[Fsatom-comm] New committee ; mailing lists

[Xavier Gonze]

Dear Peter and Konrad,

Konrad Hinsen wrote:
> On Wednesday 22 October 2003 08:36, Xavier Gonze wrote:
>>  creation of another mailing list (was it at the committee meeting ?),
>>  to be called fsatom-forum. This list has been created by Miguel,
>>  yesterday. This would be our high-traffic list (and people weakly
>>  interested by general discussions would not be registered).
>>  The fsatom list would remain low traffic, for those weakly interested
>>  people (I think we need a low traffic mailing list, with a large number
>>  of registered people, in order to reach them easily).
> 
> 
> In my experience, it is not possible to differentiate mailing lists by 
> intended traffic, there has to be a rather clear definition of topic. 
> Otherwise no one will be sure which list to send a particular posting to, and 
> will end up sending it to both, which defies the original intention.

I agree.
> 
> What we can and perhaps should do is to have an "annoucement" list where new 
> events, workgroups, mailing lists, etc. can be announced, but with strictly 
> no discussion. Such a list would typically be set up as "moderated", i.e. 
> every message has to be accepted by one of the moderators. But as soon as a 
> list is open for general discussion, no matter on what subject, it will have 
> fluctuating traffic.

Yes : this is precisely the idea.
A "forum" mailing list, and a "announcement"
mailing list have clearly a different purpose. Some people do not want
to receive discussions mail, but would like to stay in a list to which
only announcements are sent.
Actually, two ABINIT mailing lists have these characteristics,
and this system works quite well.

By the way, people continue to subscribe :-) ... and to unsubscribe :-(
on the FSAtom mailing list.
Some of the unsubscribing ones, that I know, were keeping an eye on FSAtom,
... until now.

So, we have to make a decision :
- is it OK if we start the forum mailing list, with the
  same list of people that are registered presently on the general list ?
- then, at the end of each mail submitted to one of these lists, one should have
  a message stating how to unsubscribe from that particular list
- the use of the lists will be described (accurate, but brief) on the
  FSAtom site.


There has been no reaction about the other current issue for the committee :
should we try to include one quantum chemist ? if so, would Mark Gordon
be OK or shall we try to find somebody else ?
Without any reaction of yours, I am really puzzled on the best thing to do ...

Please, could you react on these subjects (one or both) before Monday 3 Novembre ?

Thanks !
Xavier