A suggestion for factoring the list

jarvisb at timken.com jarvisb at timken.com
Tue Feb 24 12:27:31 UTC 1998


Christopher Oliver (oliver at fritz.co.traverse.com) quoth:
>> As was already suggested on this list, I think Squeak discussion
>> should be moved to a moderated newsgroup.  Newsreaders are
>> significantly better at managing a plethora of messages.
>
>Writing as technical administrator at an ISP, let me whole-
>heartedly reject this.  The mailing list, fragmented or not,
>is reliable.  News feeds are far less so.  I.e. maybe your
>clever note got archived on AltaVista or DejaNews.  Maybe it
>dropped in the bit bucket.  At least with the mail, I know
>where things are.  Further, with the spam problem, we lose
>the ability to discuss without mangling our mail identities.
>With the mailing list, I know the author and his interests,
>so I know in general how to direct my replies.  In short,
>USENET is no place for serious discussion.  (Maybe even
>light hearted discussion there is a bad idea.)

Let me weigh in with whole-hearted agreement for what Chris said.
Uselessnet is a great way to communicate if you absolutely, completely
don't care whether your messages get through or not.  I get news from
two feeds and STILL miss messages.  Mailing lists are pretty reliable.

As far as splitting the list goes, I don't think the traffic here is
excessive.  Someone earlier said they'd collected 500 messages in the
past month.  That's 16 or 17 per day, on average.  Certainly not so many
that I have to spend hours wading through them.

In my opinion we should stick with what we have.  If someone is dying to
create a comp.lang.smalltalk.squeak group, go ahead - but I personally
will continue to look here for Squeak stuff.

Your mileage may vary.

Bob Jarvis





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