Re: [GnomeMeeting-devel-list] Re: New mailing list

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

ons 2002-12-04 klockan 19.50 skrev Damien Sandras:
> > Well, that's perhaps not the most obvious place to announce important
> > news. I read the the channel topic about once a week or so.
> 
> Big mistake....

How come? I read and use IRC when I have the time to do so, since I
don't expect important news *only* to be announced on IRC. Why don't I
expect it? Because IRC isn't a good channel for important announcements
to begin with, since the signal-to-noise ratio is much to low. It's a
tough and time-consuming job trying to read a backlog when you've been
away a while and trying to just get the important bits and not the "hi",
"bye", and other largely irrelevant "which-beer-is-the-best" social type
of chat discussions. The benefit of mailing lists is that those
socialising discussions are mostly not present there and the discussions
are much more to the point, so the signal-to-noise ratio is much higher.

IRC is a good complementary channel for announcements since it gets the
immediate attention of those who are present and actively reading at the
very same time, but it doesn't get the attention of much more than this
set of people, and if you don't happen to be in this set of people at
the very same time and actively reading, then it's hard to get this
information or even notification that something important has been
announced. That's why IRC should only be a complimentary channel for
information, and that's why it should also only be considered as such a
complimentary channel.

Hopefully I've explained the obvious clearly enough now.


Christian