On 9 Jan 2006, at 3:56 pm, Stephanie Clarke wrote: > On Jan 9 2006, Tim Cutts wrote: >> >> I happen to agree with Paul on this one. Generic lists of the >> kind you are proposing don't really work, because people tend to >> subscribe to things they're interested in or know about, and not >> to such general lists, and they rapidly become write-only lists. >> > > Not always: cam.misc is very popular as a place to talk about just > about anything you like and is not dissimilar to what I am > suggesting. That people have been using milton-chat as a generic > list suggests that there is a demand for one here? Well, I almost suggested cam.misc, but did not for precisely the same reason. It's supposed to be for Cambridge-specific things, and has become hopelessly swamped in non-relevant postings. It's now so busy that I read it very infrequently for that very reason; it's becoming too much effort to have to trawl through the irrelevant dross to find things that are genuinely relevant to Cambridge. > As you imply, for many non-techies such lists are intimidating. A > Milton-based list, which covers people with a wide range of > backgrounds, would be a friendly and useful place to ask the > questions we have been seeing. As well as being a forum for more > general discussion of course. Worth a try maybe? To be honest I can see both sides of the argument, and I don't really know what the answer is. I think such a discussion list would be better if it were Cambridge-wide rather than just Milton, if it were to exist at all; it would be much more likely to successfully find someone who knew the answer to the question. Which sort of leads us back to cam.misc, which already fills that role, de facto. Tim