LI traffic and a proposal

[Atul Chitnis <achitnis@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

All:

This past one month has been a tremendous one for Linux India, and it is
being reflected in the LI mailing list - in 30 days, we had 3000 messages,
averaging exactly 100 messages a day.

It has also become painfully apparent that the list is going out of
control. The Signal to Noise Ratio is dropping seriously. People are
complaining about overflowing mailboxes with little content.

In the past, we have attempted to split LI's list into more focussed ones,
but this attempt failed for an obvious reason - as long as one could post
to the main LI list, people saw little reason to post elsewhere.

I therefore have the following proposal:

1. Make the main LI list a read-only announcement-only list, used for
   posting LI organisational news, briefs, FAQs, summaries, etc.

2. Create several new lists, making sure that the names are descriptive   
   enough to ensure that people post to the right list. Suggestions are 
   linux-india-technical, linux-india-business, linux-india-advocacy, etc.

3. Bring the "other" lists (such as linux-india-programming) into the fold
   of lists.linux-india.org.

Now before you dismiss the idea outright, consider the following:

- LI has grown in size and stature, and is no longer just a mailing list.

- More and more corporates are paying attention to LI because of Linux's
  growth in importance.

- A confused bunch of messages with a bad SNR is going to put off more and
  more people.

- It is important that people find answers quickly and know where to find
  them.

- Our listadmin Thaths is going to commit harakiri at some point... ;-)

There are lots of other good reasons I can think of, but let's first of
all hear what the others have to say.

One request - treat this seriously. In the past, I have seen several 
proposals being shot down with a quick, off-the-hip, flippant reply,
possibly meant to sound funny, but effectively killing the proposal.

Before you aim your flame-throwers at me, think about what's good for LI
before you use "but it has always been like this, why change" logic.

Keep in mind that Linux India is no longer a small little mailing list.
The combined strength of linux-india and linux-india-digest is more than
800 members now, and it is growing rapidly.

But apart from that, the growing stature of both Linux and Linux India has
resulted in Linux India being the de facto body guiding the growth of
Linux in India. 

The splitting and refocussing of the mailing list is just one of the
things we need to do. But we will discuss those later.

As KD said at the end of Bangalore IT.COM - "What have we done? We turned
the mailing list into an organisation!"

Atul

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Atul Chitnis       | achitnis@xxxxxxxxxxx (PGP:6011BCB8)
Exocore Consulting | http://www.exocore.com
Bangalore, India   | +91(80)3440397 Fax +91(80)3341137
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