Announcements-only list

[John Rudd]

Peter Bonivart wrote:
>
> John Rudd wrote:
> > Right, I understand that.  The question is: will announcements still go
> > to this list, or just to the announcements list?  For some projects, the
> > discussion list is subscribed to the announcements list, so
> > announcements go to all.
> >
> > I don't think I can actually think of an arrangement that ISN'T like
> > that.  But the wording of this discussion sounds like it might be the
> > case that announcements wont actually keep going to this list (thus the
> > reason we all need to be subscribed to the announcements list
> > individually).
> >
> > I would prefer to see the (to me) usual method: discussion list is
> > subscribed to announcements list, and those who only want announcements
> > would switch themselves over.  Though, it seems to be a moot point now.
>
> Every user of MS should first subscribe to the announcement list and
> second to the tech list (this one). That's how it's usually done on Clam
> and SA for example.
>
> I don't understand your problem,

Who said anything about having a problem?  I thought this was a
discussion of techniques?

> would it save you subscribing to one
> more list with maybe one post every month? You're already subscribed to
> it so you will not miss anything and it's not like we're not going to
> discuss the new releases here. We always do. ;-)

1) And if someday I, or someone else, decides to leave the community,
they now have to remember 2 unsubscriptions (one of which they may never
have undertaken, so they may not have any specific instructions about
that list in their records, or at least not in the place where they
specifically put those records).  They may not even conciously know
they're on two lists (if, say, they only skim this list right now).
This creates some amount of confusion for the subscriber which can be
avoided by the technique I mentioned.

2) What about people who use mail sorting filters (such as procmail) to
divert messages into different folders?  For some (like me) unexpected
messages are handled in a special way.  For example, the announcement of
the new list went into my "might be spam" folder.  If this was at home
(where I'm much more agressive about this) instead of at work, procmail
would have put it into my "awl-blacklist this un-solicitied list
subscription" folder, and I might have never noticed it.  I wouldn't
know that I was subscribed to that list, but it would have been (very
slightly, but still there) wasting my bandwidth.  And eventually, it may
have been picked up by my "too many tries from a awl-blacklisted site"
process and blocked in my sendmail access list.  Which would have then
caused other headaches (bounces for Julian, I would stop receiving a
list I _did_ want, etc.).

Given the choice, the more I thought about it, I would have preferred to
see the tech list be subscribed to the announcements list, and had that
be the mechanism for getting announcements to both groups of people.
But, like I said, it's moot at this point.  I'm not complaining, I'm
just saying, I think that technique would have been better.