[WindyCity-pm] [Chicago-talk] The bummer of split lists

[Mike Fragassi]

I've got to agree that the list splitting was not a good idea. (Among 
other things, no one told me about the new list for a while; I saw no 
public posting of the list's creation to Chicago-talk.  I still don't 
see anything like that; while newcomers have been turning up on 
Chicago-talk, are they subscribing to WindyCity-pm?)  But then I also 
don't like having separate *-announce lists in the first place.  It 
would be one thing if the list had the traffic of perl5-porters, long 
inane threads with no relevance to Perl, or trolling problems, but we 
don't.  (Except for the occasional meta thread, like this.)

In any case, as an example of the problem with multiple lists, some of 
the posts about the forthcoming hackathon are only getting sent to 
WindyCity-pm instead of Chicago-talk, which is a bad idea since a 
hackathon would concern more than just the people downtown.  I suppose 
it beats multiple copies of each email for those of us subscribed to 
both, but it should be all on a single general unmoderated list that 
covers the whole area, which seems to be Chicago-talk. (I mean, no one 
actually has approval/rejection power for posts on Chicago-talk, right?)

My preferred solutions would be one of the following:

1. "WindyCity-pm" list should be strictly for downtown announcements, in 
which case it would be better off rechristened WindyCity-announce for 
clarity.  Talk planning for forthcoming downtown events (hackathon, 
Stonehenge classes, etc.) should be kept on the Chicago-talk list until 
an actual announcement is ready.  Whether WindyCity-announce is open or 
has a moderator granting approval doesn't matter much unless the list 
starts to be abused.

2. One Big List.  You yourself indicate announcements by slapping 
[ANNOUNCE] to the start of the Subject: when you mail.  No gatekeeping. 
People who don't like chatter are offered a hand with email filtering 
recipes.

-- Mike F.