Shall we split this list into discussion vs. hackspace-org?

[Martin Dittus]

Hey,

Do people think it would make sense to split this list? E.g.:
- lhs-org: anything relating to the space itself, the organisation, the tools, membership questions, etc
- lhs-discuss: member projects, requests for help/advice, chatter

We started an infrastructure list a long time ago which is essentially unused; maybe because it is a bit too specific, but also because we had much less traffic on the main list back then.

Otoh there's now much more project chatter and random discussion, and it would be nice to give those discussions a bit more space.

m.

[Peter "Sci" Turpin]

I still think the infrastructure list should be an automatic
subscription for all members, a requirement of membership. Then use it
for putting out the official updates, schedules and such. Like a newsletter.

[Martin Dittus]

There's an "announce" list for announcements. I like the idea of automatically subscribing members to that list; although it seems atm nobody actively posts there either.

m.

[SamLR]

I would say that if members are going to be auto-subscribed to anything it should be the announce list as, IIRC, it's set up so only a few people can post. It can then become the canonical decision location. i.e. any discussion from here can be summarised and cross-posted. This would make the announce list both an excellent location for news but also allow it to act as a sort of archive for important decisions. 

S

[Jasper Wallace]

On Sun, 7 Oct 2012, Martin Dittus wrote:

> Hey,
>
> Do people think it would make sense to split this list? E.g.:
> - lhs-org: anything relating to the space itself, the organisation, the tools, membership questions, etc
> - lhs-discuss: member projects, requests for help/advice, chatter

I've been on projects before where we've tried to do fine grained mailing
lists and it hasn't really worked - people don't really understand which
list they should post to and most things just end up on the main list.

It does work (ish) if you have very specific lists I would suggest:

------------------------------------------------

lhs-jobs:

This list is for posting available jobs or people looking for work. If you
are posting about a job please include:

* Where it is.
* When it will start and end.
* Any compensation offered.
* Technologies and skills desired.

If you are looking for work please post:

* Where you are prepared to travel to.
* What your availability is.
* Rates, if relevent
* skills and links to testimonals and example projects that you have
completed in the past.

------------------------------------------------

lhs-for-sale-or-swap:

This list is for hackspace members to advertise items they wish to sell or
dispose of, or to for people who are looking for particular items.

------------------------------------------------

The reason for prefering a mailing list to the wiki is that mailing lists
are more time orientated - the wiki tends to fill with out of date junk...

> We started an infrastructure list a long time ago which is essentially
> unused; maybe because it is a bit too specific, but also because we had
> much less traffic on the main list back then.

There's only a few people doing infrastructure stuff (mostly the kitchen)
and they just meet face to face in the space afaict.

> Otoh there's now much more project chatter and random discussion, and it
> would be nice to give those discussions a bit more space.

I think we need to be more disiplined about how we use the list, in
particular:

If you are asking for a show of interest in something ask people replying
to reply directly to you rather than to the list - a "+1" sent to the list
does NOT contain any useful information for the several thousand people
who will read it!

--
[http://pointless.net/] [0x2ECA0975]

[Big Will]

I'd prefer one list to check, with a variety of different types of posts.

The current system doesn't feel broken, just a few people are antagonising each other regularly - make a new list for that lhs-flamewars by all means.

[Russ Garrett]

Incoherent thoughts:

Yes, I agree that "org" is a difficult distinction to make, I don't
think we can successfully split that from everything else.

Getting job/skills offers off this list would be nice, but I suspect
splitting them out onto separate lists will simply kill their utility,
because nobody will subscribe. One possibility here is just to ban job
offers on the list outright. Another possibility is to condense all
these into a digest, and send that to everyone (basically what I'm
talking about is resurrecting the news email).

One possibility for "announce" is to have an email alias which
automatically goes to all subscribed members.

Russ

--
Russ Garrett
ru...@garrett.co.uk

[Benjamin Blundell]

Job offers are handy (think there is one Im interesting actually) but
this is served well by the wiki so +1 to off the list.

[Aden]

While I'd like 2 lists, things that are relevant to my interests, and
things that are not relevant to my interests, this is never going to
be the case and I'd have to subscribe to all the lists anyway.

We could ban job adverts if lots of people find them annoying
(although I think they are beneficial to the space) and recommend
people post to uknot-jobs. I don't want to have to subscribe to more
mailing lists, or keep refreshing the wiki page.

Aden

[Peter "Sci" Turpin]

And seeing what emails bounce would be helpful too, let the trustees
know when a member is no longer individually contactable (something for
safeties sake I think members should be).

On 07/10/2012 15:16, SamLR wrote:
> I would say that if members are going to be auto-subscribed to anything
> it should be the announce list as, IIRC, it's set up so only a few
> people can post. It can then become the canonical decision location.
> i.e. any discussion from here can be summarised and cross-posted. This
> would make the announce list both an excellent location for news but
> also allow it to act as a sort of archive for important decisions.
>
> S
>
> On 7 October 2012 15:08, Martin Dittus <dek...@gmail.com

[Andrew Black]

I find the "main" list far too busy. THe main things that would improve it to me is
- use the announce list. I have missed announcements of events I would have found interestting
- create a sep list for workshop related stuff. - I am not very interested in the state of various power tools.
- create a list for software topics.

[Russ Garrett]

On 8 October 2012 22:02, Andrew Black <andrew...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> I find the "main" list far too busy. THe main things that would improve it
> to me is
> - use the announce list. I have missed announcements of events I would have
> found interestting

Yes, I think reviving the weekly news would be the best improvement we
could do currently. But we do need someone to do it reliably.

--
Russ Garrett
ru...@garrett.co.uk

[Peter "Sci" Turpin]

If we sub-divide communication more than a couple of ways, frankly what
we'd need is a forum and not a mailing list.

Announce list for official rulings/decisions/upcoming official stuffs.

[Martin Dittus]

Absolutely.

The trouble with the announce list was a lack of people with time to maintain it.

Suggestions welcome.

m.

[SamLR]

The best solution I can think of is this: 

Create a tag ('ANNOUNCE') that you can add to the subject line of any email going to the main list, the  message then gets forwarded to the annonce list where it can either be allowed or rejected (with a page of rules as to what should be allowed). 

The main advantage of this is that it reduces the curator ship of the announce list to decided whether a message needs to be on that list and then either allowing or rejecting it.

oh, and before I hear "well volunteered" I have no idea or time to implement this but this is the simplest solution I can think of that's not "have someone write up a news list" which I think we have established doesn't work. 

S

[Martin Dittus]

Alternatively we could simply invite people to email the list directly, and have that be moderated.

But how do we then decide what gets posted? Is it enough to have a (small? large?) group of moderators, each deciding independently? Would that mean that as the moderator group grows we would more and more tend to let things through, because someone will always pull the trigger? Would that be a problem?

m.

[Adrian Godwin]

If it needed a lot of moderators it would be because it was getting a
lot of postings, which would mean it had failed as a low-volume list.
If one moderator can't keep up, it's too busy.

-adrian

[Martin Dittus]

Do we have volunteers to moderate the announce list?

m.

[SamLR]

I don't mind helping moderate if we can come up with a clear set of rules as to what is valid material

My proposals:

• New meetings/workshops/outings (e.g. "navel fluff appreciation group: Sundays, 01:00-01:01")
• Special one-off sessions (e.g. "the Biohackers are having God as a guest speaker")
• Major space changes (e.g. "the space is now in siberia" or "the wood pile is now limited to a single piece of 2x4")
• Rules/Safety announcements (e.g. "the rage saw is now sentient and desires only blood, do not use")
• Pledges (e.g. "need £100m to buy aircraft carrier")
• Devotionals to our Glorious Leader (e.g. "All hail, ai ai f'htagn!")

I expect given these you'd see about one post every other day (based on a quick count of 'passing' posts from  23rd Sept -> 30th Sept).

This obviously depends on people forwarding stuff to the announce list which may be tricky in long discussions that lead to decisions (e.g. wording for new rules etc) but that shouldn't be too bad

Thoughts?

S

[Dario]

I for one, second all suggestions and would like to register interest for all the aforementioned topics, specifically in the "navel fluff appreciation group" (I've got a great collection) and the 100M£ for the aircraft carrier, that should easily cover the expansion needs of the Space! ;-)