[Mapserver-users] A suggestion for list divisions

[Thorsten Fischer]

I hope I can make a point, even though I have not had my morning tea yet
:)

On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 17:25, Dan Harris wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> I've been wondering for a few weeks now if the list admins might
> consider breaking up the list into more topical sublists?  Such as
> perl-mapscript, php-mapscript, users, etc.. 

I doubt this would have the desired effect.

Let's say you break it into mapserver (cgi) and mapscript. Newbie A
wants to know about php mapscript, but only knows mailing list mapscript
(cgi) (from a friend, from the website, whatever). He gets pointed to
the other list (he unsubscribes, deletes the filter rule he has set up,
subscribes to the other list, sets up a new filter rule ... etc). In the
meantime, someone else is answering his question on the first list ...

You can continue that ad infinitum. It might sound very far-fetched, but
look at this:

http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo

I have spent a good amount of time on GNOME and Gtk+ and talked to a lot
of people who turned away from the whole topic just because of this
mailing list madness. Every small sublibrary has their own mailing list.
You simply do not know _where_ to ask a question. Your average beginner
does not even know or understand what the difference between mapscript
and the cgi program _is_. He seeks for help and gets confused at that
step already. Not good [tm].

There are a -users and a -dev mailing list, which is pretty
self-explenatory. mapserver-mapscript and mapserver-cgi would not be.

There already is a seperate postgis mailing list for example, which is
fine beacuse it can be used outside mapserver as well.

>  I love the information
> coming from this group and plan to participate more in the discussions
> eventually

Don't we all? ;)

> , but I'm looking for some way to kind of filter out a lot of
> the noise (no offense meant to anyone!).

I know what you mean. But we all have different definitions of 'noise'.
I, for example, delete every HTML email I get, no matter what the
content is (well I move it to a seperate folder and skim it now and then
before i delete it), for reasons that are my concern only (i do not want
to start a discussion here). Or another thing that drives me mad:
javascript, one of the biggest reasons for security holes in web and
email software these days. In my view it's outright silly to use it, or
to require users to have it turned on. Talking about it is just noise
for me. mapserver-htmlscripting or something would suit my needs it
seems, but it would still cut me off from (maybe vital) discussions. So
I bear it and just delete the stuff.

Also, an additional mailing list also means additional adminnistering
work.

It also means an additional archive for Newbie A to search.

> I use perl mapscript
> exclusively, so the cgi and php discussions are really not of interest
> to me.

I once thought I would only do php mapscript. Then I discovered that the
CGI is far more interesting than I used to think. Then I had to talk to
people who were used to program in perl mapscript.

In both occassions, I was surprised to realize that I already knew more
about the CGI and perl than I thought; it was because I was reading the
mailing list. Can't be too bad a thing, it seems :)

> Just a suggestion :) Thanks for your consideration.

Same :) And now I will have my tea.


hth,

thorsten