plug-newbies at plug [was: [plug] Hacker Nights (was ** July Workshop Notice **)]

[James Devenish]

In message <1090836379.2641.11.camel at hosrv01.jtajt.local>
on Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 06:06:19PM +0800, Jay Warwick wrote:
> Sounds to me like you are fobbing us newbies off.

Don't worry --- there was also recently a suggestion to administratively
strangle non-newbie posters.

The idea of a plug-newbies list does have its merits (and don't worry --
non-newbies would be subscribed). However, I personally doubt that
there's "critical mass" to ensure that such partitioning would function
naturally under its own steam. If I recall correctly, June of this year
was basically a "newbie month" on this list. I assume it is just the ebb
and flow of what people happen to have on their plates. In contrast to
the current musing, I think in June there was a query about finding an
alternative for "experts" (as opposed to an alternative for "newbies").
When the list traffic is high and biased strongly towards "newbie" or
"expert", partitioning seems to be preferred by some subscribers. But as
people will point out, this sort of cross-over (for want of a better
description) has benefits of its own.

Note also that there have been already been various prior ideas about
having multiple lists, newsgroups, website fora or maybe IRC channels.
So far, I think the only one that has got off the ground is the
off-topic list.