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On 15 Jun 1995, Garry Fairbairn wrote:

>         Reply to:   mailing lists?
> 
> I would appreciate comments from any newspapers that have established Internet
> mailing lists for their subscribers.
> 
> We're a 98,000-circ. weekly serving farm families across western Canada and we
> have just established our first Internet link. (So far, just for e-mail.)

For a group this size, I reccomend that you NOT use a mailing list.  Use 
newsgroups.  In most cases your users can connect to your server, you can 
also replicate the news to multiple local town servers.  This also 
reduces the amount of traffic flowing into each individual's mailbox.
For a crowd of 98,000 - if only 10% went on-line, you could be handling 
900 posts/week times 9000 users.  Thats over 8 million mail messages.

> One suggestion was that we set up mailing lists (like this one) on our
> Internet server so that farmers could exchange messages on topics of concern
> to them, whether it be Canadian ag policy or tips on how to best transform
> calves into steers.

It is a good idea.  There are already some alt groups that deal with 
agricultural issues, but you may find that your group would be popular 
nationwide.

> But we ran into two ojections from timid bureaucrats:
> 1. If the mailing list is unmoderated, someone might post a flood of nasty
> material.

Keep in mind, News/Mail is a two-way media.  There would probably be a few
"positional" fanatics who would have their knee-jerk reactions, then as 
it became clear that you were providing those services necessary to feed 
the population, you would quickly see them quiet down.  In fact, polarized
dialogues often evolve into a very powerful consensus.

> 2. If we let anyone post the mailing list, some farmer might say something
> that is against our owners' editorial policy. (We exercise considerable
> independence, but are owned by a farmers co-operative that has various strong
> policy positions.)

There are certain specific policy positions on almost every newsgroup and
mailing list.  This list isn't about farming, but since you want to be an 
on-line publisher to farmers, we can make suggestions on how to structure 
such a publication.

> To me, these objections are ignorant and invalid. If someone (animal rights?
> antiabortion? proabortion? Republican fanatic?) started flooding our list, we
> could either cut them off and/or switch to a moderated list. From what I've
> seen of lists, this is not a problem since lists tend to be self-policing.

Every list has it's fanatics, with their positions.  Newsgroups are 
easier to manage by users because you can put up "kill" and "kill thread"
structures.

> Similarly, the fear of "incorrect" political commentary seems misguided. It's
> like owning a radio station but being afraid to offer an open-line program for
> fear that someone might criticize the beliefs of the station's owners.

The best solution to managing incorrect political commentary is to make 
sure that you have staff or volunteers who can responsibly and reliably 
respond, in the public forum, to the rantings of the lunatic fringe.  The
comp.arch.sun group doesn't prevent "pro-IBMers" from posting to their 
group, but it does provide responsible answers to issues as they are 
raised.

> Has anyone run into anything like this before? If so, how did you handle it?
> It seems to me that an organization that can't comprehend or accept the
> concept of an innocuous mailing list has no business trying to merge into the
> information highway. But, of course, I could be missing something.

Practically every list I have regularly read has been through cycles of 
various debates.  This is about the 10th time this month someone has 
suggested a mailing list instead of a Newsgroup.  Rather than refer to 
them as idiots or rant and rave, we simply assume that they are not yet 
aware of newsgroups or FAQ lists.

Steve - this should be addressed in an FAQ.
Genereal rule of thumb:
Under 1000 users, under 100 messages/week, use a mailing list.
Over 1000 users or over 100 messages/week, use a newsgroup.

> Garry Fairbairn
> Editor, The Western Producer
> Saskatoon, Canada
> 
> 

	Rex Ballard
	Standard & Poor's/McGraw-Hill
	Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect
	the Management of the McGraw-Hill Companies.




From rballard@cnj.digex.net Fri Jun 30 13:15:58 1995
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