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

[Jeff Lightner]

Your statistics are apt to be flawed because many of the on topic posts
end up becoming off topic and the off topic nature of the subsequent
posts in a thread isn't clear from the subject.  Searching by subject
would not reveal that.

I also disagree with the "foredrawn conclusion".  While it was clear
that Jerald obviously was in favor of splitting the list he DID raise it
as a question rather than simply stating "here's what we're going to do
so live with it".  

Again I mention that I am against splitting the list.  

It is not clear to me however why simply discussing the idea should
bring such vitriol and suggestions of background scheming.  It is one
thing to be for or against an idea but quite another to attack the
presenter of the idea rather than discuss the merits or lack thereof of
the idea.  I doubt Jerald intended to hijack the list and I certainly
didn't when I brought it up at AUUG and noted it here.  As noted in a
prior post my questions at AUUG were impromptu and occurred to me only
because of this thread and the fact we had just been discussing Linux
things at AUUG.   

Luckily this morning James Kinney has agreed to come back.  Hopefully
Jerald will as well.  Even if we don't all agree one would hope we could
all have meaningful discussions from time to time.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
To: ale at ale.org
aaron
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 3:29 AM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] New Mailing List ... the thread that wouldn't
die(because it is relevant & important)

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




 


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