Karel Hladky <khladky@KHDESIGN.DEMON.CO.UK> wrote:
> I think that the PICLIST traffic levels are now high enough to justify
> starting a PICLIST newsgroup.

This subject keeps coming up every few months.  I, for one, don't want a
newsgroup.

1.  Traffic level doesn't seem like a particularly relevant criterion
    for changing things.  You might just as convincingly argue that the
    PICLIST should be changed to a newsgroup because Microchip has many
    new PIC variants, or based on Microchip's stock performance.

2.  It is easier to archive the PICLIST for future reference than it would
    be as a newsgroup.

3.  News tends to expire extremely fast.  The news server I use has a
    4 Gigabyte enews spool, and it still expires things in days.  Sometimes
    I'm unable to find time to read news that often.

4.  News doesn't always propogate reliably.  Often things expire at some
    intermediate site and never make it to some people.

5.  News doesn't propogate as fast as email.  Sometimes people answer questions
    on the PICLIST in only a few minutes.

6.  I really don't want to read "Make Money Fast" spam all the time.

7.  It really isn't that difficult for people that are interested to subscribe.
    But having at least a trivial entry barrier does act as somewhat of a
    "bozo filter".  (Sorry if that sounds elitist.)

8.  If you don't like getting the PICLIST mail in your normal mailbox, you
    can:

        A.  subscribe in digest mode so you get the email batched into
            large messages

        B.  arrange to have a separate mailbox just to PICLIST

        C.  use procmail, which can sort your email based on regular
            expressions

Cheers,
Eric