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

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <Pine.LNX.3.96.970716164626.137B-100000 at mpc.dyn.ml.org>, on
07/16/97 
   at 09:07 AM, Matt Chatterley <root at mpc.dyn.ml.org> said:

>I agree with much of what has been said - and without any intention
>to be 'elitist' or whatnot, would say that everyone here who has
>contributed should be proud of their contributions to an excellent
>discussion environment.

Agreed, seconded, and cheered.

>Allowing the public freely into such an environment would certainly
>cause problems (if nothing else, the moderation volume would be
>rather huge for you to cope with, JCL).

<sigh>  Yeah...

>Perhaps an alternative would be to create a separate list, for
>'public' subscriptions and discussions.. although that does defeat
>the point somewhat - echoing to a newsgroup is probably the best idea
>so far (especially if it could be done 'intelligently' so an X-hdr
>could be used to specify that it should NOT happen to a particular
>message).

I'm not keen on any sort of split.  Its balkanising no matter how you
look at it, and the entire idea here is cross-pollination and
catalytic action of ideas and chopping the discussion into different
camps can't do anything but hurt that.

As far as newsgroup support is concerned, my current tendancy is to
one-way port (no posting to the newsgroup) the list to a private
newsgroup on a private newsserver, accessable by password only where
the password is guiven out to members in the list welcome message.

>Splitting the list by topic would *definitely* be a bad thing.
>Perhaps keeping to invitations only, but making the whole thing a
>little bit more high profile (possibly even attracting applications
>of some form) would be desirable.

<ponder>  I'll post more on this later.  I'm looking a publicising the
list while keeping membership closed/invitation only.

--
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...