RE: Mailing list traffic

[Bjoern Hoehrmann:] 
> * Daniel Glazman wrote:
> >First, nature hates vacuum: turn one list into 4 and we'll end up with
> >four times more traffic to read and digest. Second, co-chairmen of the
> >WG have to digest www-style to work on agendas and I certainly don't
> >want to multiply that work by n. Third, the recent increased traffic in
> >www-style was created by some endless discussions that don't always
> >have an immediate technical value for the standardization work (128
> >messages about "Forums" for instance); in short, this is part of the
> >signal/noise ratio that is inevitable when standardization work like
> >ours happens in public. Create new lists and you'll soon have the same
> >problems there plus the fact people not familiar with us will never
> >know where precisely post a request/comment.
> 
> The suggestion was to start making plans, and the first step there would
> be making an analysis of what's going on to find suitable solutions. 

A solution to what? Success?

> If, for instance, many of the mails are one-liners sent in short intervals,
> that may mean existing real-time chat mechanisms do not work well for some
> participants and we might want to try and fix that. Or there may be a push
> to "finish" certain documents, and it might make sense to split that
> temporarily into a design team-ish list so people can generate what
> traffic they need without them feeling they are flooding www-style. May-
> be there is a need for a CSS Interest Group where people can discuss how
> to improve community-related things without bothering people only inter-
> ested in purely technical aspects. Maybe a lot of traffic is on features
> that will not become relevant in a long time, then it might be a good idea
> to make priorities clearer. Maybe there are common issues that are being
> discussed with respect to many drafts, "what's good syntax" might come to
> mind, where a temporary design team on a separate list might be able to
> offer generic answers to that. Maybe there is simply a whole lot more
> interest in CSS currently than usual and we should simply say to expect
> these traffic levels and adjust their schedules accordingly.
> 
> In any case, the level and the spike here is indicative of a problem.

And what is that 'problem'? A few weeks ago we were told that we needed 
a web forum or this list would die out. Now there is so much traffic we 
need to split the list. Maybe we do need a list for y'all to sort it out.

Received on Friday, 3 February 2012 04:14:42 UTC