From: JamesBritt Date: 2002-10-01T10:26:37+09:00 Subject: ruby-talk separation, part II > -----Original Message----- > From: Sean Chittenden [mailto:sean@chittenden.org] > Sent: Monday, September 30, 2002 5:22 PM > To: ruby-talk ML > Subject: Re: announce@ == less email (FAQ item?) > > > > >ZenTest and ZenWeb were just released. I announced these to several > > >lists including this one. I'm sure many of you got multiple > > >copies. I admit that is annoying. These releases announce my LAST > > >announcements to ruby-talk@. I'll be announcing only to > > >announce@rubynet.org. I urge every developer releasing ruby > > >scripts, modules, or anyone having ruby-related events to use this > > >as your primary means of announcing your information. It will cut > > >down on volumes of email that we get and make it easier to focus on > > >the work at hand. > > > I'm not clear on how this would help me cut on down on e-mail, unless I stop reading ruby-talk. The announcement list is not guaranteed to carry all announcements, unless the list manager is watching all other lists for announcements not sent to the announcement list. If somebody has a new class or library, then they should add it to the RAA index. Want to see what's new? Go to the RAA. Use an RSS feed. Even RAA, though, is less than a full success, as many Ruby projects (e.g. Zen Test) never appear there, so why would an announcement list be better? Why have Yet Another Place to Post? Do we need YAPPing? > > I read this thread out of curiosity because I'm hosting the > announcement list, and the sentiments of the nay-sayers finally got to > me after a few hours of thinking about it. Immediately after I'd > finished reading my -talk mail, I archived my read or non-flagged > messages from ruby-talk and moved them into old-ruby-talk. To reply > to this message, I had to open up a mail spool with some 35K messages, > ALL of them -talk. I'm running a count of my mail spool at the > moment, I'll post the # of messages I've received in the last year and > a half... it's staggering and really sick, but, that frames my retort. > FWIW, 570979 msgs and in 18mo, that's about 1043 emails a day. I > digress... > > > Unfortunately, subscribing to it will only increase the volume for > > those of us who are staying on ruby-talk. > > Honestly? I don't really care. -talk is close to -chat. Most of the > 35K emails to ruby I've scanned over because they don't interest me. > Not to say that what people are saying isn't interesting, just that > what they're talking about has little relevance or bearing on my use > of Ruby. > This seems like basically the same discussion that occurred back at the start of the year http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/32121 What has changed since then? I have no trouble following the volume on ruby-talk, and can (still) easily pick what threads to follow or ignore. I can see a problem if a handful of people end up using ruby-talk for their personal project list, flooding the list with messages of little interest to 98% of the other subscribers. Still, if I ever decide that anybody has become hyperfocused on a topic no longer suited for ruby-talk, even after some public admonishment, I can simply add the name to my kill file. I'd rather first see social pressure used to contain off-topic or dead-horse threads before invoking fragmentation and possible isolation. I have an interest in, for example, database programming, but I don't want to subscribe to a list solely on that topic, as database programming only occupies a relatively small and sporadic amount of my time. What I find troublesome is the implied message that people should *stop* using ruby-talk for an accepted practice (making announcements), and the suggestion that people who don't join the announcement-list bandwagon will miss out on future announcements. One thing I really like about ruby-talk is the opportunity for serendipity, something that would decrease over time as more lists are created. I want to be able to scan threads that aren't of an immediate interest to me, just to see what's going on. More lists mean more work, less fun. James