I've had a little experience with splitting lists and very little with
topics.  In all cases, unanimous approval (of what to do or not do) did not
happen and could not occur, IMHO.

In one case, a fan list of a couple of thousand had some discussion clearly
in the bounds of the list charter, but of little or no interest of the
majority of list readers and writers.  This was easy.  We had some
discussion with major contributors of the minority group, set up a new list
and charter just right for them, then invited everyone in the legacy group
to subscribe (opt-in) to the new mailing list.  Of course, appropriate
discussions for the new list were no longer appropriate for the legacy
list, and the opt-in directions were repeated (nicely) several times on the
legacy list.  Now both live quite independently, with only about 10% of
subscribers of each list subscribing to both. This split was most
successful!

In another case, we weren't so lucky.  :-(   As the list had 50-100 posts
per day, many people that had more than a passing interest just couldn't
afford the commitment.  Daily digests helped some, but "not enough".  We
split the list into a pair of lists for "information" and "discussion".
The information list was treated as a new (opt-in) list, with discussion
list subscribers getting invitations to the information list. (The
discussion list was a "subscriber" to the information list). About 25% of
the discussion list members subscribed to the information list. Some people
I knew kept subscriptions to both ... the lower volume information
subscription via their "work" e-mail address and the high-volume discussion
subscription at "home". (Some reversed this! ;))

The "information" folks liked this arrangement, but the discussionists
hated it.    Over time, and as the popularity of these lists declined and
mail filtering capability became more widespread, we finally re-merged the
information and discussion lists.  The "Info:" topic was added to the
discussion list, and "information" list subscribers were added back to the
discussion list at the time the information list was terminated.  If an
information subscriber did not already have a discussion list subscription,
one was added with the "Info"-only topic. Our content administrator
contacted major "information" providers and gently urged use of "Info:".
Some information providers wouldn't or couldn't comply and we just said
"Don't worry. That's OK".   The re-merging was generally liked or loved!

I've personally come to the conclusion that splitting lists is rarely good
news for readers, contributors or owners.  One split that I do really like
is to a vendor-only very low volume announcement list and another
(everything else).

All that said, missing from the original post was "why" the owners wanted
to split the lists and whether the owners understand the substantial chance
of customer surge of bad feelings due to whatever is done.

Surely easy subscription maintenance, including a clear policy of always
"opt-in", never "opt-out", is what today's consumer expects.

cheers, wayne


Wayne T. Smith                         Systems Group - UNET
[log in to unmask]                 University of Maine System