The List As We Know It (off topic)

bugaj@dnrc.bell-labs.com
Fri, 7 Nov 1997 11:19:21 -0500 

It seems obvious to me that there is a need for discussion about programming
issues which are not directly related to the maintenance and development of
libwww-perl that is not being addressed on usenet.  I know that I, given the
choice, prefer the smaller and less hostile/annoying environment of well-formed
mailing lists to the chaos that is now usenet.

Randal suggested changing the name of the mailing list because someone must
be pointing to it erroneously as a "help" list for libwww and sending over
new subscribers who are not really interested in the topic of discussion.
This would, for a short time until someone posted the name of the new list
to some inappropriate venue, stave off the people who are not here for libwww
dev & maint.

My suggestion is that the list be split into libwww-help and libwww-maint,
or something similar, and that some of the experts choose remain on libwww-help
to be there for the newbies who may, perhaps, someday be comrades on
libwww-maint if they can just get through their initial (few or slew of)
problems with and questions about PERL and the library.  I am aware that the
more general list could become overrun and rendered ineffectual, so some
guidelines could be set up for that list.  I'm willing to *help*
moderate such a list, though I don't have the time to moderate it by myself nor
the expertise and in-depth familiarity with the library and PERL that people
like Randal and Gisle have to be looked to as the "answer man" on such a
list.

This would help keep the maintenance list on topic (off topic posts could be
sent to the "help" or "general" or whatever-it-would-be-called sister list),
and help the people coming to this list with programming questions get the
assistance they need.

Just my $0.02, and another off-topic post...

LL+P,
Stephan


-- 
                        "Do computers think?"
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Stephan Vladimir Bugaj		                bugaj@bell-labs.com
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Non-Lucent personal website http://www.cthulhu-dynamics.com/stephan  
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