On Thu, 7 Jun 2001, Gary Dale wrote:
> Your points are well taken. However, in defence of newsgroups, this is a
> high-volume list that I think would be better handled as a newsgroup.
> 1) I think a lot of people aren't able to stay in the list continually
> due to the volume. There's a lot of subscribe, unsubscribe going on for
> people who need occaisional help.
> 2) the process of subscribing to a listserve can be a little off-putting
> and then there's the delay in getting getting on.
> 3) How many firewalls block all news groups? I wouldn't want to exclude
> anyone, but surely anyone in a position to be running a java server has
> access to newsgroups somehow.
> 4) Threaded discussions are better handled in newsgroups than listserves.
> 5) You can see the (recent) history before asking the same question that
> someone else asked a couple of days ago.
> 6) Yes, you can keep the mailing list going but hopefully a news group
> would open things up to whole new range of people while reducing the
> mail volume to something manageable.
Your points are also well taken :-). And frankly, I am a big fan of
newsgroups, and think they have a lot of advantages. Still, in some
ways they are not as convenient as mailing lists, and some people have
a strong preference for mailing lists over newsgroups.
More importantly, to be clearer about the feelings of the list owner
regarding changing this list to a newsgroup, it's not just that they
think it's a bad idea, but they have pretty clearly stated that it
will not happen. (Look in the archives for some threads about
newsgroups and in particular some posts from Craig McClanahan, who may
be the closest this list has to an "owner" -- I know he is very busy,
and I believe he is at JavaOne right now, and is doing a presentation
there.)
And again, anyone can initiate the newsgroup creation process, the
existence of this mailing is not stopping that. But it may not be
something that Apache will "officially" support/recognize.
> Milt Epstein wrote:
>
> >On Wed, 6 Jun 2001, Gary Dale wrote:
> >
> >>I'd prefer to see a news group rather than this mailing list.
> >>Something like comp.infosystems.www.servers.apache.jakarta or just
> >>comp.infosystems.www.servers.jakarta would be appropriate. For that
> >>matter, there should be comp.infosystems.www.servers.apache group
> >>too. The ms-windows and unix subgroups of www.servers aren't very
> >>appropriate since many of the issues relating to Apache are common
> >>to multiple OSs.
> >>
> >[ ... ]
> >
> >Seems to me, having a newsgroup is fine, but I don't see why it needs
> >to be an either/or thing. There is a procedure for creating
> >newsgroups, and if anyone wants to get the process started for a
> >tomcat/jakarta/apache newsgroup (or newsgroups), they're certainly
> >welcome to. But regardless of whether that happens (and/or succeeds,
> >which is certainly not a sure thing), there's no reason the mailing
> >list can't go on.
> >
> >Regarding moderating the mailing list, I don't think that is feasible.
> >For one thing, as some have suggested, it would take a lot of work, so
> >it would be hard to find people to do it. Plus philosophically, I'm
> >not sure we really want to go that route. And of course, there is a
> >list owner (that exists as an entity, if not a person or persons, even
> >if they don't show themselves around here much :-), and they'd get
> >final say it what happens with this list. That may be the biggest
> >point, because there has been no input from any "owner" on this list
> >for a while on any of these issues (although they are on record as
> >saying a newsgroup is a bad idea, mostly because many people don't
> >have access to newsgroups because of firewalls, proxies, and such).
> >
> >Also, no disrespect intended, but I'm not sure it's such a good idea
> >to try to come up with sweeping ideas to "improve" a mailing list
> >after having only been subscribed a few weeks. That's not very long
> >to get to know the ins and outs of a mailing list, how things ebb and
> >flow, what's been suggested/tried or not, etc.
> >
> >Anyway, of the recent ideas suggested, I think the one that has the
> >best combination of merit/feasibility is dividing up the list into
> >sub-lists. This would have to be done carefully, of course, to
> >actually improve the situation. I'd be willing to give this a go
> >(although it might be the kind of thing where it would be good to have
> >more than one person involved). The first step though, would be to
> >try to get in contact with the list owner and see if they would go for
> >it. I'll try doing that.
> >
>
Milt Epstein
Research Programmer
Software/Systems Development Group
Computing and Communications Services Office (CCSO)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
