Shannon,

How about TOPICS!

You could setup different Topics, which are Sub lists within the Main List.

With the above scenario everybody is still part of the Main List then they
individually chose what they want to 'Listen' too.

:-) Andy Castiglione

-----Original Message-----
From: Ahern, Shannon [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 11:18 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [LSTSRV-L] Experience with splitting a large list? Seeking
advice, anecdotes, netiquette, etc. (long, sorry)


Hi Listmates-

I have looked in the archives, but I think this is such a broad topic that I am not finding exactly what I seek.

We host several unmoderated technical lists, one of which is huge (3095 subscribers), and there is a tremendous push from within our company (not from the subscribers themselves) to partition this list into several smaller, theoretically more-focused, lists. There are people who want us to resubscribe people to the new lists, and others who want to strongly encourage the current subscribers to change over, and then to shut down the list as it exists now after a 30-day warning period.

What I am interested to know is if any of you have experience with attempting such a thing, and if so, how did you approach it? What are the pitfalls? Benefits? Philosophical pros and cons?

I will include here some snippets from the people who are interested in pushing for this change. I am eager for any feedback whatsoever.

I am concerned about:
a) forcibly migrating people to new lists without their consent. I see this as invasive, rude, presumptuous, and technically a gamble, as I have ample experience with the sensitivity Listserv has to the subscription address being exactly the poster's address. Fortunately, the calls for this are few.

b) losing momentum on a well-established (yet admittedly noisy) list

Thanks for any feedback!

Shannon  :-)


Details:
Currently, there is a proposal on the table to address this by doing the
following:

(1) Initiate a small number of more focused lists to facilitate smaller, more focused "communities" of developers.

(2) Discontinue the DOTNET (largest) list after a 30 day grace period, while keeping
the archives perpetually available (to preserve the body of knowledge represented by the
archives of the list while encouraging people to subscribe to one or more of
the new lists as they see fit).

(3) Make the lists unmoderated, but make sure that we politely police
each list to make sure that discussions stay on track and technical/useful
in nature without resorting to actual moderation. This is intended to help both
combat true noise, as well as guide people to a more appropriate list for their question
if someone innocently posts a question to one list that's already been asked & answered
on one of the other lists.
 
<shannon>my concern here is whether the technical staff at my company will keep up this
"policing" for any length of time...  ;-)  ) </shannon>



The current thinking was to initiate the change over by:

(a) Email an announcement to the 2 largest lists detailing
the change-over plan with details describing each new list.

(b) Prevent new subscriptions to the original lists.

(c) Setup an email rule for posts to those lists that
auto-replies to the originator reminding them of the impending list change
over, with a link to the announcement from (a) in the archives in case they
missed the original announcement and a link to the page where they can sign
up for the new lists.  This rule would be active during the 30 day grace
period.  The posts would be allowed through to DOTNET still at this point,
though.

<shannon>No one has even asked me if *this* is possible. I assume it probably is, but I have not yet consulted the documentation, so I do not actually know </shannon>

Once the grace period elapses, I think we would change the auto-reply rule
for those two largest lists to run for another 30 days indicating the
message is not being posted anywhere and reminding them to subscribe to the
new lists.  Posts at this point would not be allowed through.  After this 30
day period elapses, just remove the email alias or whatever it is list
admins do (but w/o removing the archives).  

<shannon>Another thing no one asked me if was even possible...</shannon>