Skip Montanaro writes:
> Russ Rew has been silent on this subject so far. Perhaps he's waiting for
> the dust to settle, but I would imagine in part he's cringing in a corner at
> the thought of taking on more list maintenance woes. (I can hear Russ
> saying, "Why, oh why, did I ever get into this computer racket, anyway?")
Crawling out of the corner and dusting myself off, I'd like to add a bit to
the racket of this metadiscussion, but also try to end it. Later in this
message, I ask for a vote. PLEASE DO NOT respond directly to this mailing
list, but send your vote, if you care, to russ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Please be
careful not to inadvertantly CC: netcdfgroup.
> My original proposal was to create a digest. (I really mean compendium - all
> a day's messages folded into one large mail message.) I am willing to take
> on the responsibilities outlined in 1) if the Unidata folks either don't
> have the time, or don't want to mess with the extra overhead. Some
> coordination will be required, but it shouldn't be too much. Ooh! Maybe I
> can wangle a trip to Colorado out of it!!! :-)
Thanks, Skip, for your generous offer of help and for pointing out that the
options people are suggesting involve work. I've learned that we could set
up an automatic digester with relatively little effort that would permit
human intervention when necessary. I think Ed Hartnett is right that
periodically digesting the group will make for less immediacy than mail, and
it may also lead to duplication in questions and answers that would require
a moderator to eliminate. People may be willing to live with these
disadvantages however, as a tradeoff for fewer messages and less work
interruptions.
Please vote on one of the following three options:
1. The regular mailing list (status quo)
advantages: immediacy
disadvantages: too much noise?
2. An automatic digester with occasional moderation as needed
advantages: fewer interruptions for readers
disadvantages: less immediacy
1. & 2. Both a mailing list and an automatic digester with different
addresses, so people can choose which they want to subscribe to.
These are the *only* options to which we are willing to allocate Unidata
resources. Please send your vote to me, russ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Put your
preferred option as part of the subject. Please make sure netcdfgroup is
not CC:ed! I can't promise I'll respond to or even read anything in the
body of the message.
If someone else wants to try to set up a newsgroup, that's fine, but as Skip
pointed out, it's a lot of work. We'd rather put our scarce resources into
needed improvements to the software and documentation. If someone does set
up a newsgroup, I'm in favor of something broader than just netCDF or file
formats, for example scientific data access interfaces. That could include
discussions of CDF, HDF, PDBlib, etc., and comparisons among them as well as
announcements about each interface and software based on it. I don't think
netcdfgroup currently has enough traffic to justify its own newsgroup, but a
broader group might be useful.
--Russ
