Martin Jambon <martin.jambon@ens-lyon.org> writes:

> On Sat, 10 Mar 2007, Daniel Bünzli wrote:
>
>> Le 9 mars 07 à 21:02, Martin Jambon a écrit :
>>
>>> The Caml mailing list is intended for all users of the Caml
>>> implementations developed at INRIA. The purpose of this list is to
>>> share experience, exchange ideas and code, and report on
>>> applications of the Caml language.
>>
>> I don't see why these topics cannot be discussed here.
>>
>> I would see the point of a domain specific mailing-list (e.g. web
>> development in ocaml) but ocaml-developer seems like caml-list-2 to
>> me.
>>
>> Could you perhaps motivate the point of your initiative ?
>
> 1) Less traffic

Well -- if I subscribe to both lists, I'd have quite the same traffic
and 2 groups to sort in my mail client instead of one. I also have 1
more group to search for ocaml related thread topics I rememebr but
not quite where I read them.

If I only subscribe to one list I'll miss traffic which is not clearly
distinguished topically between those 2 lists.

Either way, I loose. The community fragments. I prefer 1 stop shops
and just skipping manually new threads I don't like: With a threaded
news/mail reader and 1 new thread per day that is not a problem.

> 2) Skipping all the unnecessary "language geekiness" stuff

And that cannot be done by hand so that we have to split the community?


> To a newcomer, caml-list looks a lot like a forum for programming
> language researchers, 

Well -- perhaps a regular posting of a mailing list FAQ or the list
charta would help to mitigate that impression. Your action, if
successful will probably draw traffic from the caml-list and make it
"look like" as if the popularity of ocaml has furtther declined (and
BTW: This fragmentation in mailing lists has been a problem to the
public perception of SML).

> which is cool, but not being able to understand
> 2/3 of the messages is kind of intimidating for someone who thought
> he/she knew OCaml.

Surprise: There is lots to learn. Actually I'd call that a chance or a
challenge as opposed to boredom and ennui.

Regards -- Markus