Re: [Fsfe-uk] [Proposal] Mailing lists

[Alex Hudson]

On Thu, 2003-10-23 at 11:15, MJ Ray wrote:
> > potential affs-discuss list: I don't see that list could have any
> > charter which didn't overlap severely with FSFE-UK.
> 
> That seems an unfair requirement at the moment. FSFE-UK has no clear 
> charter and is rather an amorphous blob just now.

I don't see the need for a charter. That sounds like just an excuse to
kick discussions off the list; the real problem that fsfe-uk has
suffered from in the past is not any kind of off-topicness but that some
discussions have become insufferably rude. I think most people are
pretty clear on what the topic is: free software in the UK.

Put it differently: any charter that might be pulled out of the mist for
FSFE-UK would overlap with any charter that has been mentioned for
affs-discuss. People will never post to the "correct" list, information
of interest to both will be cross-posted, and the overall amount of
discussion would probably go down due to lack of mass.

> It overlaps with everything but serves nothing exactly. There also
> seems to be practical problems with AFFS-centric discussions occurring
> on a list that covers a wide range of topics, creating confusion
> between what is AFFS and what is just general discussion.

I don't really get this. The 'AFFS'ness of something isn't really
governed by which list something is posted to. I'm not sure many recent
discussions have been particularly AFFS-centric either.

If there was an affs-discuss which discussed 'AFFS-related matters in
the UK', I don't see what traffic would go there. Would we discuss the
funding proposals? I think not, because it's not AFFS-related per se. In
fact, looking back over the month I can't see any discussion I would
want on that list.

It seems to me that the only 'problem' is that FSFE-UK is mistaken as
being solely an AFFS list; but I just don't see that is an issue. The
topicality of the list is unmistaken, and it reaches the right people.
In fact, it's quite a problem of our own making since until recently the
AFFS webpages bizarrely stated this was the affs-discuss list. "Fixing"
this problem by having a specific affs-discuss list seems very much to
throw the baby out with the bathwater; I can't see any practical
reasoning given for having it. Maybe now we have corrected the webpages
people will not make the mistake in the future. 

Cheers,

Alex.