[Strategic] Too many lists?

[Kate Chapman]

Hi Richard,

I think it is okay to have country specific lists.

Sure the tagging shouldn't be country specific, but there are meet-ups
and other things that are specific to areas. I think enough people
subscribe to those lists to keep people aware of tagging situations
and that there is for example a tagging list.

Otherwise should all lists be by language? I think there would be
disagreement in having all the Spanish or French language lists
together as well.

There is going to be some level of regionalization no matter what and
I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing. To go academic geographer
for a moment we can think of Tobler's First law (1) "Everything is
related to everything else, but near things are more related than
distant things." Maybe talk-ca and talk-us have more in common than
talk-au for example.

-Kate

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobler's_first_law_of_geography

On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 8:54 AM, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:
> I suggest that we have too many English, general purpose lists.  I
> think that we could easily roll talk-ca@, talk-us@ and talk-au@ into
> talk@ without harming any of those communities.  None of the country
> lists have enough traffic to cause a problem by overwhelming talk@
>
> On the other hand, I think that the three country lists harm the
> overall community by allowing Balkanization of community, tagging and
> mapping.  I think that there is too little to distinguish the
> communities to require distinct lists, and allowing the groups to
> splinter and diverge is harmful.  As an example, it is better to have
> cycle-mappers in US be aware of cycle mapping challenges in AU and CA,
> rather than to believe that a unique US tagging scheme is required.
>
> It might also be reasonable to roll the talk-gb and talk-ie etc, lists
> back into talk@ as well, but I have no history with those lists.
>
> In short, lists should be created based on demand, and then collapsed
> when the demand abates.  It's time to move en-talk back to talk.
>
> Just my thoughts.  How about you?
>
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