October 2007 - BALUG-Admin - lists.balug.org

List "policy"/description tweaks
by Michael Paoli 03 Nov '07

03 Nov '07

List "policy"/description tweaks. These are changes I have in mind for the lists. This isn't for the (shorter) text that appears on our main http://[www.]balug.org/ web pages, but rather on the more detailed Mailman list pages, e.g.: http://lists.balug.org/listinfo.cgi/balug-talk-balug.org What I show below is draft of text changes (I'd also do similar on Balug-Admin regarding automagic subscrition to Balug-Announce). The text below doesn't include the relevant URLs (those would be linked appropriately from the text), and there may also be some slight tweaking of e-mail address configurations (most notably admins and moderators for the lists, and any related @balug.org aliases - I'll coordinate with Rick Moen to be sure anything we do there is and works reasonably). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Balug-Announce This is a low-volume* announce-only (non-discussion) mailing list to cover items of key interest to Bay Area Linux Users Group (BALUG) and its members (e.g. meeting announcements/programs, important announcements, BALUG "news" items of note, and items highly likely to be of interest to many/most BALUG folks and related Linux community). If you subscribe to any of BALUG's lists, you should subscribe at least to Balug-Announce. For more general BALUG and related discussion, see the Balug-Talk list. If you think you have something highly worthy of being sent to the Balug-Announce list, send it to the Balug-Announce list moderators, and we'll consider sending it along, including it, or providing a short reference to it. Note, however, in most cases it is typically more appropriate to post an item to Balug-Talk, and if we deem it appropriate to do so, we may then cross-reference the item posted on Balug-Talk and/or include some of its relevant content on item(s) we send to Balug-Announce. Balug-Announce does not have the "digest" option enabled, as its mailings should be important, and might sometimes be time critical. Note however that the mailings may, however, be in a digest-like form (e.g. a single mailing may include several items of note, and may also have a very brief summary or subject of each noted near the top of the e-mail's body). Balug-Announce is publicly archived. *approximately 1 to 3 e-mails per month - we aim to keep the average at or below 3 per month ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Balug-Talk This is a public discussion mailing list for Bay Area Linux Users Group (BALUG). Items should generally be reasonably appropriate/relevant to the group (e.g. Linux and Open Source, in, around, or including the greater San Francisco Bay Area, etc.). Please try to use/update Subject: on mailings to reasonably summarize what the posting is about. If you feel compelled to post on something rather to quite off-topic, kindly try to indicate so in the Subject: (e.g. start it with "[O.T.]" or something like that). And of course, don't spam the list. We intend to interpret the above, notwithstanding the below, rather liberally. Job postings - job postings/listings are disallowed*, with one exception**. Note however that there isn't a prohibition against noting one's availability for job/contract work, posting a "position wanted" item, or discussion about employment and employers, job markets, recruiting/hiring/firing, whether or not not the list should allow job posting and under what circumstances, how to and not to do a job posting and where, etc. The prohibition is to be interpreted rather narrowly - just don't post a job listing or collection of job listings, or something with the rather exclusive intent to refer to your, your company, or your agency's job listing(s) or job site. If you're looking for places where job postings are permitted/welcomed, you may want to check some other resources (e.g. SVLUG Jobs or BayLISA Jobs, or consult the policy regarding such for SF-LUG). Balug-Talk is publicly archived NOTE: Subscribers to Balug-Talk should also be subscribed to Balug-Announce. If you're subscribed to Balug-Talk, but not subscribed to Balug-Announce, you may find yourself automagicly also added as subscribed to Balug-Announce. If for some reason you don't want that to happen (e.g. you use distinct e-mail addresses for each to route/filter/sort more to your preferences), send an e-mail note to Balug-Announce list admin indicating what e-mail address you don't want automagicly added to Balug-Announce, and why, and we'll add it to our exceptions list. * Job posting policy (general prohibition) may be subject to change/adjustment over time, mostly based upon majority (or at least plurality) of wishes of users subscribed to Balug-Talk (e.g. policy might be adjusted slightly or significantly, or BALUG might decide to create a separate "jobs" list). ** If you have been scheduled and confirmed to give a talk/presentation at BALUG, or have rather to quite recently given such a talk, you are permitted to make a job posting/announcement to BALUG-Talk. It may be advisable to include short mention towards the top of the e-mail that reminds folks how this specificly fits within list policy (e.g. "Thanks for having me for the ... BALUG talk. Per the list policy, here are the currently open positions I'd like to mention:"). Please, only one job posting e-mail per talk/presentation. It may be highly advisable to include relevant links and/or contact information in the posting where folks will be able to obtain updates on the position(s) (e.g. description changes, position closed, additional positions opened, etc.) so one doesn't feel tempted to "need" to make a follow-up posting to the list about the position(s). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ See also, e.g.: http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin-balug.org/2007-October/000419.… (starting about halfway down that item) for a bit of earlier discussion on some of these items.

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Lists: stats, etc.
by Michael Paoli 22 Oct '07

22 Oct '07

stats: list membership (~482 total uniques) total uniques up slightly (by about 5%) from not too long ago. list subscribers (does include also those with delivery disabled): $ wc -l */memb*`date -I` 27 balug-admin/membership_2007-10-21 304 balug-announce/membership_2007-10-21 251 balug-talk/membership_2007-10-21 $ sort -u */membership_*`date -I` | wc -l 482 Note also that it appears we have a fairly large number of folks that are subscribed to "talk", but *NOT* subscribed to "announce". Theoretically (at least logically) that shouldn't be the case (in general - typically exceptions being per-list e-mail addresses), but it is totally under "user" control. A quick count of that: $ { sort -u balug-talk/membership_`date -I` > cat balug-announce/membership_`date -I` \ > balug-announce/membership_`date -I`; } | sort | uniq -u | wc -l 172 ... nevertheless *that* number is down moderately from not too long ago. After considering various options, what I'm inclined to do to "rectify" that, is after announcing it and noting it on the lists appropriately, for e-mail addresses that are on the "talk" and/or "admin" list lists, they'll get periodically added to the "announce" list - unless they specifically notify "us" (list admin(s)) that they want to be on an "exception" list (e.g. if they have and want to use separate per-list subscription addresses). The process would be semi-manual at least initially, but would, longer term, be fully automated (well, except for the being added to the "exception" list - that might require manually adding the e-mail address to a file). The above noted approach has the advantages of: * it avoids the potential complications of lists subscribed to lists and differing options/configurations (e.g. we want "announce" to be non-digested, but we want folks to have digested form be option for "talk"; if we subscribed "talk" to "announce", then those getting "talk" digested, and not subscribed to "announce" would only see "announce" within digested "talk" e-mails) * it allows users to have separate per-list e-mail subscription addresses if they desire such, and provides means for them to request not being automatically added to "announce" based on subscription to "talk" and/or "admin". I'm also inclined to set up an alias for the balug list admin(s) - that way folks have a consistent e-mail address that can be used for that. (Mailman lists and displays the list admin e-mail address(es) - it looks a lot more clean if there's a "generic" address for that function, rather than listing all the individual folks that are in the set of list admins for any given list). references/excerpts: http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin-balug.org/2007-September/00040…

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Probably should not have been approved for "announce": Maemo (N800 Linux tablet) course at Stanford on November 6
by Michael Paoli 16 Oct '07

16 Oct '07

This message probably should not have been approved for the BALUG "announce" list: http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-announce-balug.org/2007-October/0000… The evidence would seem to indicate it got "approved" (perhaps someone accidentally clicked the wrong item or thought it was for a different list), though it's not impossible that it may have been passed/approved through some header forging or the like. The message would have been okay for "talk" (that's a relatively open forum, though it could still do without all the attachments). "announce", however should be quite low volume (like 1 to 3 messages per month) and quite topical to BALUG (not a catch-all for any and/or everything LINUX, OpenSource, etc., that anyone and/or everyone may care to announce). If there are non-BALUG events of note that we want to mention on "announce", it's probably most suitable to include a short mention and reference to such along with one of our regular mailings to "announce" ... if at all.

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