Hi Stef, you can count me in to show newbies around.
I have the same problems other *teachers* using Squeak have, and that is that my students are afraid of this list (for various reasons). In the past I even created local lists so that they could communicate with me, some of my assistents, and each other. This has nothing to do with splitting the list!
A stupid but effective way to guide people to this mailing list is: - having a clear footer that indicates that this is the new (or whatever name) mailing list, and that talks about the 'real' mailing list. No worries, as soon as they feel ready people will move. - the 'teachers' on the newbie list occasionaly have to reroute questions once they get beyod newbie questions. It is that plain and simple.
Note that adding such list will *grow* the community, not *split* it... How can it split when the people that will answer the newbies still belong to the squeak-dev as well ?! Do you think that because I am answering newbies I will no longer be interested in squeak-dev ?! This is crazy.
The 'do not split the mailing-lists' discussions in the past were said in a completely different context than for helping out newbies. We were talking about real variations of the language (with a real danger of splitting) or the community (the developers versus the sunday Squeakers). That is not the way to split this mailing list. But for helping out newbies, that is a different cause alltogether.
Subject: Re: Looking for good souls
Hi guys
You know what? I found you really conservative and sitting on your knowledge. Do you really want to stay in your private club, be dandy, do not invite anybody to learn and grow? Because you think that people are not afraid of our discussions? Really?
May be this starter mailing-list will fail but I will have dare to try instead of staying with your certainty about life and facts.
My GOAL IS NOT TO SPLIT SQUEAK_DEV. My goal is to give a chance to people that are afraid or do not want to receive sometimes 50 emails per day to communicate with us. These are years that because of technological aspects we did not create such a list.
Here is what ralph told me, so either we do it publicly via squeakfondation as a normal and public list as the fact that we acknowledge that newcomers are ***welcome*** in our cool community, or I create a mailing in an obscure mail server and I will advertize it. I let you decide. But I will do it (you know me and I will fail and take the responsibility of this failure if it fails but at least I could be looking at this scar and be proud of it).
Just make a list and then advertise it. In fact, you might make several lists, for different languages.
As long as I've been on the Squeak list, people have argued against splitting the list. However, if Squeak is to grow, the list must split. When a list gets large, people don't want to post. When the people who post are experts, beginners get shy. If you want to grow the community, the lists must split.
Fortunately, you don't need to take a vote. Just create a list and advertise it, and the people who want to join will join, and the others won't.
-Ralph
Stef