[META-SIG] Terminating comatose SIGs

[Guido van Rossum]

I went through the various SIG archives, mostly at Findmail, and the
following sigs are clearly in coma (and have been for a long time).  I
think that comatose SIGs don't serve any purpose, and that these SIG
mailing lists should be terminated.  Their archives should be saved,
of course.

Here are the numbers of messages since August:

c++-sig (2 in Aug, 1 in Oct, 7 in Nov -- of which 2 spams and one
         reply to a spam)

locator-sig (0 in Aug-Oct, 1 in Nov, 6 in Dec)

objc-sig (0 in Aug, 8 in Sep, 4 in Oct, 2 in Dec)

pattern-sig (5 in Aug, 4 in Oct)

plot-sig (38 in Sep, 12 in Oct, 10 in Nov, 2 in Dec)

progenv-sig (2 in Aug, 1 in Nov, 1 in Dec)

thread-sig (2 in Aug, 19 in Sep, 9 in Nov, 2 in Dec)

web-sig (1 in Aug, 0 since)

With these traffic levels, you can't maintain that there is an
interest that warrants a separate SIG -- people interested in these
subjects are better off using the main list, where they are more
likely to reach other individuals with the same interests.

One could argue that there's still hope for the plot-sig and
thread-sig. Still, the trend is unmistakable -- they can be given an
extension of three months to get their act together.

I also really like Paul Prescod's idea for the proposed SGML SIG: a
fixed expiration time of 6 month, after which it is killed
automatically unless there's a proven interest to continue.  This
should be done for all SIGs, including the currently successful ones.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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