Re: Proposal: an "important-news" IETF announcement list

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

Hi Adrian,
On 26-Sep-21 09:36, Adrian Farrel wrote:
> I promised I wouldn't get sucked in, but reading Bob's latest I find myself typing anyway.
> 
>>> The IESG is therefore considering creating a new mailing list for
>>> important organizational announcements only. We are hoping that a
>>> subscription to a new low-volume mailing list will be acceptable to
>>> IETF participants that find ietf-announce too noisy, and will help us
>>> disseminate important news and announcements more widely and effectively.
>>>
>>> Here are the details about this proposal:
>>>
>>> * The name of the new mailing list is important-news.
>>
>> Suggest “ietf-important-news”, like “ietf-announce”.
> 
> Can we avoid mailing list title inflation?
> Just "ietf-news" should do the job.
> 
>>>  - The ietf-announce mailing list will continue to operate as-is.
>>>
>>>  - All emails sent to important-news will be CC’ed to ietf-announce.
> 
> Really? Why? This seems to totally deny the value of a new list. 

Possibly, but it's more friendly to people who are perfectly happy with the existing list.

> It is also not very pleasant in the context of the "mandatory subscription" described below because now people will get two copies of emails.

Not if you set the "no duplicates" option in mailman. I set it globally years ago and it improved my life considerably.

>>> * Subscriptions
>>>
>>>  - Every participant with a current Datatracker account will be
>>>    automatically subscribed to important-news.
> 
> Please don't do that. It is inertia subscription. That is not nice in my opinion.

I assume it would be an opt-out setting for new accounts. I think it's a reasonable strategy for existing accounts; how else will people know, because most of them aren't on ietf-announce?
 
> How about sending each Datatracker account registered email address an email offering them "click here to subscribe"?

Better, include a "click here to unsubscribe" at the end of the welcome message.
 
>>>  - Every participant creating a new Datatracker account will
>>>    automatically be subscribed to important-news.
> 
> This can be handled with a check box during account creation so that the account holder has the option.

... to opt out.

> 
>>>  - Any important-news subscriber can unsubscribe at any time.
> 
> Which is fine, but requires opt-out action which should not be the default.

I disagree. This isn't like a commercial advertising exercise; it's trying to get people to actually be members of our community.

   Brian