::scrTodays brane juice

[Richard Clamp]

Going to get to Paul's mail in a bit.  This is stuff I've said today,
by vibrating meat about, so here's an edit of some of it.

a) What is the itch we're scratching here?

Clearly defining this is the hard work, and once we can define a set
of problems to address we can throw solutions at them and get a feel
for what seems to work.  Gah, me looking for a process, kill me now :)


b) A case study/verbal thingy I don't remeber the proper word for

Back in the day there was a list - development@tw2.com.  Actually,
tell a lie, it wasn't a list, it was a mail alias - there were so few
of us.

If anyone had anything to say to all the developers they just mailed
the list, so it became the announcements list, and the off-topic
list, all in one big ball.

Move forward in time.  This becomes 20 people, then 30.  This
generates enough badly-formatted traffic to keep everyone busy, and
it's still a mix of important announcements and drivel.  

A few people complained mostly that important stuff was getting lost
in the bandwidth, so we forked an off-topic list.  Anyone posting
ot-content on the original list got slapped about.

Of course, within two or three days everyone was on both lists, but
the only compulsory one was dev, no-one complained again (apart from
if they were getting slapped about), and no important announcements
got left unnoticed.


Might work elsewhere, come to think of it.

-- 
Richard Clamp <richardc@unixbeard.net>