Splitting lists.

[Ingecom - SERRE Jean-Christophe]

Galen Johnson <gjohnson "at" totalsports.net> wrote:
> 
> I believe that the most sensible suggestion by far has been to add a
> small tag to the beginning of the subject letting everyone know to what
> the message pertains.  For example;
[ 8< ... ]

I'll second Jonathan Morton's opinion about this, that expecting such
tag-discipline to be followed by incoming newbies (or even from many
posters on a long-term basis) is an illusion. Completely relying on
luser input always makes systems eventually crash.

Additionnaly, one point I've not seen taken in account on that
discussion is the digest lists.

Personally, I subscribed to vnc-list-digest instead of vnc-list, because
I don't want vnc-emails to pop-up in WinBiff all day long, and because I
don't expect critical information that can't wait until the evening.
This already mean I can't simply delete messages I'm not interested in,
and also that I get the full picture of text+html crap messages.

Tagged subjects, even if working, wouldn't help in any way people who
want daily digests. To me this seems a big limitation.

> This should be plenty of categories for everyone and the best thing is
> we don't have to split the list.

There is splitting and splitting. If you remove the current list and
replace it with "vnc-win" "vnc-mac" etc., there will certainly be a lot
of crosspostings each time someone has a mac-win VNC trouble, etc. which
seems to be your fear in a splitting.

Now, my own little suggestion was to keep the current list for the usual
stuff, but to ADD "vnc-win-only" "vnc-mac-only" etc. lists clearly
dedicated to single-platform questions (winvnc trayicon, linux fonts
settings, etc.), so as to help remove all such threads from the current
list and keep it as slim as possible.

In that case there is never a need for crossposting, and there should
practically be not much if all lists and their exact use is clearly
documented in the automatic reply one get when subscribing.

And this would allow to keep the digest feature useful...

-- 
JCS - Jean-Christophe SERRE - INGECOM France - +33 (0)1.48.34.12.34

Les ordinateurs, c'est comme les galères,
pour aller plus vite il faut plus de RAM.

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