Off Topic Posts

[greg andruk]

On Fri, 11 Feb 2000, Gene Chiaramonte wrote:

> All good points. I have several filters in place already, but many messages
> still slip through.

Right, a killfile on the Usenet side is going to be of limited value
because there is a stream of new people bringing up the same old tired
arguments.  On the mailing list side, it's easier for procmail to find the
offending topics in the message bodies, but even that is prone to missing
unwanted material and squelching things worth reading.

> I am suggesting that python-list be split into 2 lists. One for specific
> python programming questions, and another list for python language opinions
> and comments.

I'm not sure it would help too much to split the list side.  The random
noise tends to slip in on the Usenet side, and so an addition on that end
(say, comp.lang.python.advocacy) might (or might not) make sense.

I say might not make sense, because *.advocacy groups seem to work best
when a language or operating system's own community has a heavy contingent
of evangelists who will sustain it.  I don't see very much overt Python
evangelism around here, more that there are some strong
defenders/apologists who chime in when evangelism from elsewhere appears.

To put it another way, an *.advocacy group would only be successful if
there was strong agreement among the Python community that all such
arguments should be dragged off there [and that there ramains a good
understanding of the difference between "productive" language comparisons
and mine-is-better-than-yours], and that members of the Python community
would want to participate in such a group.  It won't work if it's merely a
dumping ground analogous to alt.dev.null.

Also, the list/newsgroup gateway would make activities like setting
followups/reply-to the other forum a bit awkward.  Not sure how important
that would be in practice, but it shouldn't be ignored.