[boston-lisp] merge boston-lisp-announce list into boston-lisp list?

[Neil Van Dyke]

Please let me know if you have any comments on the goodness of merging 
the "boston-lisp-announce at neilvandyke.org" list that I maintain into 
"boston-lisp at common-lisp.net" list (or perhaps into a 
"boston-lisp-announce at common-lisp.net" list).

You may wish to email me privately.  Any replies will *not* go through 
to the moderated "boston-lisp-announce" list, anyway.

More info follows...

"boston-lisp-announce" (originally called something else, a bad pun) was 
intended to reach the largest number of Boston-area Lisp 
(CL/Scheme/etc.) users, for announcements of things like meetings of 
Boston-area Lispers, highly relevant talks in the Boston area, and 
Boston-area job postings involving Lisp.

When I created the list, I had a suspicion that many of the Lispers we 
most wanted to attract were highly averse to being on email discussion 
lists, and to spam, so I promised that "boston-lisp-announce" would be 
very-low-traffic and heavily moderated.  I also adopted a policy of no 
member listing and no message archives, for those people who want to 
keep a low profile for themself or their startup company, or who just 
think that might help keep their address away from spammers and headhunters.

When Boston Lisp Meeting started up, I think that "boston-lisp-announce" 
helped jumpstart participation in that, by reaching a fairly up-to-date 
and focused list of relevant people.  (Around that time, 
"boston-lisp at common-lisp.net", or wherever it was hosted at the time, 
was effectively dead, as far as I recall.)

Given that Boston Lisp Meeting announcements have seemed to constitute 
most of the traffic on "boston-lisp-announce" in recent years, and that 
"boston-lisp" seems to be the de facto list for post-Fare Boston Lisp 
Meeting, as well as me realizing that a primo list of Lispers exists 
nowhere other than my little personal Web site hosting account (the 
continued existence of which is contingent on me not getting hit by an 
MBTA bus)... I'm leaning towards talking with the "@common-lisp.net" 
people about merging "boston-lisp-announce" into their stuff.

I'm asking here on "boston-lisp-announce" first and foremost to see 
whether there are any objections to merging at this time.  I did make 
some guarantees as to how the list would behave, and I will honor those 
guarantees unless there are no objections.

Or perhaps people would conditionally accept the idea of moving the 
list, so long as it becomes "boston-lisp-announce at common-lisp.net" with 
the same guarantees as "boston-lisp-announce at neilvandyke.org".  (I 
suggest speaking only for your own interest here, not speculating on 
others', since everyone affected should receive this same message and 
can speak for themselves.)

I'm CC-ing "boston-lisp" in case anyone there has ideas on how to best 
handle a currently-hypothetical merging of lists.

All this said, if anyone would like me to continue to host and moderate 
"boston-lisp-announce at neilvandyke.org", with the same guarantees as 
always, I am happy to do so.  Modulo any unfortunate MBTA incidents.

Thanks,
Neil V.

-- 
http://www.neilvandyke.org/