On Tue, Sep 18, 2007 at 03:48:06PM +0100, Andrzej Jaworski wrote:

Responding to Simon Peyton-Jones' reminder that this is a low-bandwidth list I was obscure and commited a blunder.

This one and many other threads here are started undoubtedly by experts [sorry guys:-)] and coffee brake should work for them, but on numerous occasions threads here spawn beginner type questions. So, my thinking was that it is perhaps against the tide trying to stop them. Why not to make the list Haskell a first contact general practitioner? Then creating e.g. "Announcements & Challenge" or "Announcements & ask guru" list could take the best from "Haskell" but also would make it less front line and thus more elitist, which should imply the manner by itself.

I proposed renaming haskell@ -> haskell-announce@ haskell-cafe@ -> haskell@ in http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2007-July/028719.html but the only reply was There are very few inappropriate posts to the haskell@ list. I very much doubt that the list names are a problem. in http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2007-July/028727.html so I dropped it. I've just quickly categorised the haskell@ posts from August to see what the numbers are really like. The posts I've marked "off-topic" are ones that, as far as I can see, are no more suited to haskell@ than most of the messages that are sent to haskell-cafe@. Other peoples' categorisations might vary, but I'd be surprised if they did significantly. http://urchin.earth.li/~ian/haskell-list-categorisation.txt Of 68 messages, 52 were off-topic and 16 were on-topic, so about a 75-25 split. 5 of the off-topic messages were replies to on-topic messages, so would probably have been off-topic regardless of the list name unless we set the haskell-announce@ reply-to address to be haskell@ or moderated haskell-announce@. Of 28 threads, 13 were entirely off-topic while 15 were at least partly on-topic, so about a 50-50 split. This is a much better ratio as it is the chattier threads that tend to be off-topic, of course. There was only 1 on-topic message that wasn't the start of a thread. In response to I very much doubt that the list names are a problem. I fully understand why someone new to the community, and thus unfamiliar with the lists' intended purposes, posted http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2007-August/019746.html to a list called haskell@, but I'm sure they wouldn't have posted it to haskell-announce@. Something I noticed is that, of the 15 on-topic threads, 9 (including "The Monad.Reader") were things like calls for papers and conference announcements, which have a largely different audience than new-library announcements. Maybe there's even an argument for splitting haskell-announce in two? haskell-academic-announce?

You could always cross-post but subscribe or answer to one.

Cross-posting to mailing lists doesn't work well, and there's really no reason for haskell-cafe@ subscribers not to be subscribed to haskell@, so you might as well only post to haskell@ if you think it should be crossposted. Thanks Ian