[MUD-Dev] META: Making the list public?

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <01ILASKKDXUU90ROGR at nova.wright.edu>, on 07/16/97 
   at 08:38 AM, S001GMU at nova.wright.edu said:


>My only wish, if we do go public, is to keep the subscription method
>the same as it is now.  By doing that, I think we can avoid most of
>the nastiness mentioned in previous posts.  

Given a publicised list, how do we manage membership by invitation
only?  Think:

  Bubba Joe reads a Usenet article mentioning the MUD-Dev list.  "Gee! 
How do I get on that?  Oh, I need to be invited?  Who has to ivite me? 
Whom do I ask?"

>Keeping on top of this
>list is quite a bit of work (have to clean my mailbox out and archive
>things about once a week, or I'll run out of disk space!), and well
>worth it now.  I'd hate to have to start filtering out noise
>messages, on top of everything else.  it would greatly decrease my
>interest in the list.

Suffice to say that should I be conviced that the signal to noise
ratio could not be maintained were the list to go public, I won't take
the list public.  I'm willing to add some load to myself as moderator
to maintain the ratio should the list go public, but not a lot. 
That's why I'm asking for this meta discussion here.  I'm willing to
be convinced, but I also expect you to take equal time attempting to
solve the problems you're using to convince me.  I don't want to make
this move lightly or quickly.  I do think it *could* be a valuable
move.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...