Re: how to make mail lists scale well

[Russ Allbery]

Chuq Von Rospach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> One approach I find interesting but haven't really researched is to
> start building lots of SMALL lecture halls, each of which fits N
> students, and each has the same video feed from the professor, but each
> small hall then breaks off for an independent discussion. And when it's
> all done, the highlights of each independent room could potentially be
> collated for distribution to everyone...

> Hmm. Thoughts?

The Perl 6 development lists tried a model like that, partly modelled on
the IETF working group idea, but with an idea that the work done in the
subgroups would be summarized on the main lists.

It didn't work very well, primarily because for the most part the
summaries never got written.  (I was guilty of that myself for the one
list that I tried to chair.)

Writing summaries or collecting highlights is a *LOT* of work.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>