I do not maintain a mailing list, but suspect I will one of these
days. I have an interest in the problems of mailing lists (in
particular those that arise on lists dedicated to bands and their
fans) and in possible social and technical solutions to these
problems. The below is intended as a starting point for discussion and
which people could use as a basis for suggesting such solutions. I
don't intend to produce anything as formal as a FAQ but I do hope to
produce something which could be used as a similar sort of reference.

The problems and solutions clearly have relevance to lists other than
band ones; I focus on these for personal interest reasons and because
the problem can be acute on such lists because of a relative
preponderance of subscribers who are unused to mailing lists, and the
fact that the fans of bands often tend to form chat-based communities.
I would be very interested to hear any opinions and suggestions.


One problem that has occurred on every band list I have ever
subscribed to relates to the fact that there tend to be three distinct
attitudes that subscribers to such lists have. Some subscribers want
to use the list as an information resource so that they can receive
news about the band in question. Some want to use it to discuss
matters directly related to the band in question. The definition of
"directly" is clearly hazy, and some lassitude can be assumed;
however, this group are still fairly easy to separate from the
third. This third group of subscribers want the list to be a community
who, although initially brought together by their shared interest in a
band, wish to talk about anything and everything. I shall refer to
these groups or kinds of list as information, discussion, and chat
respectively.

Time commitment
---------------

A subscription to an information list takes the least time to deal
with. The number of e-mails generated is the lowest. A subscriber
should find that the e-mail received is likely to be relevant, and the
relevance of even a long article can be quickly estimated. Thus little
time is required in order to review e-mail received, and almost all
subscribers will lurk.

A discussion list generates more e-mail and requires some more time to
deal with. Some subscribers may spend a lot of their time carefully
reading and answering list e-mail. However, lurkers still find these
lists valuable without having to commit a great deal of their time to
them if they so desire.

A chat list is an entirely different proposition. Although clearly the
degree of lurking amongst subscribers will vary, most will actively
participate to at least some extent by sending messages to the list,
Such a list may generate a large volume of e-mail and consume a lot of
the subscriber's time in both reading and replying to messages on the
list.

Of course, individuals often belong to different groups on different
lists. No-one would want to be in too many chat communities, but might
like information about many different topics.

Utility
-------

All three lists can have great utility and it seems important that all
sorts of subscribers should be supported to the extent that this is
possible.

The information list is clearly very important to those subscribers
who do not have access to a music press that carries it due to their
geographical location. Receiving information from a dedicated list is
also clearly far more convenient than reading such a press, and the
turnaround tends to be much quicker. However, such a list is still
very useful even if information sent to undergoes distribution delays
due to some moderation process.

Much the same can be said for the discussion list. The perceived
importance of such lists is probably best established by observing
that according to their charters most mailing lists are of one of
these two flavours. In the case when only one list is available, it is
normally of the discussion flavour. Discussion lists have a social as
well as an information purpose; friendly relationships are often
formed between active participants on these lists. The beginnings of a
community arise.

Chat lists can become a relatively important part of a subscriber's
life, and fellow subscribers may become very close friends. Real-life
meet-ups get organised, and private e-mail relationships
blossom. Participating in a chat list is very much a way to
socialise. This is why conversation is often completely off-topic and
arbitrary; the original shared interest forms a focus for the group
but not in any way at the expense of other chat.

Maintainence requirements
-------------------------

The lists have different requirements on the amount and sort of
maintainence required in order to keep them useable. All three
flavours may suffer from spamming. Other requirements may involve
ensuring messages are kept appropriately on-topic and keeping the
subscribers as happy as possible by settling disputes and avoiding
unplesantness.

Of course such duties may be shared amongst more than one person, and
certain software tools (robo-moderation and filtering) can assist in
it greatly. Also note that some lists effectively have no active owner
and so centralised control is not always possible, and that group
control tends to generate an amount of e-mail that is inappropriate
for information lists (and unfortunate for discussion ones.)

Information lists are probably best as moderated lists. Since the
volume is relatively low, this does not require much time, although
*regular* attention is required. The time delay introduced is not
critical as these lists are not intended for dialogue and faster
reliable non-electronic alternatives do not exist. Topic and happiness
policing do not tend to be a big issue as they are pre-empted,
although moderation clearly introduces political complications of its
own.

Discussion lists involve dialogue and so moderation is less desirable,
although some kind of "trusted user / first posting" robo-moderation
may still be plausible. The delicate jobs of topic and happiness
policing become necessary. "Only if you have to" and "firm but fair"
tactics are probably advisable.

Chat lists eliminate the need for topic policing, but presumably the
high volume of e-mail increases the demand for happiness policing. To
an extent, since these lists are autonomous communities, one might
expect a certain amount of self-policing from such forums.

Conflicts
---------

Conflicts as to which style of list is required by different
subscribers are the problem which this discussion seeks to address.
The problems are particularly acute when the same mailing list is
being used for more than one purpose.

Discussion and chat subscribers are happy to receive information
postings. Chat subscribers are happy to receive discussion
e-mails. However, the reverse inclusions do not hold. Chat adverses
affects the utility of discussion lists, and both chat and discussion
make it very hard to use information lists. These are not minor
problems; they may cause unsubscriptions. Arguments about them can
often be heated, in my experience.

One problem with ascertaining the best policy is that since chat
subscribers are by far the most active, their position tends to be
overstated. However, there may often be a relatively silent majority
whose dissent is not heard. In particular, a non-active dissatisfied
subscriber often unsubscribes rather than pushes for change. This is a
highly unfortunate circumstance and some research into its prevalence
would be useful!

A second reason why the opinions of non-chat subscribers suffer is
that meta-topics such as these are often seen as more noise by their
proponents. Thus in order to pursue them these proponents have to act
in a manner they may see as hypocritical. Technically, discussion
of policy is always on-topic unless a separate forum for such
discussion exists, but no-one wants it to be a disproportionate part
of e-mail.

Solution: division
------------------

One obvious solution is to divide subscriptions to a mailing list into
these three sections; essentially there are three mailing lists. Posts
to information are sent also to discussion and chat subscribers
(possibly without the delays incurred by the information moderation
process. This provides a way for subscribers who want to avoid these
delays to do so as long as they are willing to cope with the extra
costs they incur in terms of volume of e-mail and reliability.)
Similarly, posts to discussion are forwarded to the chat list. Such
forwardings need to be clearly identified and appropriate follow-ups
set so that answers are not misdirected.

Is this sort of arrangement possible with existing list server
software and with acceptably little set-up, migration and maintainence
time?

Solution: compromise
--------------------

If the above solution is impractical due to time or resource
requirements, how can these different uses be made of the same list?

The obvious approach is to allow users to do the division at their
end. The high volume of e-mail remains, but at least the time needed
to deal with it for information and discussion subscribers is kept to
a minimum. And the obvious mechanism to enact this approach is by
means of subject-line tags.

In my experience, chat subscribers cannot be expected to identify
their messages as such. This is for two reasons; firstly, off-topic
messages often come from subscribers who are not used to Usenet
convention and who do not care for netiquette. Secondly, chat
subscribers do not see the problem as theirs to solve. Even if they
are going against charter by posting chat messages, they are only
inconvenienced if the list maintainer takes action against them. And
of course, such subscribers have already been seen to be in the
majority of active participants, so most e-mail comes from them.

One solution is for people posting information and discussion e-mails
to identify them as such and for non-chat subscribers to filter
non-tagged messages themselves either manually or automatically.
For information messages, a tag such as "*INFO*" is appropriate. For
discussion messages, a tag relating to the topic would probably be
better than "*DISCUSSION*". Maybe a sensible keyword would be the name
of the band being discussed.

(Of course, one could filter based on message-content, and delete
messages from the list that don't contain any of several key-words
without reading them. But that sounds like quite a responsibility for
a non-technical subscriber. Such techniques might have application
inside list-server software (e.g. tagging subject lines based on
content), but I'm guessing the software doesn't presently allow for
this.)

One problem here is that follow-ups can wander off-topic. For this
reason, subscribers may wish to consider the existence of a "Re:"
prefix to invalidate the tagging. If this is to be the convention,
subscribers need to know that they need to manually delete the prefix
from replies whose content they still consider to be appropriate.

(Again, this sounds like a sizeable responsibility for the
Net-ignorant, although at least it results in appropriate e-mail
staying unread rather than inappropriate stuff annoying other
subscribers. Again, list-server software solutions might be
interesting to look at.)

Are there other solutions?


Thanks,
--
@*-.,_,.-`'-=*@@*=-`'-.,_,.-*@  For my contact details, and information on the
|          Anthony.          |  bands Pulp, Saint Etienne, and the Kitchens OD,
@*-.,_,.-`'-=*@@*=-'`-.,_,.-*@  home's <URL:http://WWW.CS.Man.ac.UK/~baileya/>.
Anthony Bailey studies for a CompSci/Maths PhD at the University of Manchester