Maybe BayLISA needs a new mailing list

[David Wolfskill]

>Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 12:19:30 -0700
>From: star at starshine.org (Heather Stern)

>My heart quails at the idea of declaring a fresh "generic chat" list, but
>if you really feel that baylisa@ and baylisa-jobs@ can be restored to
>their more focus'd topics by this method, then I support the concept.

:-}

>If we are adding lists I'd also like to see an announce@ added -
>certainly not because I want another place to post things (bleh) but
>because it's been requested a few times,

Sure; no problem.

>and it would be easy to make the regular baylisa@ list a recipient to it.  

I'd rather not do that.  Folks who want to be subscribed to BayLISA
lists have, historically, needed to subscribe themselves -- we have
(generally?) not automatically subscribed (or unsubscribed) anyone.

(This is not to say that this model is perfect; merely that changing the
model is a bit more of a conceptual leap than tweaking the mix of
currently-instantiated lists.)

>This would allow people who don't want to deal with any chat, even
>technical, to bail from it and just get our meeting and event announcements. 

Yup.

>The next question would be if we should accept other events of sysadmin
>interest as announcements there, eg. SIG BEER WEST, ACCU, various user
>group meetings.

That sounds more like a policy, and therefore a Board, issue.  :-}

>> I would, of course, prefer that if the list is created, that someone
>> else (other than postmaster@) would be the "list owner" (and thus
>> deal with attempts at spamming and the like).

>I don't have the bandwidth to become a moderator, but the idea sounds like 
>it has good potential.

I have a volunteer for -chat at .  -announce@ would also need an owner.

>Would a thread that has been pushed off the main or jobs list cause its
>members to be temporarily moderated so that all the stray threads could
>be directed to the correct list?  Would that get us into censorship
>trouble?  (never minding people who ooze trouble on their own - I mean,
>would it change our legal state with regard to list content.)

Once the new lists are set up, I would be inclined to let folks exercise
self-restraint as much as possible, and if that fails, moderate the
list.  That will undoubtedly annoy some folks (whose "pain threshholds"
are lower than mine), but that is somewhat of a risk we take by having a
relatively freely-accessible list.

Peace,
david       (postmaster at baylisa.org)
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david at catwhisker.org
Based on what I have seen to date, the use of Microsoft products is not
consistent with reliability.  I recommend FreeBSD for reliable systems.