[Leaplist] Fwd: Re: Can kids volunteer for install fest on Saturday?

[John Simpson]

On 2008-02-29, at 2130, Gavin Baker wrote:
>
> If I'm already on this list, is there a reason why I should need to  
> join
> a separate list to receive event announcements?

because the announcements aren't sent to this list?

which itself is because not everybody who's on this list, needs or  
wants to read those announcements. although it could be argued that if  
the announcements were also sent to this list, they wouldn't be  
totally un-welcome either...


> There's no harm in having separate discussion / announcement lists  
> -- it
> can actually be good, for people who prefer low traffic. But
> announcements should be posted to both; if I'm on the discuss list,  
> I'll
> get announcements there without having to join another list.

that can be a topic for discussion... maybe the announcements SHOULD  
be sent to both lists. does anybody else have an opinion about this,  
one way or the other? does anybody even CARE enough about it to have  
an opinion?


> Also, I find the announce list pretty useless. The subject lines are
> utterly non-informative, and the email body similarly contains no real
> information. There's no reason all the necessary information of an  
> event
> shouldn't be in the email, so it's all in one place. (It's bad to
> presume the reader already knows where/when the event is, and it's  
> also
> bad to make them check the Web site to find out.) And personally, I
> don't want to receive 4 emails reminding me of the same event; one
> email, a day or two before the event, is sufficient. I would expect  
> most
> people are this way: of all the other mailing lists I read, no other
> posts 4 reminders, one day after the other, for the same event.

it shouldn't be too difficult to change the content and/or timing of  
the messages... personally, i think seven days out, and then two days  
out, should be enough.

although i also have to ask, how hard is it to add "first saturday of  
every month" to whatever calendar you're using- even if it's a paper  
calendar hanging on the wall?


> | Do you think we need more? If so, what would you suggest in addition
> to that?
>
> Besides making the announcements informative and posting them here:
> * An RSS feed for announcements

i have a "-announce" list for my qmail combined patch. the web  
interface i'm using with that has a feature to automatically provide  
an RSS feed of the list. the version of mailman which is being used  
for the LEAP list apparently doesn't have it installed, but there is a  
patch which will make mailman generate an RSS feed.

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2003Feb/0047.html

i just looked at the patch- it won't work correctly as-is (it has  
"2002-December" as a hard-coded directory element in the URL, which  
would need to be changed to the year and month of the message itself)  
but it shouldn't be hard for somebody who speaks python to make it work.

unfortunately there's nothing within the messages themselves which  
will give you the URL of where that message ends up in the archives,  
otherwise i would have written a "mailing list to RSS" script already.  
it is possible to do, but it would require that the messages contain a  
"serial number" of some kind, and that it be possible to turn that  
"serial number" into the URL of that message in the archives. the  
other option would be to set up my own web archive of the list, so  
that i know the URL for each message, but i figure it makes more sense  
for phil to install the mailman patch than it does to duplicate the  
archives.


--------------------------------------------------------
| John M. Simpson  --  KG4ZOW  --  Programmer At Large |
| http://www.jms1.net/                 <jms1 at jms1.net> |
--------------------------------------------------------
|   Hope for America  --  http://www.ronpaul2008.com/  |
--------------------------------------------------------





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