[ale] New Mailing List ... the thread that wouldn't die (because it is relevant & important)

[aaron]

On Tuesday 03 October 2006 09:23, Jeff Lightner wrote:
> FYI.  
> Last night I went to AUUG (Atlanta Unix Users' Group) and just for the
> heck of it asked if anyone was on the ale list as they discuss Linux a
> lot during the pre-session.  One person said he was but only grudgingly.
> I then asked how many had heard of the ale list and several hands shot
> up.  Finally I asked how many had unsubscribed due to OT posts and most
> of the same hands stayed up.
> 
> From that informal poll it does seem that many professional SysAdmins do
> tend to stay away from the list even if they are doing Linux
> administration and Jerald was expressing a valid concern when he brought
> this subject up.

This may seem a little moot after Jerald's most recent response to the mailing 
list thread, but I had started this message before he posted and maybe it 
needs to be said in the hopes that it might help smooth some ruffled 
feathers.

I'm not sure anyone was [ever] suggesting that the traffic volume concerns 
about the [ale] list were invalid, only that they involved a segment of the 
community and not the entirety. The hundreds of folks who ARE signed up to 
this list must be comfortable with the content and volume or they wouldn't be 
here. Not surprisingly, there has been a lot of justifiable questioning and 
opposition to the idea of moderating _this_ list, especially since the 
moderation topic was initially presented in the distinct tone of being a 
foredrawn conclusion decided by an unknown cadre of insiders without any
open discussion or debate within the community.  (-: I'll stay on topic here 
and skip the obvious corelations to the world at large. :-)

Jeff Hubbs summed it up well in his last couple messages, but the point is 
that the opinion polls about OT at selected meetings of sysadmins are slanted 
in the way they are presentation and, at best, will only reflect what your 
average sysadmin is going to consider as OT, which will probably include 
anything that doesn't involve server configuration and system administration. 
That definition, like the unwelcome moderation, has never been what the ALE 
list is about, at least for the 6 or more years that I have been a 
contributing part of both the list and the group.

As part of my participation in ALE I have collected an archive of almost all 
of the [ale] messages from the past 4 years, with the exception of some of 
the totally off-topic Windoze related messages that I occasionally dump in 
the bit bucket.  Prodded by the "New List" discussions, I did a little crude 
statistical evaluation of that archive based on From: and Subject:. I think 
the results are interesting:

-- I show a total of 39,853 messages in my 49 months of archive, an average of
about 814 messages per month.

-- Of those messages, roughly 10% (4,172) were Subject noted as "[OT]" or
"OT:"  (either case and including labels like semiOT: etc.). I'm not 
suggesting that all of our OT messages get properly tagged as such, but it 
has been the consistent rule far more than the exception.  Even when 
evaluated at a glance, the clear majority of the [ale] "OT" subject lines 
have considerable relevance to technical issues, programming questions, 
hardware purchasing help, service provider critiques and so on. While this is 
not a formal parsing of the message content, the indications based on Subject 
lines are that messages of a truly Off Topic, irrelevant or non-technical 
nature might make up 3% of the traffic on this list at most, and that number 
may be a stretch if one doesn't include the broken Windoze related posts.

-- Evaluating the _sources_ of our list traffic was also very revealing. I 
only did a count on a few of the most obviously frequent "From:" names, but 
the top two are a certainty:
	The #1 trafficker is Geoffrey, who shows up as the most prolific poster to 
the [ale] list with 3,268, a number which beat out the second place contender 
by more than 1,000 messages! This means that Geoffrey is single handedly 
responsible for about 9% of this list's traffic, with a number that rivals 
the total number of OT posts!  (-: Since, according to his latest comments on 
this thread, he still seems determined to have this list moderated, the axiom 
"Physician heal thyself!" comes to mind. :-) 
	Coming in at a lagging but significant #2 is James P. Kinney III, with 2,092 
messages accounting for a little more than 5% of the total list traffic. 
Arguing that we maintain an unmoderated list may buy him a little slack, but 
it may be appropriate timing that James is volunteering to take on hosting of 
ALE's internet resources for free! 
	Jim Popovitch contributes a lot to the list traffic and may fall in the third 
place slot with 851 total messages, just over 2% of the total, but the new 
kid on the block, King Bahamut,  is rising toward King of the mountain.
	 King Bahamut has only been with us for about 4 months, but extrapolating
his 108 message count against the monthly average, he would have handily taken 
third place and 3% of the total list traffic had he been posting since 2002.
	In fairness I also looked at my own message count, and "Aaron" came in at 
423. While this not an insignificant number, it is quite possible that this 
won't even place me in the top 20.

So all of the stats should help make it clear that there are no weapons of 
mass destruction or mass distraction here. However, acknowledging this 
doesn't diminish the validity of the sysadmin polls within their context: the 
needs of some fellow Linux enthusiasts are not being well met by the current, 
single list offering. I think everyone here is fully in favor of ALE being as 
inclusive to all of our community's diverse special interests as possible, so 
the solution of adding a more focused [ale-tech] list, and any other specific 
sub-lists we may need, are about as obvious, effective and unobtrusive a way 
to achieve inclusiveness as is possible.

Finally, I know, as geeks, we feel it our duty to complicate and obfuscate the 
mundane, but I think we would be much better off with the KISS approach to 
our group mailing lists; we don't need loop back routing or reverse 
forwarding or topical filtering or twiddle bit moderating or access 
re-automation to accomplish the inclusiveness goal. We especially don't need 
the list management process to be on calorie more work for the admin 
volunteers than it needs to be.

I'm promising this to be my last comment on this thread before it starts to 
compete with all the seasonal OT H1B Outsourcing message floods we all know 
and love (-; and before I start to creep into the top 20 posters club. ;-)

peace
aaron