Re: Proposal: Mailing list archive requirement(s)

["Stephen Sprunk" <ssprunk at cisco.com>]

Says David W. Morris:
> I agree ... as long as the IETF expects mailing lists for WGs to be
> provided by volunteers, its pretty unreasonable to demand that
> every such volunteer will be willing to set up anything beyond the
> list server.
>
> Proven recommended software would go a long way to mitigate the effort.

I am prepared to volunteer a personal box of mine to host all IETF lists
except ietf at ietf.org and ietf-announce at ietf.org.  This would be using
SmartList unless I'm given a convincing reason to use Majordomo.

> The IETF could also choose to tax itself in the form of increased
> meeting fees and have the secretariat take over providing list servers
> for all WGs... Of course, considering how long it took for this list to
> be managed by a 'modern' software tool, I'm not sure it would be
> effective to have the secretariat assume that responsiblity.

Agreed.  However, I believe that the current system of volunteer mailing
lists is counter-intuitive.  Why have dozens of lists all over the place,
each with a different domain, different admin, and different command set?
Many of the lists don't even have a logical name (MMUSIC's is "confctrl",
etc) once you figure out the host they're on.

Having all of the WG lists centralized seems more efficient.  One admin, one
command set, one naming system (I prefer wg-foo at lists.ietf.org).  That
service doesn't need to be run by the secretariat as long as it's run well
and seamless to the users (us).

> Threading and an effective search engine would be useful ... and in fact,
> having the ability to search across all WG archives, IDs, RFCs, would be
> helpful as well.
>
> Of course, nothing says that the archive/thread:webservice/search would
> have to be run by the WG list operator. It could be a centralized
> service which just subscribed to each WG mailing list.

I think this is the best approach; I don't have the resources to provide
archive services myself, but I'll coordinate with whoever wants to provide
it.

Stephen


     |          |         Stephen Sprunk, K5SSS, CCIE #3723
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