[Prairiegreens-action] dead list

[John Wason]

At 10:25 PM 06/07/2001 -0500, Zachary C. Miller wrote:

>This is the prairiegreens-action mailing list. 
>
>No messages have been sent to this list since September 2000.
>
>Is anyone interested in keeping this list around or should we close it
>down and have people sign up for either prairiegreens or
>prairiegreens-news.
>
>Some of you are not subscribed to prairiegreens or
>prairiegreens-news. Prairiegreens is our very active discussion list
>and prairiegreens-news is our very low traffic announcements list.
>
>http://www.prairienet.org/greens/mailist.htm
>
>Just curious whether people think this list is useful or whether
>discussion of actions should take place on the general prairiegreens
>list.

It's a good and interesting question, Zach.  I'm aware of the three lists -
or four now, I guess, because there's the new Prairiegreens-UIUC list.  I
subscribe to all four, and rarely in fact really notice which list each
Green e-mail is actually coming from.  

When I post, I tend to post to the main Prairiegreens list, for several
reasons: (1) It's the list everyone else seems to use.  If I'm REPLYING to
someone else's message, I just reply to whatever list the original message
was posted on.  Even the Bylaws were, I think, circulating on the main
Prairiegreens list.  (2) I often don't know how to distinguish what I post
or respond to, on the basis of content, as being explicitly appropriate for
one list or another.  And (3) I don't really know what the readers of the
various lists may or may not be interested in.  Even though they're not
actively participating, for all I know the casual Green readers/lurkers may
actually be INTERESTED in the bylaws.  How can we know if they don't comment
one way or the other?  And if they're not interested in a particular item,
all they have to do is hit the delete key on their keyboard.  Even the main
Prairiegreens list is not so high-volume that this is a significant chore.

Maybe, though, we should re-think the names and functions of the lists.
Maybe have a general Prairiegreens list called something like
Prairiegreens-chat, and a list tailored more to the hardcore Greens, the
ones who are officers and on committees and participate in everything, and
call it something like Prairiegreens-hardcore.  :)  Even that, though, seems
like a somewhat arbitrary distinction to me.  Those who are interested in
the local Greens seem to form a continuum, from the most casual to the most
committed.

In any case, definitely maintain the newly-added Prairiegreens-UIUC list,
because the campus group may well have concerns and activities that are
entirely separate from those of the community Greens.

Just my thoughts,

John