[META-SIG] whence db-sig?

[Ken Manheimer]

On Mon, 28 Jul 1997, Greg Stein wrote:

> Moving questions to the main python list is better than leaving them on
> the sig. On the list, there is a broader audience, the PR aspect of the
> perception of more traffic/involvement, the list is

I am not sure, but i have a strong impression that answers about special
topics are more forthcoming when questions are posed to a relevant sig
than when they are posed to the newsgroup at large.  This impression
gets more solid when thinking about, eg, numerical math oriented
questions posed to the matrix-sig.

> perception of more traffic/involvement, the list is
> archived/indexed/queryable through any number of sources (can't use
> DejaNews against db-sig!), etc.

Granted that dejanews won't hit it, but there are the pipermail archives
for the sigs.  You could see the segregation as a benefit.  I'm not
sure, here. 

> Just because a list is cheap to maintain, doesn't mean it should be
> maintained. The presence of the list introduces a certain type of
> "noise" in the Python community.

I see clear benefit in retaining artifacts of retired sigs like the
email archive and the web contents.  I also see a clear benefit in
clearly distinguishing retired sigs - segregating the entries for them
from the list of active sigs, and clearly registering on the retired sig
web pages that it is no longer active.  Do we all agree on this?

The question then, for me, is what we want to do with the sig members
and email traffic.  I can see a few reasonable dispositions:

 1 Put it out to pasture! Close down the email list, with an auto- 
   responder indicating that questions and comments should be sent to
   the newsgroup (or a newsgroup, if the python newsgroup splits).

 2 Let the sig hang around and kibbitz.  Clearly mark it as
   retired, but retain the email list and let the members unsubscribe
   themselves or not (and even let new members join), and field
   questions and residual maintenance of the sig business.

(It also occurs to me that we could have an auto-responder but also keep
the email distribution active, but i think that really amounts to (1)
with some finagling.)

I like 2.  I could almost be convinced of 1 because keeping a retired
sig's distribution active "muddies the waters" - diluting the
concentration of information in the main newsgroup - but then i think
that active sigs do just that, yet that's what active sigs are for.  It
*would* be bad if a retired sig appeared to be a useful channel for info
but actually had no subscribers.  To cover that, we could put auto
responders in gear whenver there are less than, say, 10 subscribers. 

In fact, my ultimate proposal is to let the sig's manager decide whether
they want the sig to continue.  If they say no, and noone steps forward
to take it over, then certainly it should be closed for correspondance.

Ken


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