Re: list charter

You wrote:
> If this follows every other list i've ever been on, there is a
> flury of initial activity by a couple of people (like me :-)
> then it tapers off to something more managable. I had toyed
> with making it a digest, but it seems like you want fast message
> turn around right now..

This is very true. Project driven mailing lists work best when they are
private, unannounced, and only contain people who are actively contributing to
the project (if you don't have a role, you're not on the list...good
motivation)

This list has huge volume right now (I was out of town for 4 days and came
back to 100+ messages) Almost all this volume is generated by a very small
portion of the subscriber list. As the subscriber list grows, there will be
more and more "Someone please fill me in..." types of questions.

The risk of having closed lists is that people may discover they have real
lives, and the list goes into stasis (eg, the cinematronics list and the
Williams list). With an open list, there is always someone with something to
say, and thus drag people back from their real lives ;-)

With the current way this list is setup, it may as well be in a newsgroup.
The only distinction is that some people are more likely to give priority to
e-mail messages than news postings, but that is a subtle difference.

My suggestion: someone articulate roles for this project, and sign people up
to do them. Everyone else politely is asked to watch rgvac for occasional
project updates (similar to the current KLOV effort). If people have to back
out because of reality, recruit someone else to step into the role and move on.

If people want to go this direction, I can volunteer for this coordinator/PM
role, although my real life is real enough these days that I may not be the
best person for the role (diapers diapers everywhere, and not a board to solder
;-) This PM stuff ain't rocket science, but it is one of the few things you
can't do with a PIC ;-)

Ray
Received on Tue May 6 12:21:56 1997