Hi Yusuf,
On 01/11/2016 02:11 PM, Yusuf Satar wrote:
>
> The purpose of a mailing list is two-fold:
> - Group people sharing a common interest, allowing them to communicate
> and share ideas, and to prepare a common course of action.
> - Serve as a newsletter, to allow people to keep informed. Whether or
> not they contribute is irrelevant:
> + If they do not contribute, at least they will be informed about
> Mauritius Internet Issues – thus MIU is useful to them
> + They may at some point come across an issue whereby they can help
> or they feel concerned and their input may be extremely valuable – more
> than the cost of preserving their membership (the costs of sending an
> email are minimal)
>
You have a strong point, but, as Mauritius Internet Users considered
having a group of people working for the advancement of internet in
Mauritius, I was somehow more in favour of having people who contribute,
rather than having readers. In my opinion, MIU is not just another
mailing list. Nothing prevents people from reading the mailing list
archives regularly. In fact, it's one of the purpose, to allow
non-subscribers stay informed of internet-related activities in Mauritius.
I may argue, that at some point if a non-subscriber wants to contribute
to a specific topic, he/she could send an email to the mailing list. The
appearance of the email to the list is subject to approval. There are
emails on the list that non-subscribers sent & they appear.
> One of the biggest, if not THE biggest mailing list, is LKML [1] - the
> Linux Kernel Mailing List, consisting of the Linux Kernel Development
> team. However anyone can join (at their own risk, since it is a very
> high traffic mailing list), irrespective of their ability or rate of
> contribution.
>
Yes, LKML is a high volume mailing list and precisely that is why it
can't be moderated as the Mauritius Internet Users ML. Your suggestion
could be effective if we received hundreds of useful emails from
non-subscribers on a weekly basis. At the moment, I suggest we keep it
strict.
> Thus I strongly disapprove of the idea of cleansing the mailing list
> from non-participating users.
>
It becomes difficult to quantify the size of the group with inactive
subscribers. Otherwise, we might say we're a group of 500 people with 5
active participants.
> It makes sense however, whenever there are activities that a task force
> be formed from the active users – given circumstances and availability
> of seats.
>
This will be a fair thing to do. I agree.
>
> Perhaps a better alternative would be to invite non-active users to
> renew their subscription once a year.
>
This is a nice suggestion. Even if I was in favour of having something
formalized to let subscribers know they're being removed from the list,
I find this suggestion & argument more constructive.
Regards,
--
Ish Sookun
I drink coffee & manage Linux servers
for lexpress.mu.
Received on Mon Jan 11 2016 - 11:37:55 PST