[new] Beginners' mailing list and scheduled IRC

[Jay Kominek <jay.kominek@colorado.edu>]

Following a brief discussion from the Wiki[1] and some conclusions[2] I've
come to on my own, I've created a new mailing list, intended to be an
easier forum for beginners to pose questions. This is not meant to take
even a single message of traffic away from this list[3], or jbosnu.

Instead, it should be a forum for those people who join this mailing list,
and leave the next day because they got 50 messages while they went to the
restroom. And for the people who don't send anything to the list, because
they're afraid it will start something which looks like a flame war to the
uninitiated. (Of course, when they don't get their questions answered,
they leave because they can never start figuring out whats going on, and
thus rapidly become bored of 20+ messages a day.)

Further, it should be a place that makes an attempt to be just plain nice
and friendly. (99.9% of the time, 99.9% of the people here are friendly,
but the flare ups seem to coincide with the list membership going down
ever so slightly.)

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SO:

For people who want to subscribe; either because they want/need help or to
ask questions, or because they'd like to be able to help, the web page to
join up at is:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban-beginners/join

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Alllso, I'm thinking of planning scheduled IRC events for help sessions.

(Nothing more complex than "I guarantee I will be in #lojban on server
blah at 9pm eastern time this saturday for one hour, and will remain
completely attentive for The Whole Time or else you get your money back.")

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[1]: http://nuzban.wiw.org/wiki/index.php?Beginning%20Mailing%20List

[2]: The number of beginners I've seen asking questions on the mailing
list has dropped in the year since I've joined, while overall traffic has
easily doubled.

[3]: Not that it matters. August 2001 will easily have more than 1000
messages, making that single month 1/10th of all traffic on the current
mailing list. (And making it the most active month ever.)

- Jay Kominek <jay.kominek@colorado.edu>
  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose