is this list still a main thing?

[Abigail]

On Wed, May 20, 2015 at 12:22:45PM -0400, Uri Guttman via yapc wrote:
> On 05/20/2015 10:25 AM, John SJ Anderson via yapc wrote:
>> On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 11:30 PM, Uri Guttman via yapc <yapc at pm.org  
>> <mailto:yapc at pm.org>> wrote:
>>
>>     i am glad the list got some volume finally. i think i saw a
>>     mention that yapc registrants are not automatically added to this
>>     list. 
>>
>>
>> Attendees are no longer automatically added to this list. That was a  
>> decision made based on the overwhelming preference of past attendees.  
>> There is an announcement-only list that people are still added to, but  
>> it is intended for very infrequent usage, involving critical  
>> announcements that really do need to go to everybody attending. (And  
>> before you ask, no, the arrival dinner arrangements don't, IMO,  
>> qualify as "critical".)
>
> bah, humbug! then how is one to communicate with the attendees? the  
> dinner stuff may be the only threads now but in the past there were  
> plenty of yapc related discussions. how would you publicize an event or  
> a bof or discuss some scandalous breaking of rules?


Considering the mailing list is for *all* YAPC::NA's, I can appreciate
the unwillingness to automatically add people to the mailinglist. 
And I don't think running a different mailing list for each YAPC is
a valuable alternative either.

As for the examples you give, announcing events like BOFs that are part
of the conference belong on the conference schedule. Discussing scandalous
breaking of rules should not happen on a public mailing list.

Do realize that for almost anything you want to discuss, most attendees
will not be interested in. Even an arrival dinner with 150 people means
there are more people who won't be there (and the discussion only attracted
a handful of people -- for the majority of the people, a time and place
mentioned on the Wiki will be enough).


>> (Also, as somebody who sees the subscribe/unsubscribe notifications, I  
>> can tell you the frequency of the latter are directly correlated with  
>> the posting volume on the list. Seeing quite a few of them in the past  
>> couple days...)
>
> wow. and those who unsubscribe want to be at yapc with even more noise  
> but less communication?
>
> are yapc attendees really using facebook and twitter vs mail these days?  
> proprietary locked in systems vs an open and free one? yow.


The majority of the people don't care about that, and in practice, this
mailing list is as closed to them as Facebook or Twitter is: just because
the mailing list runs on free software doesn't mean the mailing list is
open to anyone. Except for a few admins, all one can do is subscribe and
post, but that's the same options Facebook and Twitter give you.




Abigail