Re: Metaproblem, part 3

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

Eli Zaretskii writes:
 > > From: joaotavora@gmail.com (João Távora)
 > > Cc: esr@thyrsus.com,  phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
 > > Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 12:20:47 +0000
 > > 
 > > An idea would be to prefix the subject line in the on-list dialog with
 > > "[mentoring]" so people know that a newcomer is being tutored and so can
 > > avoid contributing tangential matters or topics too advanced that will
 > > confuse the effort.
 > 
 > We can certainly try that, and see if it helps.

You could try it, but in my experience with communities that have
evident mentoring efforts suggests that "tangential matters or topics
too advanced" are not that big a problem.  Newcomers generally detect
and ignore 2/3 or more of those posts.  If newcomers get confused by
those, they should go off-list.  If mentors detect that a newcomer is
getting confused, *they* should go off-list.

The bigger problem is the level of list traffic itself, which is
intimidating to newcomers, who often don't even want to subscribe.  If
there are people who have demonstrated interest in mentoring, a
separate list is a good idea.

Which reminds me: better than an ANNOUNCE tag in the subject line is a
separate -announce list which feeds into the main -devel list among
others.  If announcements of freezes etc double the number of
announcements (vs releases and major security events), I doubt anybody
will complain.