Concerns about the list...

["Paul M. Moriarty" <pmm@cisco.com>]

Hi,

For those of you who don't know me (I'm more of a lurker than a
poster), I'm your friendly, neighborhood mailing list maintainer.  I
wanted to take a minute to talk about the list, and address concerns
about the potential unleashing of "the great unwashed" onto the list.

At present, we have about 160 subscribers, roughly 50 on the digest and
another 110 on the real-time list.  Growth has been slow, but steady,
with a few adds and the odd drop or two each week.

The signal+noise/noise ratio has been quite high; something which
pleasantly surprises me given that we have no faq, nor written rules of
any kind.

First off, let me assure you that despite the creation of the USENET
newsgroup, the list isn't going away.  As long as there are people
interested in having a mailing list (and Cisco continues to let me run
it :-), I'll keep the list running.

Regarding potential degradation of the quality of the list and
explosive growth, neither have yet to occur.  There are some options
that we have on a mailing list which do not exist on the net.  I can
control who gets on the list and who gets removed.  This is a simple,
little change that requires that I approve all new subscribers.  As for
removing, I do it all the time when mail starts bouncing for a list
member for more than a couple of days (this is invisible to you and one
of the beauties of this particular mailing list utility).  While I've
yet to yank somebody from the list for inappropriate posting, it is
only because I haven't had to (thank you, one and all).

If somebody wants to post the existence of the list to the new
newsgroup, I say let 'em.  We don't exactly keep it a secret.  I run
another list as well for folks interested in the Boston Celtics
basketball team and the existence of that list gets posted to
rec.sport.basketball.pro on a monthly basis and it has yet to degrade
that list.

With a little peer pressure and a little creative list management, I
suspect that we can keep a high quality mailing list for some time to
come.

I now return to my lurking, and return you to your regularly scheduled
postings.  :-)

-> Paul <-

--
Paul M. Moriarty / pmm@cisco.com / +1 415 688 8174 
Manager, Engineering Computer Services / Cisco Systems, Inc.
Maintainer, TheWho Mailing List
"Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles." - Emerson