pages and see about getting the list mentioned somewhere in the web and
downloaded README material.
