Spam, bacon, sausage and Spam (was: EuroPython 2020: Data Science Track)

[M.-A. Lemburg]

On 22.07.2020 15:00, Christian Heimes wrote:
> Hi MAL,
> 
> would it be possible to reduce the amount of EuroPython spam on
> @python.org mailing lists to a sensible level? This mailing list is a
> general discussion list for the Python programming language. It's not a
> conference advertisement list.
> 
> Something between 1 to 3 mails per conference and year (!) sounds
> sensible to me. You have posted 21 new threads about EP 2020 since
> January on this list, thereof 5 threads this month. In comparison I
> could only find two ads for other conferences in the last 12 month
> (FlaskCon, PyCon TZ).

Hi Christian,

as you probably know, EuroPython is a community effort, run
entirely by volunteers with no commercial interests. Since
c.l.p, as well as other general purpose Python community lists, are
places where we can reach out to the community we're working for,
it's a natural target for our conference communication.

We are perfectly aware that our emails are not necessarily
interesting for everyone, but then you have the same problem
with many topics on these general purpose mailing lists.
The standard way to approach this is to simply ignore the
postings, filter them out or silence them.

It's obvious from your emails and tweets that you don't like our
emails and that's fair. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
However, we are running the conference for a large community and
so have to compromise between people such as you who don't like
getting our emails and the thousands of people who do.

When you run community events, you have to learn that you can never
make everyone happy - even though we try hard and I believe we
have a good track record of at least making most people happy :-)

Regarding filtering, almost all of our emails carry "EuroPython" in
their subject line and we usually use a europython.eu email
address as sender. In fact, most emails are sent by me, since I the
one in charge of preparing and sending them, so you can easily filter
them out.

In terms of volume, I don't regard the 24 messages I have sent
this year anywhere near a level which can be considered spam
based on volume, given that the list has received 3300+ messages
this year.

Again, you may have a different opinion and that's perfectly fine.
We can agree to disagree on this.

FWIW: I would like to see a lot more conference communication from
the many Python events around the world go to this and other lists.

People new to Python generally have a hard time finding out what's
going on in Python land - one of the reasons I started the Python
events calendar project, for example:

https://www.python.org/events/
https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonEventsCalendar

The Python conferences and meetups are a central part of the Python
community and should get more awareness rather than less.

Thanks,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
EuroPython Society Chair
http://www.europython-society.org/
http://www.malemburg.com/