On Sat, 6 Feb 2021 at 15:57, Frank Cox <theatre at sasktel.net> wrote: > On Sat, 6 Feb 2021 15:22:21 -0500 > Jonathan Billings wrote: > > 1.) you assume people will clearly label their off topic threads > > I think that in most cases that will happen, yes, since people with a > technical background understand that clarity and precision are important > when posting a question or observation or asking for advice. > > 2.) as we’ve seen, those off topic threads often weave in and out of > on-topic threads until a moderator tells you to take it to another venue. > > Which of course never happens now with threads that start off discussing > some aspect of Centos? > > > > You’ll dilute the usefulness of this list to the point that it will be > > worthless for people who are interested in CentOS topics. > > In your opinion. On average, this is not a high-traffic mailing list and > I'd be really surprised if the traffic actually increased in any > significant way since a question that might today be asked about Centos > will be asked tomorrow about Rocky; either way, there's no net increase in > the traffic, just a change in the subject line. > > I have now administered mailing lists for 25+ years and I have found that what happens is that off-topic traffic basically causes an echo chamber effect over time. The people having the side conversations get louder and louder over time not because the list gets larger but because they have 'driven' off the people who were here for a specific focus. The people remaining become more and more of an echo chamber moving the 'topic' to being wha I realize that this has been a traumatic split in the culture for a lot of people (myself included), but there is a point where the list main topic of discussion will be on how to use/administer/fix CentOS Stream and CentOS-7 versus Oracle/FreeBSD/Rocky/Alma/Debian/Slackware/etc. I can ask for a generic-enterprise-nix (genix?) list on the CentOS mailman and see if that can take up the traffic for the people who feel that they want and need to talk about alternatives. If that is acceptable then people can subscribe there and talk in detail about other operating systems choices. I do believe these conversations do need to happen but not everyone wants to hear the 4 Yorkshiremen skit every day as we 'old-timers' deal with our past. -- Stephen J Smoogen.