[Baypiggies] Fwd: Request to mailing list Baypiggies rejected

[Ken Seehart]

Russell Whitaker wrote:
> On 1/10/07, Aahz <aahz at pythoncraft.com> wrote:
>   
>> On Wed, Jan 10, 2007, Russell Whitaker wrote:
>>     
>>> So, the listowner has made the decision that cross-posting to other
>>> lists is not permitted then?
>>>
>>> Look, I'm trying to get something going that involves both the
>>> capabilities security community and the Python community.  This is
>>> related to a specific attempt to assist both.  This rejection seems a
>>> bit hidebound and unnecessary to me.
>>>       
>> The problem -- as I already said -- is that cross-posting between mailing
>> lists means that the people who reply to your messages will get caught by
>> the requirement to be a list subscriber in order for their messages to be
>> seen.  (This requirement courtesy of spam.)  It just doesn't work unless
>> a large proportion of people are already on both mailing lists -- and
>> even then it can be irritating as people get multiple copies of messages.
>>
>> There are two reasonably good ways to handle this:
>>
>> * If the topic is particularly relevant to one mailing list, send an
>> invitation to the other mailing list(s) inviting them to subscribe
>>
>>     
>
> This is unnecessary and cumbersome.
>
>   
>> * If the topic doesn't have a good home, create a new mailing list and
>> invite everyone to join
>>     
>
> In this case, also unnecessary and cumbersome.
>
> OK, if this is the case, then I'm going to scale back my efforts on the part
> of BayPIGgies, and put my efforts elsewhere with less overhead.  Thanks
> for validating my impressions.
>
>   

I agree with both of you.

Unfortunately sometimes in a systems design situation (which this really 
is) there are multiple
factors that determine whether a particular approach will work well.  
When multiple people are
involved, this often results in a religious war because most people are 
only capable of seeing
one factor at a time, and consider that one factor to be some kind of 
absolute commandment
handed down by God.

Yes, cross-posting is clearly evil, since it has the potential to cause 
someone a certain amount
of inconvenience in certain situations.  Also, cross-posting is often 
done by evil spammers just
to maximize their audience.

So one question is whether or not there are reasonable alternatives that 
are not unnecessary
and cumbersome.  Both suggested alternatives are arguably more 
cumbersome than cross
posting, and did not take into account the intention of the cross-poster.

The announcement was regarding a potential talk at BayPiggies about 
Security.  Inviting the
Security community to join BayPiggies so that they can see a message 
suggesting a talk about
security won't work because the target Security audience should need to 
join BayPiggies.  On
the other hand, inviting the BayPiggies community to join the security 
list so that they can see
the same announcement would be equally strange.  The suggestion of 
creating a new list for
people who are interested in python security in the Bay Area is even 
more strange (yes, I
believe that was what Aahz was implicitly suggesting).

So, it would seem to me that there are certain situations where, 
although entirely evil, cross
posting is the best known solution.  I don't think that there is a 
general consensus that all
cross posting is bad.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossposting

I am not necessarily attached to the idea of allowing cross posting, but 
if cross posting is not
to be allowed, it would be helpful to have suggestions of alternatives 
that are actually superior
to cross posting.  Such ideas should be oriented toward solving 
problems, rather than just
eradicating evil (I wonder if this has anything to do with world 
peace).  Any ideas?

- Ken Seehart


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