Hi folks. As I've been daft enough to get a few things rolling, it looks like it's fallen on me to announce the new IRC channel, #haskell-in-depth. #haskell has been a roaring success over the last few years, as Don has repeatedly pointed out. Unfortunately that roar is starting to make it hard for some to participate - there's so much traffic that it can be difficult to fit an additional conversation in. We're starting to hit the limits as to how far one channel can take us, and that means we need to explore ways to divide up traffic. Actually, this isn't entirely new - a number of years ago now, #haskell-blah was formed as a space for off-topic (and sometimes less-than-worksafe) conversation among #haskell regulars. We also created #haskell-overflow, but it doesn't see much use except among some of the cabal implementors because it's hard to know when to take the conversation you're currently in to -overflow. We need channels that people start their conversations in, not ones to send people to! So we're trying a space for in-depth discussion. The new channel is open to everyone, just like #haskell. But just as we're hoping for certain kinds of discussion, there're others we want to avoid. If you need to know how to use monads so you can do IO, #haskell-in-depth isn't the place. On the other hand, if you want to discuss how Haskell's monads compare to the category theory or what the category theory can tell us about how individual monads relate to the language as a whole, -in-depth is a good place! In particular, we're hoping that the kind of category theory discussions that give the mistaken impression you actually need to know CT will increasingly live in #haskell-in-depth. We're not after a theory channel though - architectural discussion, compiler implementation, possible type system extensions, library design, all are good subjects. Anyway, I shouldn't ramble on for too long here - #haskell-in-depth is open for business and we look forward to seeing you there! -- Philippa Cowderoy <flippa@flippac.org>