The Coq mailing list

["Lucian M. Patcas" <lucian.patcas AT gmail.com>]

Dear all,

In my opinion an online forum would serve the Coq community better than a mailing list. A forum would allow for better organization of topics and it would also allow the members to search for and find answers more effectively than going through hundreds of emails or searching the coq-club archive, which seems to have rather limited searching capabilities. An online forum will not be a miraculous tool and will not prevent persons who are not willing to work hard enough to find their answers from trying to post the same questions over and over again, but it will allow the moderators to enforce the etiquette more easily.

In my experience, I have found mailing lists to be better suited for announcements rather than discussions. Of course, what works for me may not work for everyone, so I would like to know what other members of the community feel about this. 

Even as it is, this mailing list has been an invaluable resource for me and I thank all who have contributed.

Regards,
Lucian

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 03:35, Beta Ziliani <beta AT mpi-sws.org> wrote:

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 8:54 AM, Alexandre Pilkiewicz
<alexandre.pilkiewicz AT polytechnique.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Greg,
>
> I'm sorry if I made anyone think I was suggesting we should stop
> answering trivial questions. Like anyone else, I have been a beginner
> in Coq, and I still often ask pretty trivial things. I've been lucky
> enough to be able to ask most of those questions to people in offices
> next to mine, but I would never want to denies other the right to ask
> them on a mailing list (even if I support the suggestion of Matthias
> to create a beginner list, to allow people to ask basic questions
> without being impressed by discussion on W-types, and without imposing
> a maximum number of questions, and believe that IRC might be better
> for that)
>
> That being said, a friendly community doesn't mean a community without
> any rules or any ways of protecting itself against trolls. And I think
> someone who keeps asking trivial questions, does not read the answers,
> does not follow any advices, and keeps accusing the tool of being
> badly designed before trying to understand it falls in the "troll"
> category.
>
> Cheers,
> Alexandre
>
>

Here my 2cts to the discussion.

I agree with the characterization of this person, and I believe we
should not take further actions to regulate the list. Just identifying
and isolating trolls should suffice for now, I think, as there weren't
that many postings before the troll.

I think it's a good thing to have experts and beginners asking
questions in the same list. As long as the number of messages is
manageable, I will encourage us to maintain this setting.

Best,
Beta