beginners@haskell.org (I like the plural better too, thanks Dan)
That might be useable, but is likely to suffer from the variety of Haskell beginner backgrounds and the resulting variety of initial interests (topics that got them interested in Haskell, or that would help them to get up to speed with Haskell): - abstract maths: categorical connections - numeric maths: optimizations/libraries/profiling/.. - logic: Curry-Howard/advanced types - web programming: database libraries/cgi/html/xml/.. - sml/ocaml: how do I do my higher-order functors and side-effects in Haskell? - biocomputing: how do I do high-volume data harvesting efficiently in Haskell? - etc, etc If you throw all Haskell beginners into a single list, won't you end up with, well, haskell-cafe@? IIRC, the subject of this thread was about a specific group of Haskell beginners and their projected needs, in particular, that they might find beginning easier if isolated from the buzz of haskell-cafe@, in a community of similar interests, different from those of other Haskell beginners. Using topics to focus interests within a single haskell-cafe would at least have a chance of getting there (the one drawback: I can't think of a way to ensure that beginner's emails have a [newbie] keyword, so they might not see their own mails), and would make the helpful subscribers of said list available for answers (they might even be able not to mention unsafePerformIO, higher-order type class dodomorphisms, and the like in a [newbie] thread?-). You could, of course, try beginners@, and whenever someone gets no answers there, direct them to try haskell-cafe@. But would you want to force the threads in beginners@ to be interest-independent, to avoid scaring other beginners with specialist discussions?
help@haskell.org questions@haskell.org
These seem misleading - noone is promising help/answers on that list, and many subscribers are happy to provide both on other lists.
Personally, I think that there are problems with all three names, though: .. Since this new list is about beginner issues for Haskell, a functional programming language, ideally, the name should simultaneously be short, easy to remember, academic, suggest general beginner issues, and, if possible, suggest a sense of community. The best alternatives that I have come up with are the following:
IMHO, all of this is seriously starting to move in wrong directions. What is needed is a discussion of list charter. The only thing I've seen was "Discussion about beginner questions and issues in teaching Haskell", with the implicit assumption that those beginners are non-academic students, but in some form of education/school. If that is the target, with the idea that teachers can point their students someplace suitable, and students/teachers can meet others in the same boat, then edu@haskell or school@haskell might work. Claus