[Haskell] on starting Haskell-Edu, a new education-related Haskell-related mailing list

[Ketil Malde]

Simon Marlow <marlowsd at gmail.com> writes:

> My main concern here is that the remit for the new list is not clear
> enough.  I can see a potential need for two lists:
>
>   * a list for discussion related to teaching Haskell;
>
>   * a list devoted to those learning Haskell, with a less research-
>     oriented feel than haskell-cafe.

> it's not obvious to me that both of those needs should be served by a
> single list.  I believe it's important that the mailing lists served
> by haskell.org should have clear non-overlapping topics.

Another concern might be that there currently isn't a lot of
discussion about the first topic on the existing mailing lists.  IMHO,
this may make it unlikely that the list will gather critical mass to
keep rolling.  There's a ton of more specific lists at
http://gmane.org/find.php?list=haskell , yet almost none have any
volume to speak of, the exception is highly specialized lists where
people in the know (ghc developers, summer of code particpants)
subscribe. 

As for beginners, there are occasional beginner questions on
haskell-cafe, but not in such volume that it is detrimental to the
existing lists. I'm not so worried about old-timers not subscribing to
it (you all seem pretty service minded), but I worry that we'll just
keep polluting existing lists with messages telling people to repost
their question to haskell-beginners instead.

IMHO, we might as well just use the existing lists for both of these.
If the perceived problem is the high-brow stuff scaring newbies off,
it's better to add a new list for that topic.

-k
-- 
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants