[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] Swapping parameters and type classes

[Simon Marlow]

Ian Lynagh wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2007 at 03:48:06PM +0100, Andrzej Jaworski wrote:
>> Responding to Simon Peyton-Jones'  reminder that this is a low-bandwidth list I
>> was obscure and commited a blunder.
>>
>> This one and many other threads here are started undoubtedly by experts [sorry
>> guys:-)] and coffee brake should work for them, but on numerous occasions
>> threads here spawn beginner type questions. So, my thinking was that it is
>> perhaps against the tide trying to stop them.
>> Why not to make the list Haskell a first contact general practitioner? Then
>> creating e.g. "Announcements & Challenge" or "Announcements & ask guru" list
>> could take the best from "Haskell" but also would make it less front line and
>> thus more elitist, which should imply the manner by itself.
> 
> I proposed renaming
>     haskell@ -> haskell-announce@
>     haskell-cafe@ -> haskell@
> in http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2007-July/028719.html

I suggested the same thing at the time we created haskell-cafe, but the 
concensus was in favour of haskell-cafe.  At the time I didn't think it 
would work - for a long time, the number of subscribers to both lists was 
almost the same - but now I have to admit I think haskell-cafe is a big win 
for the community.  The -cafe extension gives people the confidence to post 
any old chatter without fear of being off-topic, and I'm sure this has 
helped the community to grow.

Those of us who grew up with Usenet (RIP) are more at home with the 
foo/foo-announce split, and it's certainly quite conventional for 
mailing-list naming too, but on the whole I don't think doing things 
differently has really done us any harm and it may well have been a stroke 
of genius :-)

Cheers,
	Simon