Re: [seul-edu] Mail list versus UUNET newgroup

[Douglas Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

Stephen C. Daukas wrote:

> 
> I agree, if only because it would be easier to avoid the cross-posting 
> to the various email distributions that takes place now.  As far as I 
> can tell, SEUL-EDU is the majority of the content and the other "sister" 
> lists get much of the same stuff most of the time.  Some of the lists 
> get traffic, but they remain idle most of the time.
> 


The reason for this is mainly historical.  The seul-edu mailing list 
was (so far as I know) the first discussion forum for talking about 
Linux in education by at least a year.  For that reason anyone 
interested in the topic came here.  As time went on, there were 
numerous small lists formed to cover the same topic, mostly by people 
who weren't aware of the existence of the seul-edu list.  Very few of 
them ever got enough subscribers to generate interesting discussions 
and therefore languished.

In an effort to address this fragmentation problem, we formed 
Schoolforge in January.  One of its stated goals is to increase 
communication among all the groups and organizations working on 
getting open resources into the schools.  We thought of just making 
the seul-edu mailing list the primary discussion list for Schoolforge, 
but we were concerned that that would seem too much like an attempted 
takeover of the smaller discussion lists.  We therefore created 
schoolforge-discuss for general discussions about using Linux in 
education and encouraged members of the seul-edu list (and all the 
other lists, I hope) to take such general discussions there, reserving 
the seul-edu list for SEUL/edu-specific things like discussion of the 
Applications Index or the ISO project.  I still encourage this, 
although the separation hasn't been as quick or as sharp as I'd like.


> A newsgroup structure would make it much easier to follow items of 
> interest without having to wade through other stuff.  A good structure 
> would make it easier (and take less time) to focus in on ISO-related 
> activity, for example.  After all, that's why it was created!
> 


Well, as Jan Wilson said, the web email archives can be viewed by 
thread, which gives you pretty much this ability.  Still, I realize 
that some folks prefer the ability to post through the web also, which 
you can't do with an email archive (actually, you can send an email 
reply to a specific message, but it's not quite the same).


> The question is, who would agree to do the work to keep it going?
> 

Umm, that'd be me, with little doubt.

-- 
Doug Loss          As long as I have you there is just
drloss@suscom.net  one other thing I'll always need--
(570) 326-3987     tremendous self control.
                           Ashleigh Brilliant