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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/17/84 chuqui version 1.7 9/23/84; site nsc.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utcs!lsuc!pesnta!amd!nsc!chuqui
From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: mailing lists are no substitute for newsgroups; let idle ones be!
Message-ID: <2447@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 7-Mar-85 15:38:58 EST
Article-I.D.: nsc.2447
Posted: Thu Mar  7 15:38:58 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 7-Mar-85 19:20:21 EST
References: <4351@Glacier.ARPA> <145@osu-eddie.UUCP> <926@cbosgd.UUCP>
Reply-To: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Organization: The Village
Lines: 66
Summary: 

In article <926@cbosgd.UUCP> mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) writes:
>I have to agree with Brian and disagree with Karl on this one.  I've also
>used lots of mailing lists and newsgroups over many years.  My experience
>is that, while mailing list maintainers try to be good about it (as clearly
>Karl does) things don't always work out so well in practice.

From my experience, mailing lists are advantageous only in limited areas: a
small and specialized area of knowledge where the number of people who want
the information is limited; a topic of information where response time is
important; a topic that is going to have a known limited lifetime; and a
topic where you really don't want to get sidetracked by a lot of comments
from 'the peanut gallery' (no offense intended to the peanut gallery).

For example, unix-wizards would make a terrible usenet mailing list.
Everone wants it, the data on it isn't time critical, and it will go on
forever. Singles would make a terrible mailing list for the same reasons,
as would most of the other groups currently on usenet. 

But there are places where I've used groups to great advantage, and where
they seem to work well. mail.feminists works-- when net.women.only didn't
work as hoped, they moved it to a mailing list. This gives them control of
distribution, a moderator to keep the garbage out, and keeps it focused on
the areas that need to be focused. 

I myself have run two major mailing lists in the last year. The first was
an unqualified success and was a group of people that collaborated on
rewriting the emily post document that you all read in
net.announce.newusers (you HAVE read it, haven't you????). It was set up as
a mailing list for a number of reasons: 

    . limited audience-- as we put together the first draft, I only wanted
    to handle comments from people who were actively interested in working
    on the document.

    . time critical-- If I had to wait two to three weeks for net
    propogation on drafts and comments, I'd STILL be working on it.
    turnaround was on the order of 36-48 hours.

    . low signal/noise ratio-- If I had made net.news.emily for the
    development, everyone would have thrown in their two cents worth, and
    we would have spent enormous amounts of energy arguing about nitpicky
    items. By keeping it to a private list and posting checkpointed drafts
    to the net, everyone got their say, but we didn't get bogged down in
    the trivia. Emily came together quickly and worked well (it still works
    well after a year, although I'm thinking of doing some minor revisions)

    . it went away. When emily was finished, the mailing list faded into
    the sunset. Try that with a newsgroup.

The latest mailing list, lan-news, has faded into disuse without really
accomplishing anything. I think moving it into a mailing list may have been
detrimental over a newsgroup because it made it easier to lose momentum--
it probably ought to have had wider access than it did. 

Generally, whether or not to go to a mailing list depends on the
information-- somethings seem to fit that form of communication well,
others don't. We ought to keep both options open, which is why I'm keeping
a list of available mailing lists.

chuq
    
-- 
Chuq Von Rospach, National Semiconductor
{cbosgd,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui   nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA

Be seeing you!